It finally happened. You killed a player. Congratulations! Now everyone is sad (probably including you!).
When this happens, people often dread the occasion because they got attached to their characters. But why did they get attached? In my experience, it's because they still had work to do, and now they're pushing up daisies and lobbing swears at the poor psychopomp tasked with escorting them to judgment.
Death is permanent. Unless you have the ability to resurrect.
Let's analyze what's really at play here.
The Purpose of Death
Death, people will tell you, is a consequence. Death, people say, is what makes you care about combat. It's the painfully motivating force. You'll never truly evade it and it happens when you least expect it. It's sad, and somber, and great for roleplay.
Well, people are wrong. All of this can be undone with a simple resurrection spell. So really, let's be honest with ourselves. It isn't a punishment after about level 13. And really at that point, it's just inconvenient.
"But it's expensive! It uses a resource!"
Yes, imaginary strawman, it is. But who cares? You can't argue that death is a vital, necessary force to include so that events feel dangerous and real if you're going to just gloss over the fact that any player with enough money can commission your soul back to life. Let me put it this way: if the only thing standing between me being resurrected at any given level is a matter of money and access by way of applicable casters, then the true danger is found not in death, but in empty coin purses and isolated stretches of wilderness.
"Sorry, Baldr. You can't be brought back because we're juuuust outside of the span of time allowed by the spell. It'll take us too long to get back to you."
"Oops! That really sucks, Anisia. If I just didn't buy that +3 sword of kickass, then we could've paid for your revival. Better luck next time :/"
Doesn't really sound like a "powerful, meaningful death", does it?
So why do people insist on saying death is a necessary penalty that must, under no circumstances, be tarnished by making it "easy"? I'm not here to debate if there is such a thing as a meaningful death. There is. But all of the people are at the table to play the game. They chose a character for it. And if they weren't ready to die and are gated behind resurrection because of something arbitrary, then this really says less about providing narrative oomph, and much more about what we're trying to achieve by balancing the game.
And that's the meat of it, really. We have convinced ourselves that it would be "broken" to be able to defy death so easily. That's why it has to cost 60 trillion gold pieces and also your dignity, because by golly if it was affordable, then it would be meaningless, and everyone would do it.
No it wouldn't, and no they wouldn't.
Reframing Death
If we are so worried about death losing meaning, then we must first analyze why death is presumed to be important at the table. To put it concisely, death matters because if you die, everything you've done up until now is all you'll ever have done, and it is all you can be remembered for. Forget the parts about how much people will miss you. It's relevant, but immaterial. Your legacy ends. That's the message here.
But this perspective is precisely why the arguments about 'easy access to resurrections would cheapen death' work. Because when you view death as the ultimate cessation, then getting a chance to resume is cheap.
So that's why I don't think of it so simply.
In a fantasy world, we have the option for a great many ways to play around with experiences like this. There are deities and creatures that are responsible for the handling of souls. They are devoted to the care and judgment of them. To what end do they get judged? Usually some elaborate form of reincarnation. Occasionally they are repurposed as denizens of the underworld, where they live nondescript lives doing something in service of the deity in charge. But even if they were cast into oblivion, where they are fundamentally destroyed, the process goes through several points of interaction.
My point is that death in most fantasy worlds are anything but final and immutable. And often, they are far from irreversible by means other than mortal-wielded magic (come on, are we really so arrogant?). And are we really going to forget that restless spirits frequently linger and cause problems?
In addition, these deities that deal with souls and the afterlife have agendas. Granted, most of their agendas revolve around tending to the souls of the deceased, but that's not to say they don't have problems that need fixing on the prime material (liches are flagrant abominations that stand in bitter defiance of the cycle of life, after all). Especially so, when you include the trope of deities that, for one reason or another, ditch the material plane as a place they would ever willingly appear (something something, I have a cleric who can do this for me, so why would I make the trip and do it myself?).
This also means that their agendas can be made smoother by people willing to aide. Of course they're not immune to bribes and bargains. They're gods. They invented the concept.
Side note: The presence of these agendas is precisely why ordinary people really can't be expected to be able to "cheat Death". Player characters are, by design, more important than everyone else. NPCs are special too, but they're baked into the narrative in a manner that allows for the DM to plan around their demise. Players, on the other hand, are agents of choice with no predictive aide suitable to plan around them reliably. The fact that players are different in this way, means we must treat them differently regarding dying. If you think that somehow comes off incongruent, I invite you to consider what part players really fulfill in your campaigns. In my experience, they are always the ones accomplishing that which no one else can or should be able to do.
A Ghastly Undertaking
Let's be clear, what I'm suggesting is not a "get out of the grave free" card. In a world where death is the end of everything relevant to you, but there is still a significant chance to bring someone back, you can cheapen it by making it a non-issue to enact. At that point, all you need is a practiced wrist to handle all the handwaving that allows you to rise from death after battle.
