Magical resurrection is a theme in many RPGs, and also in 5e Dungeons and Dragons. However, whatever means of magical resurrection players can access, in most cases nonplayer characters can access too.
How do I allow magical resurrection as part of the game world without removing the dramatic tension that accompanies death? If any major character who dies has the potential to return, won’t death lose significance? How do I avoid this?
Ideally, the solution won’t be to just tax the party money; that’s unpleasant, but it’s not emotionally significant. A long, extensive quest isn’t always possible. What means are available to me to keep death scary without combat devolving into a torch-the-bodies-afterwards affair on both sides?
Any effective solutions you've implemented in your own game would be highly appreciated.
Best Answer
It really depends on what your goals are.
Death is as significant as its effects are in the game. For games where real permanent death almost never happens to PCs, and has no consequences, death can be quite insignificant. This can also reduce the difficulty and consequences of failure to the point where the players don't really need to fear much of anything, and can expect most or all defeats to be merely temporary setbacks or mere delays on their inevitable path to success and glory. This can undermine the "glory" too, if players notice there's no real question of actual defeat. Many computer games are like that ("Oh I died, better respawn or restore my last saved position, guess I just wasted three minutes..."), and even some tabletop games.)
You asked, "If any major character who dies has the potential to return, won’t death lose significance?" Yes, it loses significance equal to the difference in the consequences between actual death, and whatever death means in the game. However, having "the potential to return" can be very different from easy returning, in a number of ways, depending on the game being played, and what exists in the Game Master's world and the specific scenario. For examples:
Returning may require special skills which the players don't have easy (or perhaps any) access to.
Returning may involve a loss of abilities, in terms of experience/levels, attribute scores, or other added disadvantaging side-effects (aging, afflictions, etc).
Returning may require ingredients which are scarce or challenging to obtain, and/or cost a lot of money, or which could be used for other things if not used for resurrections.
Returning may involve the challenge of bringing the mostly-intact corpse to a particular location, perhaps within a certain time period.
Returning may have other risks or limits, such as a maximum number of times per person, or within a period of time, and/or chances of failure and/or side-effects.
Returning may have religious and/or social stigmas, such as being considered evil necromancy and/or mortal sin. Some people with religious attunement might even be able to tell that someone has been resurrected.
Returning may also not just be a simple convenient state change. Depending on the game world's spiritual setup, it may be more involved than that, possibly consorting with and striking deals with fae or djinn or spirits or demons, or maybe the PC's own spirit needs to be convinced to return, and so the returned PC becomes focused on whatever that convincing reason was, like a revenant (q.v.).
Returning may require a long time for the returned PC to be able to be very effective again, during which time they are weak or fragile and need to rest or at least wait to recover their former strengths and abilities.
So I would consider carefully what you and your players think you want death to be like in your games, check out all the options in the rules you mean to play with, and discuss with your players. Then decide what rules to use, what game world situation to set up, and possibly what house rules to use.
For what it sounds like you want, I think you could pick and choose from ideas such as above to get a game where death can be returned from, but only with major costs and effort involved, and as much or as little impact as you want.
Staying system-agnostic, I find that the choice of combat system also has a major effect on the death situation. That is, in games with abstract combat systems, especially games with dangerous abstract combat systems, it may be fairly difficult to avoid death sometimes, and in this case, it may be more tempting to have actual permanent death be unlikely. On the other hand, in games with more detailed tactical combat systems, or games where players have lots of ways they can (and are expected to) be careful to greatly reduce risks of death, and risk management is an important element of play, then it may work well to have deaths and crippling injuries be more or less permanent unless avoided in the first place. Or, player tastes may even enjoy fairly common and unpredictable risks of permanent loss or death, and enjoy that not dying is a significant achievement (that's how many early RPGs played out, any some players still enjoy that experience). (Personally, I mostly run games with little magical healing, but plenty of choices and tactical battles that let the players choose what risks to take. Usually there are very few PC deaths, because they tend to make choices that avoid getting them killed.)