Death and Resurrection

Let's be honest, the purpose of resurrection in TTRPGs is primarily for the benefit of the players. If a DM makes frequent use of the resurrection spells for entities that the players went to great lengths to kill, it heavily undermines their effort and feels terrible, even if plausible. If all it takes is a bunch of money and a cleric then rich high level players live in a world without death as a consequence for anybody.

Now that we all agree about that, why does resurrection have an expensive material component cost? To punish the players for being unlucky? Why is it locked behind high-level magic? To make playing cleric mandatory? If we only consider the players, then these things become very obvious problems. Players shouldn't be shoehorned into playing specific classes, nor should the money that they worked hard to obtain be required to continue playing the game.

The powers that be should instead be very particular about the who gets a second chance. If the players are the main character of the story, then the game's resurrection mechanics should treat them as such. As a replacement for most resurrection effects, use these rules instead. Or don't use resurrection at all. It's your game. Whatever.

Please make sure your players are on board with whatever you decide. Nobody likes surprise mechanics.