Hi, people. As the title says it, I'm trying to figure out how Negative Levels are handled in Pathfinder. Back in 3.5, it was "simple" (sarcasm implied), as far as I understood it, since it meant a tedious but, more or less, understandable "level roll-back".
However, in Pathfinder it says that you simply apply cumulative penalties (ala template), and I like that a lot because it saves a lot of time, but some bits of it confuse me. The rules say the character is considered to be X levels lower for variables that consider HD in question (they put spellcasting as an example) for each Negative Level. I can understand what I read, but some questions arise from this:
1) Does this means I have to recalculate HP?
2) Does this means my skill rank limit is reduced too? And, if the answer is yes, what happens with the "surplus" ranks?
3) Does this means I loose access to class abilities gained in level X if I am treated to be X levels lower?
4) Are Saves, BAB, or something else regressed as if I was X levels lower aside of the penalty? (My guess is no, but it doesn't hurts to ask).
I know these are a lot of questions, but I wanted to make sure because I have a character that is going to be brought back with a Raise Dead spell, which inflicts 2 permanent Negative Levels, so I wanted to know how exactly to modify and/or treat his CRS. In advance, thanks, and sorry for the wall of text.