yea, instant perma death is great. How else am I to kill off all the horrid characters like Fiona or Meg. I can't be bothered to wait 3 turns to make sure they are dead.
Anyways, I agree, there is nothing that FE should take from VC. I loved VC, but FE is the definition of hard SRPGs, whereas VC is a new take on the genre. If you tried to shoehorn in any of VC's game mechanics then you'd end up breaking FE.