What I'm suggesting is not trivial. It's a companion piece to the notion that death should be difficult to overcome. The biggest difference is I do not want gold to be the only thing that should matter.
One concept is as follows:
Death spirits, denizens, and deities all have a vested interest in keeping a soul when its time is up. But who decides when it is up? If a soul is not at peace, an usher cannot, by virtue of the essence that was used to create them, renege on their duty to escort it to the place of judgment.
However, they are capable of trading a soul not yet ready for a soul that is. Thus, the one tried and true metric one should know is that in order to escape death, you must enact the role of the psychopomps and bring a soul ready to depart.
Not every soul is equal (sorry, some souls really are more important), but people do not fathom how ushers and the like speculate upon the value of souls, so it's a bit of a potshot. For an adventurer, your soul is special, and so you need roughly 3x the amount of souls. Ushers work fast, though, so not only must you catch one before night's end at the nearest Gate of Passing (found at any reputable graveyard, but a mock up can be constructed in a pinch to host an usher), but you must carry out the work they request of you for the trade. You must hurry, because a soul will be coaxed into acceptance over the period of one week. Wait any longer, and the only thing that can save them is resurrection.
Alternatively, you can always trade your soul. An adventurer for an adventurer. In either case, the usher will somberly trade the soul, with which you must quickly return to the body, which must have been reposed for the duration and must not have been tampered with since death. The process of returning is a ritual requiring a sanctified priest(ess) familiar with the rites. The soul will only linger after leaving the usher's person for three days before it fades through into the underworld to be ferried once more. If this occurs, the process must be done again, and has a chance of failure, as the soul has become less and less resistant over time.
So firstly, you must put in work to save someone. You must do it quickly. You must meet certain requirements. You must be successful.
Then, you have to safely escort their soul back. You must be or find an appropriate holy member to help. And again, you must act quickly.
This makes the process of death permanent if, and only if, you allow it to be. Who knows what the ushers will demand of you, but do you care? You get an adventure out of it and an ally back.
"So, what's to stop you from doing this all the time?"
Nothing. Ok, look. I don't think you need to scrutinize it along the lines that it is repeatable. But if you really want to know how I would run it to ensure that people still fear death and still have a way to get out, I would do a few things. But first, let's remember that interacting with psychopomps are far from the only ways to get a soul. Devils are notoriously willing to make one-sided deals. And pledging allegiance to demons might be a way to ensure return of your friend. But those are evil, and if you're resisting me on making death more fleshed out and reasonable, then I know you're a goody two-shoes who won't like those options.
So what I would do is this. There is a failure of no less than 10% each time a soul is attempted to be brought back through this process. Also, ushers will stop responding after the third time. This will require you use alternative means. No, that doesn't immediately equate to devil deals (though it could...). But it does mean you'll need to find a different way.
The ushers are the ones who are quest givers in this scenario. Thus, they are the ones who choose the task. Consider also that with each subsequent folly, their requests will get more and more challenging.
But what happens after the third time? Well, if you die again and you're still not ready, there is a ritual that certain, rare occultists can teach you. It's highly religious, so you better pick a god and start praying in advance. This ritual will allow you to call a spirit that is unwilling to depart. It will also draw attention to you from ushers themselves. This is what we call a Bad Idea, because this will sour your reputation with ushers. You'll have to fend them off as appropriate, and they won't wear kid gloves.
But if successful, you get the spirit back, and can perform the aforementioned ritual.
Better not die again, because that's really rough.
Fine, I'll explain.
Terrible Consequences
Dying more than four times is quite bad. Not just because you're clearly playing poorly (or your DM/dice are out to get you), but because the spirit has been ripped from its rightful vessel so many times that it risks corrupting.
You see, there are unseen forces all over the place that don't affect you because you have a flesh suit that protects your spirit. But sometimes they can. Most people call this "temptation". In reality, it's a natural radiation from other planes, and bare souls are especially vulnerable to it (that's part of why so many ghosts are grumpy, but some are pleasant). Temptations can be good, evil, or neither. But in every case, a soul uncased is a soul in peril. Repeated exposure to these radiative forces can cause shifts in character's judgment and behavior. There is a 20% chance after the fourth time you die that the next death will shift your alignment one step in a random direction (roll 1d8/1d6/1d4 as appropriate for current position). You never move more than a step, but this is a meta-enforced shift, not a simple matter of what your magics are aligned to.
The player should be told to act in accordance with these changes. This is the price of death. It should and will change their motivations, wants, methods. You could argue that they're a different person, but they're not. It's a facet that would have cropped up if the soul had followed those temptations from the beginning.
Additionally, ushers will start putting you on their hit list after the first violent run-in. You better believe it will only worsen after each successive one. I think that's enough of a "punishment", don't you?
A Second Chance
So, let's say you think it's not always fitting to include a Gate of Passing. And you don't really want outsiders like psychopomps to be a recurrent force players can just meet. This is reasonable enough.
