The discussion in the Paladins thread reminded me of this. When a mob dies, is the death permanent for him/her/it IC, or is it like the death of a PC character? When the mobs respawn, what is it IC? Are they the same mobs with 1/3 con less, or are they different mobs, who "came out of hiding" or whatnot?

My characters have a different outlook. Thera is a cursed land, doomed to endless cycles of violence and bloodshed. Dependant on the will of the land, which may or may not be the same as the will of the gods, victims of violence either are resurrected and mind-wiped to relive their life, or replaced by a being similar to the original.

Changes to the patterns of Thera take massive adventurer action and godly intervention.

Adventurers are elevated and damned to a more vicious cycle, keeping their memory and soul intact through death, able to see past the cycles of respawning, but capable of true death, and slowly eroding towards it.

Then again, my characters are usually at least a little crazy, so even if this is against the official explanation, it works with their psychotic point of view.

is that the PC's, which can be seen as adventurers, attract the attention of the gods. The gods recognize the potential within the adventurer and finds him interesting enough to restore him, though even a god cannot fully restore a person as he was before (which results in the 1/3 con).

Now, with regular people, citizens, farmers, craftsmen, ..., they don't attract that kind attention, so their deaths are permanent. But, they are not even remotely as likely to die as an adventurer is. Unless he's unlucky and catches a disease or meets anything else that leads to his demise.

So it depends on the mob, if you kill a farmer, he will be dead permanently (he was killed by one of those ruffians hanging around the Fortress), where an Acolyte devoted to Zurcon would be important enough to the gods to be resurrected. As would be the Svirfneblin King.

Also, a PC isn't resurrected after delete delete, because he no longer is interesting to the Gods.

If I am killing a load of kobolds, I just assume more came.

If I am killing mercenaries, I assume more got hired.

If I am killing the svirf King, I assume he get resurrected.

IC I usually consider two "classes" of beings.

Individual types (PC's and unique mobs) have special attention from the Immortals who bring them back to life, yadda yadda.

Everything else. Those thousands of kobolds. All those dark-elf students. Orphans up the wazoo. Etc etc.

IC it makes as much sense as anything else. Why would a god waste time resurrecting a random blood beast, anyways?