Well, that's part of the problem. Don't do that. If the character's going to die and take your equipment with them - that's part of the unexpected nature of the story. When I finally get around to playing FFVII, I'm not going to even think about when a character might die. If they die and take all sorts of awesome stuff, I'll have to struggle through, just as the characters themselves would if they didn't have the benefit of metagaming.