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Shadowrun being low lethality doesn't conform to my experiences with it either.  Getting ambushed in SR is almost a gauranteed death.  A gunshot without armor/magic/et cetera mitigating the damage has a pretty high chance of killing you outright (especially compared to a lot of other systems).

Lots of games have lethality somewhere between 3e and 4e and low or no access to rezzing.  I agree with an earlier commenter that the easy access to rez was a DM tool and relic of earlier, much more lethal editions.  The ease of erasing a player death is going to have to depend on the lethality of the game.

From a narrative perspective I hate resurrection. 

Mar 30, 2012 -- 9:27PM, OcelotX wrote:

Why are we concerned about altering death mechanics so random kings don't just buy Raise Dead rituals, but we don't think about why they don't just take Wizard levels until they can prepare Wish and shape reality to their whim?  Why is it objectionable for the party to be infinitely wealthier than any governing authority, but we don't mind if they're infinitely more powerful?

To my understanding, its because its difficult/nigh imposible to reach a high enough level to easily case Raise Dead let alone Wish. That's not to say you can't find such an individual, but someone who's held up with the matters of the state (ruling actually doesn't allways allow for time) probably won't have the time to commit to the slow process of leveling up outside of adventuring.(Or even pay enough to that rare individual as they'd be such a  high priced commodity.) The reason adventurers get more powerful more quickly is because nothing forces you to learn faster than the school of hard knocks. At least that's one interpretation.

Death's Door -10, saves perhaps 80-95% of all character "deaths". You simply kill off the rest of the encounter and get to your friend before their time is up. Available at level 1.

Raise Dead costs constitution, but extends death's door from minutes to days. Perhaps there should be something inbetween, like an Icebath effect, CPR or something, that allows characters to be pulled back in hours/level rather than days/level for caster, without Constitution loss. Raise Dead should be available at mid to high level, and very high level Paladins. That inbetween thing might be available to low level and mid level Paladins.

Resurrect costs 3 years of caster's life, meaning with an average party of 4, you are looking at 9 years per 3 people so a max of about 5-10 opportunities a piece. This should be a high level spell for clerics, and beyond the reach of Mortal/Non Ascended/Non Epic Paladins. On a scale of 1-20, a 35th level Paladin gets this spell.


Now What about Reincarnation?

Reincarnation should be as common as Raise Dead and Resurrection in Oriental Adventures and for Psionicists. Here I think there should be a basic trade off:

Resurrection should be Identical to Reincarnation in Terms of Level for the Opposite Classes.

so if you had to be 14th level cleric, vs. 14th level Psionicist/OA Priest, you would have the Cleric With access to Resurrect, and the OA character with Reincarnate.
You might then have the Cleric have access to Reincarnate later, like 21st level, and the same with the OA priest for Resurrect. I don't see Reincarnate appear much in the West, and I don't see Resurrect appear much in the East, but I've seen both appear in both at different times. Also been thinking there's different levels of reincarnation, like, sometimes the characters come back based on karma, and sometimes its like random, or whatever. I don't know, but It would be cool if Reincarnation could perhaps restore more "lost levels" or whatever at higher levels.

I think death is really important to have, but in making it a strong possibility we need workarounds to avoid people getting too depressed/irritated. First you need to make death entirely possible, but give some wiggle room to avoid too many needless deaths. We use the negative hit points rules for this, but we also keep to the rules on SoD situations, so it sort of balances out. We also use a narrative style that lends itself to fudging (you all awake chained to the oars of the slave galley).

I don't think revivification should be easy...not like a skill. It should be a mid-level spell option that has costs and negatives, as well as limitations. For us we used a time limit (24-72 hours after dying), required a system shock/survival roll to avoid permanent penalty (experience loss, stat degredation, limps, etc), and we made the reagents/components touchy to obtain. For groups with no clerics we allowed 'purchasing' from larger churches, but only at great cost.

Higher level res were nothing short of EPIC to obtain and cast, but had none of the negatives.

Also I think Minor Revivification (for example "resurrect a character died within the last 4 rounds) could be a low-level spell with no problems at all.
Revivification could be obtained at mid levels and used to resurrect people died within the last five minutes.
Resurrection should be an epic spell that brings back to life someone died even within a month or year, or maybe it depends on how well the body is preserved.