Diehard
You are especially hard to kill. Not only do your wounds
automatically stabilize when grievously injured, but you can
remain conscious and continue to act even at death’s door.
Prerequisite: Endurance.
Benefit: When your hit point total is below 0, but you
are not dead, you automatically stabilize. You do not need
to make a Constitution check each round to avoid losing
additional hit points. You may choose to act as if you were
disabled, rather than dying. You must make this decision
as soon as you are reduced to negative hit points (even if it
isn’t your turn). If you do not choose to act as if you were
disabled, you immediately fall unconscious.
When using this feat, you are staggered. You can take
a move action without further injuring yourself, but if
you perform any standard action (or any other action
deemed as strenuous, including some swift actions, such
as casting a quickened spell) you take 1 point of damage
after completing the act. If your negative hit points are
equal to or greater than your Constitution score, you
immediately die.
Normal: A character without this feat who is reduced to
negative hit points is unconscious and dying.
So if I'm on 1 hit point and I have a Con score of 20 [death occurring at minus Con score] and I take a hit for 31 damage, I will be reduced to -30 hit points, and therefore dead.
So my question is this...
Does the "but you are not dead" part mean that if you are dead, as in my example, the rest of the Feat is irrelevant, in other words, it only works if your hit points are in between 0 and -CON score ??
Or
This Feat works even if you are reduced to -1000 hit points??
If you are hit down to below -CON, then you're dead. Not dying. So the feat doesn't work.
On the other hand, if this is also implicitly talking about the Rage thing, then the "you may act as though you're disabled instead of dying" will allow you to maintain your rage, and your bonus hitpoints from it, so long as your current hitpoint total isn't low enough to class you as dead.
Yes, the Rage question does seem to make players think this Feat works at any minus.