The only reason I even want fame is to get more noble character slots. If you just give all the character slots that people would get from fame when the player starts out instead, I think there would be a lot less fame whoring. It would just become a statistic, fun to compare, but not effecting a players experience of Battlemaster. Right now it has a huge effect, namely how many characters you can have at once, giving people a big motive for fame whoring.
On to the "Til Death" option, I would like this. It would give more weight to me RP'ing Gustav Kuriga as having near-suicidal faith in Allison Kabrinski, and secondarily the Blood Stars (yes, he puts her above the Blood Stars, though he'll never admit it).
There was plenty of fame chasing long before fame was tied to the character slots.
