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I've seen two approaches work (in the same campaign):

1. Discuss game philosophy with your players early (before this becomes an issue, but even earlier than that).

2. Make it leave a mark.


## Discuss game philosophy

A longer campaign (and I imagine you're planning a longer one if resurrection is on the table) works best if everyone's goals align.  If some players are there to beat up monsters and take their stuff, while others are there to tell a story together, you're going to run into conflicts eventually.  We had this problem, with one player unhappy that we "didn't get much done" in some sessions (= didn't have lots of combats), while most of us were enjoying the greater plot that was unfolding.  That player ended up leaving the game, far-enough into the arc that we had to do some ret-conning to not break the story.

We didn't have this conversation early enough.  We did in the weeks leading up to, and after, this player's departure.  We could have alleviated a lot of frustration if we'd done so earlier.

A conversation like this brings out things that matter to the participants.  You, as GM, want death to be rare, meaningful, and not trivially defeated.  You and your players want other things too, some specific and some more general and philosophical.  You're all there because you're trying to do something together, and you're going to be spending a lot of time on it, so have a "game philosophy" discussion early on so y'all can adjust expectations, and don't be afraid to check in from time to time.  (Our campaign story had three "acts" contributing to the overall arc, though only the GM knew that in advance.  The ends of these acts were check-in times for us, among others.)

As part of this discussion, you can work with your players to achieve your goal (meaningful, rare death) and their goals (don't want to lose a character you've invested in because of an unlucky roll).  Talk about what you're all able to do to meet those goals.  Maybe you develop some house rules; maybe you all decide that certain remedies won't be available despite what's in the spell list; maybe you'll lean into the fact that most of these spells are cleric spells and depend on the favor of the gods (who can be unpredictable).  I suspect our GM fudged rolls occasionally, and that was fine with us players because it was in support of the story.  But when a player took ridiculous risks and a character actually died, that happened (and that leads into point 2).


## Make it leave a mark

One of our player characters died well into the campaign.  Unbeknownst to us players, the GM had some important plot hooks keyed to that character; "just roll up a new character" wasn't going to work.  But the player had been behaving recklessly during a combat and the GM didn't fudge to avoid death (which would have felt wrong to all of us, had it happened and had we learned of it).  We didn't have resurrection magic within the party, but there were plausible paths.

We all made some mis-steps during the rest of the game session where that character died; the GM told us in retrospect that we should have stopped there and had an out-of-game conversation.  We didn't have it that night, but we had it over the course of the following two weeks, between individual conversations and our email list.  The GM and player agreed that our druid knew someone who knew someone (this was actually plausible), and the result was a reincarnation spell, not resurrection.

The thing about reincarnation is that you might come back as something *different*.  I don't recall what the tables say about odds, but they didn't roll on that table.  The GM told the player what was going to happen, and the player agreed.  The (previously human) character came back as a half-dragon, which fit in well with the the character being a fighter and also fit into a dragon-themed story.  There were probably some stats-based damages for having died; I don't remember, but probably the character lost a level.  The player played the character as having to relearn and adjust to this new form, and it made good story.  It was a milestone event in the overall story.

It also instilled some more caution and gravitas in all the players.  Combat had *consequences* -- not just dice and character sheets, but things that mattered to the story, things we would have to role-play and live with.  Much later, we were fighting something that could inflict (permanent) blindness, and I was playing *very* cautiously because that's something that would especially bother me.  (Apparently this frustrated the GM, who had a magical cure planned that would give the affected character an additional ability -- and we didn't bite.  But it was a natural consequence and the GM accepted that.)

You, as the GM, ultimately control what is or isn't available in the game world, regardless of what the rules say.  But imposing your will isn't going to be fun; instead, work with the players to work out what kind of game you're going to have and where adjustments might be needed.  You don't have to work out all the details in advance; if everyone agrees on a philosophy, you can make the adjustments you need to make when situations arise.