One mechanic that's common in RPGs is that, when a character dies, all status ailments and temporary effects on the character go away. For example, if a party member is blind, you can cure that blindness by killing the character and then reviving them. Do you think this mechanic makes sense, or should such effects remain on a character even through death?

The example that made me think of this is Final Fantasy 2, which is one example where curing some status ailments (amnesia and toad come to mind) is harder than reviving dead characters. Specifically, Esuna needs to hit multiple times to cure those status ailments, while Life only needs to hit once (and in remakes, not even that's necessary).

(Incidentally, FF2 is interesting in one other respect; in the original version, death does *not* cure status ailments, but in the remakes of said games, it does.)

This sort of rule can also lead to bugs in more complex games. For example, in Baldur's Gate 2, if a polymorphed character gets killed, the polymorph spell effect will end, but the character will retain the abilities the spell grants, allowing the character to polymorph as much as desired permanently. Also, I believe that, at least on some version of the game, a character with a sequencer might no longer have it active, and therefore can't use it, but might not be able to cast another one (I don't remember exactly how this worked, or if the bug went the other way).

So, what do you think of this common mechanic?

I don't like it because it's not realistic.

Typically in real life when I kill a blind person and then bring them back from the dead, they are still blind.
Why devs think that games should magically be exempt from this is beyond me.

I think it's fine, but only for debuffs and whatnot.
It'd be interesting to have characters in games with permanent debuffs .

Then again i've never been hit by a blind debuff. But i do have a shitty eye sight debuff. Which i guess if i die and come back, i'd still have shitty eye sight...

Maybe it could depend on what effects. Like i think poison is fine to disappear after death.

It depends on whether the rest of the game is balanced around it or not.

I don't mind it, because usually, in such games, dying is already inconvenient enough.

Other genres take the dying convenience a bit too far, but there again, it tends to define their degree of "seriousness", so, if you're in the mood for light-hearted semi-casual slashing/shooting, you won't mind much.

(Yeah, am currently playing Just Cause 3, and it's typically one of these many open world games where death is just something between a "reset heat" button and a teleport ability.)

"dying is already inconvenient enough"

That's going on my headstone. XD

There are games where dying is actually, in some cases, more convenient than not dying.

* In Phantasy Star 3, you can get an infinite use item that has a chance of reviving a dead character with full HP. That item does not work on living characters, and you can't easily get an item for healing living characters at that point.
* In some Final Fantasy games (typically 6 and onward, but there are cases in the first 3 due to how the magic system works), you can full revive, but either can't full heal a living character or doing so requires a different resource. (In the FF2 case, I note that this only happens if you raise Life to level 16, which is not something a typical player would do; 8 seems to be about the highest level the game expects you to reach by the endgame.)
* In some games, such as some Dragon Quest games (5 and later), it's quite likely that a character will get a full revive before a full heal.
* In Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, at extreme epic levels (well after game balance has broken down), you can fully heal a dead character with no real cost or side effects for the cost of a 9th level spell, but doing so to a living character requires an epic spell.

By the way, Ultima 4-7 works something like how you describe Just Cause 3; after punishing death in Ultima 4 and 5, Richard Garriott gave up trying to discourage death warping and just gave the player a minimal cost spell (1 MP, no reagents) which has the same effect.

I seem to recall,one of the Might and Magic series was addressed correctly.Player member killed so back to a temple to pay to be resurrected and then paying again to remove a curse or disease.Some got it right but I think death is final and should be treated that way.Darklands was another that treated death in the correct respect as player was permanently deleted and you needed to create another new member for the party.And that is the way it should be addressed or as I did,just load a previous save.

I disagree; I prefer it if death is easily treatable just like any other status ailment.

Id be fine with it if dickheadedness, bigotry, and otherwise shitty writing and so on were also cured.

Reminds me of the original Dragon Quest. If you die while cursed, you respawn in the castle with 1 HP and the same MP you had when you died, and are immediately kicked out of the castle. Fortunately, the town where you can get the curse removed for free is right there. (Incidentally, in the Dragon Warrior Randomizer, it's actually possible to softlock, particularly if the terrain surrounding the castle is poison swamp and you don't have any available means to heal yourself.)

(Being cursed only happens if you use one of the two obviously cursed items (one even has "Cursed" in its name.)

I'm fine with this way of handling death. Most issues mentioned here seem to be related to exploitability of death to bypass other problems. The solution to that is just one of balance: making sure recovering from death is less convenient than recovering from those other ailments. There are, of course, edge cases where the cost of recovering from...i dunno, 4 separate status effects is more than recovering from death, but that again is mostly a matter of balance. Items that help with such status effects are usually multipily effective anyhow: you wouldn't take 2 cure disease potions to cure 2 diseases, 1 would cure them both.

"Death Cures Everything" would be a good incription as well. XD

That's why permadeath is the best choice. :)