Raise dead question

[doc the grey]

When you use raise dead on a 2nd level character do they take the neg levels, take the Con drain, or some combination of both?

[Fake Healer]

They take the negative levels only, and unless the 2nd level character has additional racial hit dice he can't be brought back with raise dead. He gains 2 negative levels and when your negative levels are equal to your hit dice you die.

[LazarX]

They take the con drain.

[Fake Healer]

LazarX wrote:

They take the con drain.

Only 1st level characters take the con drain.

[doc the grey]

So is there no official answer to this?

[seebs]

Never seen an official answer, but I can tell you what the answer is: It should say "If the character is first or second level."

The issue here is that Pathfinder is not a new system, but rather, an adaptation of a previous system. So go look at the original 3rd edition Raise Dead, possibly in the d20SRD site:

Raise Dead, 3rd Edition

"Coming back from the dead is an ordeal. The subject of the spell loses one level (or 1 Hit Die) when it is raised, just as if it had lost a level or a Hit Die to an energy-draining creature. If the subject is 1st level, it loses 2 points of Constitution instead (if this would reduce its Con to 0 or less, it can’t be raised). This level/HD loss or Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any means."

Now look at Pathfinder:

"Coming back from the dead is an ordeal. The subject of the spell gains two permanent negative levels when it is raised, just as if it had been hit by an energy-draining creature. If the subject is 1st level, it takes 2 points of Constitution drain instead (if this would reduce its Con to 0 or less, it can't be raised)."

One of the changes from 3rd Edition to Pathfinder was dropping the entire concept of permanent level loss (and, similarly, dropping all XP costs). When they made this change, Paizo decided to make raise dead cost you two negative levels, rather than a single genuinely-permanent level loss that can only be overcome by going out and earning experience again. But when they increased that cost to two, they forgot to check the next sentence over to see if it needed to be re-aligned.

I would probably give a second level character one negative level and one point of constitution drain. It doesn't matter much, since it's a trivial spell to restore that.

[Midnight_Angel]

seebs wrote:

I would probably give a second level character one negative level and one point of constitution drain. It doesn't matter much, since it's a trivial spell to restore that.

Seconded.

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed a couple posts. There's no need for hostility here.

[doc the grey]

Midnight_Angel wrote:

seebs wrote:

I would probably give a second level character one negative level and one point of constitution drain. It doesn't matter much, since it's a trivial spell to restore that.

Seconded.

i actually think you'll end up taking the 1 neg level and the 2 Con.

This actually works out well for me since I looked into some of the ways to pull the neg level off and I'm really excited to see them pull it off.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Fake Healer wrote:

They take the negative levels only, and unless the 2nd level character has additional racial hit dice he can't be brought back with raise dead. He gains 2 negative levels and when your negative levels are equal to your hit dice you die.

Yeah, that's the RAW answer. So what's the non-ridiculous one? This is actually really needing an FAQ, but it sadly doesn't look like we're likely to get one.