Deathless Spirit and Death attack Question

I have a player who is playing a aasimar with the Deathless Spirit alternate racial trait. He was hit tonight with an assassin's death attack, and only survived because he claimed Deathless spirit gave him a +2 towards the save.

After reading the text, it felt to me like the bonuses are more towards Death Effect spells and spell like abilities, and not applicable in that case, but let him live due to feeling I might be nit-picking a bit.

But the question is this: Is there a difference between Death Attacks, and Death Effects (i.e. attacks vs spells), or is it really just the same thing?

Yeah he gets the bonus. The Death Attack is a death effect. The idea is to apply the benefit vs anything that causes instant death.

The ability doesnt stipulate that its only applied vs spells so it works for all death effects regardless where they originate from.

yep they get the bonus death effect= anything that makes you insta die(but does not include hard hitting spells like a maximized fireball that would insta kill a level 1 pc and other stuff like that just stuff thats make the save or you dead type effects)