WhatGravitas
Explorer
The real problem with character death is: It sidelines the player until either a) the character is resurrected or b) has rolled up a replacement character.
So, in order to keep that from happening, you have to get the character back into the game *quickly* - without penalties that make the character undesirable to play (e.g. stat losses - causing people to just re-roll a new character). Penalising them too harshly and making re-rolling overly favourable nixes the reason to have raise dead[/] in the first place (narrative continuity).
If you want to keep raise dead magical, you have to make death rarer - something that doesn't happen through bad dice rolls, but through bad decisions. One way to do to that is by breaking "out of combat = death" - in D&D, incapacitating a combatant almost always results in death. If there was more of a wiggle room between "unconscious" and "death", the whole issue wouldn't be a problem (short of a TPK or leaving somebody fallen behind - which is of course "bad decision").
So, what would help would be having more negative HP space. Then, raise dead can be rarer, too. Finally, if you want to impose a lasting penalty, don't make it permanent - make it a plot hook. Something you can get rid of within the next adventure or so.
So, in order to keep that from happening, you have to get the character back into the game *quickly* - without penalties that make the character undesirable to play (e.g. stat losses - causing people to just re-roll a new character). Penalising them too harshly and making re-rolling overly favourable nixes the reason to have raise dead[/] in the first place (narrative continuity).
If you want to keep raise dead magical, you have to make death rarer - something that doesn't happen through bad dice rolls, but through bad decisions. One way to do to that is by breaking "out of combat = death" - in D&D, incapacitating a combatant almost always results in death. If there was more of a wiggle room between "unconscious" and "death", the whole issue wouldn't be a problem (short of a TPK or leaving somebody fallen behind - which is of course "bad decision").
So, what would help would be having more negative HP space. Then, raise dead can be rarer, too. Finally, if you want to impose a lasting penalty, don't make it permanent - make it a plot hook. Something you can get rid of within the next adventure or so.