I've been a joint DM and player in an adventure that has gone on for a year now with characters that our group has played for nearly two years. We've done a fairly well system of rotating dms so everyone can tell a story with these characters.
We all started at level 3 and are presently level 14.
We've had a bunch of close calls and near death experiences - even intentionally by the hand of PCs (a PC paladin was starting to go down a dark path and two party members knocked him out and threatened to kill him to stop him from falling).
That said, there has now also been 4 player deaths as we hit the end of this story arc, and they've all been unexpected. At level 13 one pc was disintegrated, one was outright killed by an enemy in a ambush and had his head kersmashed. One died in battle and had his body nearly fully disolved by acid and subsequently died a second time when suffering the penalties of ressurrection but was saved by revivify.
We've used all the deaths to greatly enhance the story. When my PC died in the ambush (unplanned to die, just how the die went) we made a big thing about ressurrecting him. As a fiend pact warlock we decided that a pit fiend would actively attempt to stop the ressurrection and attempted to manifest itself and claim the soul of the PC.
We devised a system in which over the course of an hour the pit fiend would materialize, growing stronger and sending in waves of demons and the party could either lessen the strength of the waves of enemies or block the fiends full manifestation through a series of skill checks interspersed through the ritual and waves of enemies.
When we had a PC die of disintegration, the party was flabbergasted. It was the same battle that killed the other pc as well, making a somber experience. The parties cleric ressurrected the PC who died in the acid, and the stat penalties for his resurrection have been a fun penalty to impose. Word of his ressurrection reached the bad guys who have made several attempts on his life again, keeping him as a target and changing how the PC has to play until he recovers fully.
The PC who was disintegrated played it very well. Even though, the rolls off the die, he received a True Ressurrection from a npc cleric who used divine intervention, the player had to decide if he were truly willing to come back to a war afterspending time in his goddess's sacred heavenly Grove.
Even though all the PCs who have died have been ressurrected there has been a cost (party was given 100,000 gold to defend and prepare a city) as the enemies are smart, and keeping an eye on all the things that happen, targeting those NPCs and PCs with the capability to ressurrect and taking advantage of the PCs weakness after they are brought back.
On top of that, the enemies are capable of ressurrection as well.
The PCs deaths have given the characters and players real motivation to go after the bad guys. They hate them. The constant ambushes and escapes have been a great thing for the table while they have a huge list of things to do.
We made sure that ressurrection wouldn't cheapen our story, but has enriched it and let us tell the stories we want as a dm. Our players know that there is a real threat and spells like disintegration and finger of death will and can kill them.
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