You're all going after the wrong problem, as I see it.
The monetary cost, whatever it may be and in whatever form, is - in the end - trivial.
What is missing from 5e's death rules (so far) is any permanent or quasi-permanent consequences to the revived character. And that to me is where the true problem is. Being off form for a few days is nowhere near enough; most raises aren't done in the field in any case but are instead done when back in town, so no penalty there at all as the revivee recovers during the same days used by the rest of the party to divide and sell the treasure.
There is no chance the revival will fail (as in, no 1e-like resurrection survival roll).
There is no permanent loss of (1e-2e Con, 3e level).
Death here becomes no more than a monetary cost, and probably a trivial one at mid-high levels.
Lan-"players of old feared level drain, so it (wrongly) came out of the game; now they fear character death and thus with every edition we see it weakened"-efan
Agreed, 100%.
Now, I know that someone will see those changes as an improvement. D&D is, after all, a game, and permanent penalties are usually seen as not fun.
OTOH, fear of PC death does lead to more "realistic" gameplay in the sense that that fear is a handy substitute for a survival instinct. That makes a PC more than a mere piece in a boardgame.
To me, coming back from the dead SHOULD have consequences. However, in the light of myriad volumes of fantasy literature out there that touch on such a subject, perhaps that consequence should not be a single outcome hard baked into the rules, but rather, something more fluid. And maybe not limited to the target of the power, but also to the caster.
Perhaps the spell or whatever read raising mechanism would state that using it would say the returned character (and possibly the caster) now has
N Minor and/or Major Consequences. Examples of said consequences would be listed in a non-comprehensive section of the DMG, so the DM could tailor the effects to the spell used, the nature of the caster, the campaign world, the manner of death and whatever else the DM felt relevant. And- importantly-
not all consequences would necessarily be negative, or at least, not purely so. Perhaps the consequence results in an increase in the power of the returned PC...but simultaneously, he has some magical taboo that affects his actions. For example, the returned PC becomes a bound thrall to the person who brought them back. He is compelled to aid his benefactor in all situations.
And, to keep the fear of PC death "alive", the player wouldn't necessarily be aware of what the PC's Consequence was...
(Edit: I see the Mouse has similar thoughts.)
FWIW, Lanefan, I'm trying something with level drain in 3.X: instead of all the usual math-intensive consequences of level drain, I just impose conditions.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?335683-Brainstorming-Revising-Energy-Drain-for-3-X
--is the sort of "consequence" I want to see. I don't like seeing a PC permanently penalized. You wind up either with a penalty that doesn't matter, or with a player who feels punished for raising their old character rather than creating a new one.
