dying while level-drained?

[Braininthejar]

What heppens if you get level-drained and then die before you can roll to see whether it sticks?

[sirpercival]

You're dead?

[snakeman830]

I think he means if they're resurrected later.  Could also have an impact on Animate Dead in certain circumstances.

[phaedrusxy]

You're dead?

All conditions affecting you are generally removed when you die and are resurrected, right?

[Braininthejar]

All conditions affecting you are generally removed when you die and are resurrected, right?

Most of them... but what about the roll for lost levels? Can your vitality shake off the impact of negative energy when you are dead?

- either level drain is something "added" to the body - in effect "negative energy poisoning" and it discharges safely when there is no lifeforce.

- or it represents something "missing" - a lifeforce "hole" that a body can recover from or not. - and dead people don't heal. That would not only mean automatic loss of levels, but make people drained to death unressurectable (since you can't be a living creature with no levels)


Or perhaps I am going too philosophical

[phaedrusxy]

Hmm... now that I look at the text of Raise Dead, I'm not sure what the answer is.

Normal poison and normal disease are cured in the process of raising the subject, but magical diseases and curses are not undone.

A negative level isn't exactly a magical curse, but it is kind of close.

Does the Rules Compendium have anything to say on this?

[rot42]

I could not find anything directly relevant in the Rules Compendium. As a practical matter, I would have any negative levels discharge safely on death to avoid having a PC worse than a cohort. Possibly with an exception for Revivify, but there are cheaper ways out of negative levels.

[Kethrian]

A negative level also isn't a normal poison or disease, or an ability score at 0, so it's nothing that Raise Dead mentions as being able to remove.  But if you're still dead when the 24 hr later Fort save occurs, I would think that it just ends with no effect because a corpse is immune to level loss (it's not alive).

[darqueseid]

All conditions affecting you are generally removed when you die and are resurrected, right?

Most of them... but what about the roll for lost levels? Can your vitality shake off the impact of negative energy when you are dead?

- either level drain is something "added" to the body - in effect "negative energy poisoning" and it discharges safely when there is no lifeforce.

- or it represents something "missing" - a lifeforce "hole" that a body can recover from or not. - and dead people don't heal. That would not only mean automatic loss of levels, but make people drained to death unressurectable (since you can't be a living creature with no levels)


Or perhaps I am going too philosophical

People drained to death become the monster that slayed them per the SRD, if not they become wights, meaning they do in fact become unressurectable (until they are destroyed as the undead that they became). 

the SRD for resurrection states that the creature is restored to "full hit points, vigor and health"  so to me this means that the negative levels are removed with regards to that spell.  Raise Dead however, doesn't have a specification about this, but I would interpret it in as favorable a way as I can for the character and remove the negative level.  The only exception being if the negative level were caused by a magical disease or curse...