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Good module/side-bar information with this thought.
I have had characters go out doing something heroic and having to take a bit to decide if I wanted them brought back. As often as not I choose to let their story end there. Penalties, enhanced costs, and such should be a table to table decision.
Options and guidelines are always good to include, though.

Personally, I think mechanical penalties are the worst conceivable way of solving the issue and making them last longer only makes things worse.  Restricted access at least begins to help solve some of the issues, but the cure can be worse than the disease.

Sometimes, character death is good.  It was a fitting end, the player is looking forward to trying something different, or the story just demands that a character stay dead.  Easy access to resurrection can ruin that.  Even if you as a player are willing to say "that was a good end, I refuse resurrection," does that make sense to the story?  Why would the paladin of ilmater who sacrificed himself to save others in a heroically awesome moment then decide, "you know what, I've given enough, I'm just going to hang here with my god and let someone else save the world," even though the player has a new concept he's itching to try out and resurrecting the paladin would just totally trivialize his sacrifice.  Why wouldn't a king have a high level cleric with a raise dead scroll follow him around everywhere, just in case?  But mechanical penalties don't solve any of those issues.  The king doesn't care about them, the paladin's sacrifice is still trivialized, and the player still has to choose between breaking character and good story/playing what he wants.  Restricting access doesn't help much, because too often there's no good reason not to have access right there, or the problem is simply temporary as you carry around the corpse until access presents itself.

Sometimes, it's bad.  Your beloved character that you've been adventuring with for years takes a few unlucky crits in what should have been an easy fight, and now the party is down a man in the middle of the dungeon crawl on their way to the heart of evil, and if they turn back they'll have to start over.  It's ignominious, it throws away all the connections that character has built to the world, and it puts a serious crimp in the drama if the party has to turn around and raise him from the dead.  Again, mechanical penalties aren't helpful here, beyond a "serves you right for letting yourself get killed" that I find anathema.  I'm all in favor of consequences, but mechanical penalties are just saying "I punish you for something that may well just be bad luck (which can't be discouraged) or in-character decision making (which shouldn't be), in a way that just prevents you from contributing to the party's success."  Restricting access just makes this problem worse, because there is no good story reason for the times you have access to be positively correlated to the times when character death is bad (in fact, I can think of good reasons why it should be negatively correlated).  You won't find a high level cleric in the middle of your dungeon crawl unless the DM says "deus ex machina" but you will find one in the palace of the newly dead king.  You won't find one in the woods where a random encounter gone south kills the wizard, but you're more likely to have though to bring the appropriate materials along for that epic boss fight where the paladin heroically sacrifices himself.

Consequences, properly done, should be story consequences: things that you wouldn't want to happen to you, but which make for great drama when they happen to your character.  Supposing that while you were dead, your soul suffered an eternity of torment at the hands of some arch devil?  Now you've got character development and a new bad guy to layer into the campaign, and you end up with a deeper story instead of a bored player.  Your actions had consequences, they changed the story (far more than a trip to the city and a few days' rest), but those consequences make the game more interesting not less.  Story consequences also help the first problem.  OK, the king as a high level cleric on standby in case he gets assassinated, but what if he comes back wrong?  What if getting him back at all is still a major quest, because you have to head into the underworld to retrieve his soul?  There are still huge consequences to having let the king die in the first place: much huger ones than "he has a -1 to all rolls for three days" (or even ten years), and ones that add to the story.  The paladin's sacrifice isn't trivialized, because he was tortured for centuries thanks to that death, maybe even turned to the dark side.  And if the story demands the character stay dead (or a player just wants to roll up a new one) there are a multitude of story reasonss why he must stay dead without feeling contrived: the cost of saving him is simply too high, requiring a deal with the devil that is too expensive or a quest they don't have time for while the world falls apart around them, or they simply don't care enough about jerk-face McSteals-a-lot or commoner number 423.  And best of all, the inability to save him becomes itself a dramatic moment in the story instead of "let's stuff his head in a bag of holding until we find a high level cleric" or "DM says his soul is at peace and doesn't want to return."

TLDR version: Mechanical penalties and restricted access don't add to the story, and they get in the way at times when character death is bad as often as they help when character death is good (unless the DM contrives otherwise, which is contrived).  Story penalties for the win!

Should be a setting/DM dial.

Personally, I have weaved resurrection into my setting to work with it.

Death in my setting causes magical madness which can accumulate from many sources. If you become too mad, your body rejects your soul (becoming a ghost) or your soul refuses to return to the living world. So players have to manage their PC's stress as they can go loco and get final death.

Feb 1, 2013 -- 5:10AM, powerroleplayer wrote:

Restricting access just makes this problem worse, because there is no good story reason for the times you have access to be positively correlated to the times when character death is bad (in fact, I can think of good reasons why it should be negatively correlated).

If your players are going into a dungeon crawl with a big campaign defining climactic battle, you can always drop a scroll of raise dead into the party's hands before the dungeon. If you drop it early they might not realise you're worried they're going to need it.

Feb 1, 2013 -- 5:10AM, powerroleplayer wrote:

Consequences, properly done, should be story consequences: things that you wouldn't want to happen to you, but which make for great drama when they happen to your character.  Supposing that while you were dead, your soul suffered an eternity of torment at the hands of some arch devil?  Now you've got character development and a new bad guy to layer into the campaign, and you end up with a deeper story instead of a bored player.

You could always have a devil pop up and say "oh dear. I see you've lost a dear and departed friend. How sad. If only someone could help you. For a price."

Devils may have become my new favourite villain for D&D

Feb 1, 2013 -- 5:10AM, powerroleplayer wrote:

OK, the king as a high level cleric on standby in case he gets assassinated

Why would a cleric agree to this? They should be doing their god's work. Not waiting around like some gun for hire in case the king should die. When you have an immortal ruler you invite tyranny. Or you invite incompetency. Everyone knows that they can't gain the throne because the king's going to just get raised. They become bored, disillusioned, apathetic. It weakens the kingdom and the power base that the church is clearly trying to build.

Feb 1, 2013 -- 5:10AM, powerroleplayer wrote:

TLDR version: Mechanical penalties and restricted access don't add to the story, and they get in the way at times when character death is bad as often as they help when character death is good (unless the DM contrives otherwise, which is contrived).  Story penalties for the win!

I completely agree with this. I'm inclined to remove the penalties altogether. I can cause much more trouble then a mere "-4 to all rolls" (which, incidently, largely screws over fighters more than wizards who typically don't roll to damage enemies).

Feb 1, 2013 -- 4:17AM, CarlT wrote:

I don't know if you ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But I liked the bit of a twist that occured when they brought Buffy back from the dead.



She came back pissed off.  She was in heaven.  She was at rest.  She was done with all the crap back in Sunnydale.  And they yanked her out of there and forced her to come back and deal with all that again.  And she was not happy about it.



Just because they raised your character, that doesn't mean you have to be happy about it.....


Carl       

I don't remember where I read this, but I read in a splat book from one edition or another that the plane you travel to in the afterlife was directly related to your alignment.  In the event that my character dies, I'd actually like to roleplay being in whatever plane that happens to be and determine my feelings after the fact.  So, instead of sitting out of the game until resurrection, I could experience my character's death, and roleplay accordingly.  Depending on alignment, the character could potentially experience some character changing aspects due to the knowledge of their fate in the afterlife.  It could change a character's outlook entirely, maybe alter their alignment, or perhaps encourage them to continue the life they have.  So, you could theoretically find yourself in a literal heaven or hell situation and want to react if resurrected.  Of course, my DM hates splitting the party, so I'd likely just have to go home until I make a new character or get raised.