We've always played "let the dice fall where they may" campaigns, so if a PC ends up dying he's dead until the rest of the party can do something about it.
In my previous campaign, I set it up such that each player had two PCs and they decided each adventure which one they were sending on that session's mission; this resulted in everyone having a "spare PC" available in the case of PC death.
In my current campaign, I gave the party an NPC cleric so if anyone's PCs got killed in an particular adventure they ran the NPC cleric for the rest of that session. (Resurrections generally happened between adventures.) Of course, they then managed to get the NPC cleric perma-killed, so that was no longer an option; fortunately, one of the PCs had already established that he had a sister who was a druid, so I statted her up and she now serves the same role: party healer and backup PC for whoever gets their own PC killed in an adventure.
Fortunately, the occurrence of multiple PC deaths in a given adventure are extremely rare - in the one or two times it's happened we let the second player to get their PC killed run a familiar or animal companion for the rest of that session.
Johnathan
In my previous campaign, I set it up such that each player had two PCs and they decided each adventure which one they were sending on that session's mission; this resulted in everyone having a "spare PC" available in the case of PC death.
In my current campaign, I gave the party an NPC cleric so if anyone's PCs got killed in an particular adventure they ran the NPC cleric for the rest of that session. (Resurrections generally happened between adventures.) Of course, they then managed to get the NPC cleric perma-killed, so that was no longer an option; fortunately, one of the PCs had already established that he had a sister who was a druid, so I statted her up and she now serves the same role: party healer and backup PC for whoever gets their own PC killed in an adventure.
Fortunately, the occurrence of multiple PC deaths in a given adventure are extremely rare - in the one or two times it's happened we let the second player to get their PC killed run a familiar or animal companion for the rest of that session.
Johnathan