I have another thought that might help.
Death is a singular entity, clad in robes, naught but a skeleton underneath it, and wielding the scythe we've all seen before. Powerful, and force personified, it is iconic, but also legitimately real.
Death, though, looks back on life from the very end of it. It comes to claim you at the end, but has seen everything after your passing as well. It knew the last page of the storybook of your life and the universe as a whole from the day you drew breath. It knows how things will end and ventures back in time to collect your soul because doing so fuels Death.
Think of Death like an edgy form that represents entropy. The less souls it has, the more likely that one day, Death as a whole would cease entirely. Death obliterates the souls and consumes them in a parasitic relationship with the cosmos. A necessary, if not seemingly macabre function, it does serve an overall positive purpose when you consider things like overpopulation, dictators that could never die, and ravaging diseases.
So for Death to give up a meal, two things must at least be necessarily true: you must be unwilling to pass; and you must be special enough or strong enough to overcome Death's first embrace.
Ghosts hang around because of unfinished business all the time. And Death is omnipotent to large degree, but would rather go for easy prey to conserve energy for when it needs it. And trust me, Death has many that view it... unfavorably. Beyond that, many of these ghosts end up leading to several more casualties. Death gets several meals out of one missed one. Pragmatic.
Thus, if you die, there are choices before you. Death will appear so that it may take you. You will, if you're reading this far, staunchly object. Might even cry. "I never made it back to my children in Vamt! The war will reach them and they won't know it's coming!" Death knows. It knew what would happen whether you lived or died. It knows what is the most favorable outcome for it.
Surprisingly, Death asks a question. "What is life renewed worth to you?"
Death is humoring you. But you actually have a chance. It's important to know that you must think long and hard. Because Death already knows the only answer it would accept. But the cosmic rules Death is bound by prevent it from telling you. You get one chance to beg. Death might make it a conversation. It likes small talk.
In the end, you won't make a great argument. Death already knows what will happen millenia past your final peril. But it extends a bony hand, leaving two copper coins in the palm of your hand. One to represent your first life. One to represent your second.
It will tell you life is bestowed conditionally. Whatever argument you landed on - that's the final. No ifs, ands, or buts. No renegotiation. No third chances. No matter the cause, no matter the reason.
You are tasked to finish your quest. To fulfill the agreement. And then, when you succeed, you are to put the coins on your eyes as you lay to sleep, where Death will appear, and consume your soul. Painless.
The alternative is interesting. If you refuse to do so, you become an enemy of Death. And now, it seeks you out through time. And if it succeeds in finally ending you - which it always, always will - you are no longer obliterated to fuel the Hungering End. Instead, you are banished to Hell. Limbo. Prison. Whatever you call it, it's worse than what you think. Death is spiteful when someone reneges on a deal.
Side note: The only thing Death does not immediately know is what you will choose to do with your second life. That is always a choice that fundamentally alters everything, and cannot be known until it has been decided by the player. Death takes gambles like these because it can. It's also entertaining. This is why it won't know if you would renege immediately or not.
Afterword and Discussion
I don't think that death is something we handle well in gaming. Locking it behind time and money is little more than a good metaphor for the real world, and often frustrating as a player (and as a DM). I know there are likely a great many out there who vehemently subscribe to the notion that anyway out of death, even resurrection spells for some of you, is cheapening the severity.
I'll say two things. Firstly, relax. Secondly, this heavily depends on your setting and goals. If you want a game where death is final, then make it final. But in my experience, a lot of people (DMs included!) hate when a character dies. And not for any reason other than "damn, now they won't be able to finish that quest..." It doesn't hit the same to make a new character after that. In a game where wish fulfillment is a guiding principle behind why it is enjoyed, this seems a strange hill to die on.
Some people can manage permadeath just fine, but many don't. I will agree, though, that a spell that does the deed is boring when left at that (though I still utilize it with some modifications). That's why I think we need to approach it differently. If time and money are frustrating and uninteresting ways to make death permanent, then I think that willingness and successful planning are better replacements. Or, in the second scenario, becoming indebted to Death. That seems far more engaging than "We go to the conveniently high-leveled priest and rez Jor. Again."
And note for the psychopomp route, I don't think these discussions should always be "Tim died again, what do you want us to do this time?" Rather, I think persuasion is an important part of this. Court the usher. Make promises. Make it matter. You're fighting for someone's life, and a compulsion is telling the usher to ignore you. Convince them. Don't make it a skill check, but make it something that players must engage with in order to fulfill. Dine with Death and learn its needs.
For the Death as a sole entity option, it's relatively straightforward, but it should be clear they are on gifted time. It will all come to a screeching halt once they finish their job. Defying Death could be a narratively fascinating path, but it should almost never work out favorably.
And if you still think that this cheapens the experience, let me sell you on one last point: You won't feel nearly as guilty going all out against a party when they have a second chance at life.