Hey so just to clear things up, this is roughly what we have in mind for the battle mode design. I wont go into to much detail as some things are subbject to change. This is just to clear things up before this discussion goes off into to many directions.
We'll definetly only give players a single life per round. Otherwise your suggestion isnt to far of from what we had in mind:
Imagine Battle to be like one life Skirmish, but without the 12 player cap and with a “TDM like” gold system, that rewards you for your performance. Similar to M&B Warband, where you get gold for kills. In Bannerlord we expanded on this, so you'll not only get gold for kills, but also for assists and other things like staying alive. The amount of gold you get is dependent on the difference in value between yours and the opponents class. (You get more money for killing high value troops, and you'll get even more for doing it with a cheap class)
Your starting money and rewards are quite different to the current TDM model.
So you'll pretty much always be able to play most of the light and medium classes. If you want to play some elite class, you'll need to perform well to be able to afford it again, or perform ok but stay alive. It hinders the slippery slope you sometimes found yourself on in M&B Warband Battle, giving you loads of comback potential when playing cheaper troops (since you get more money and the opponents get less for killing you).
We hope this will lead to somewhat balanced teams, in terms of their troop composition.