While I respect your view on having death be a factor in your decision to become stronger later in the game, I will state it is not needed. Truly skilled Nidalee players, as seen in the pic provided, will never need anything more than the tear as it represents not only the ability to stack an item and clearly not need an upgrade, the sheer willpower of being pro and landing those spears.

As a nidalee main and user of different nidalee builds, I must say that chalice + tome is a much better start, and once you go up ranks in ARAM not dying becomes a weakness. The basic fact is that either in a misplay or for a greater benefit, you'll probably die till level 7 or 8, at that point getting tear is far more useful than starting it, generally very few mages can successfully start tear.