Let's say you were an Oracle for a level dip for access to certain options as an Antipaladin (the Lich curse, specifically), and then you decided to retrain the Oracle level into another level of Antipaladin. What happens?
Would my Lich curse get removed, or would it stay since it can only be removed through the power of a deity, per RAW?
I would say you could not retrain that level away without divine intervention in that case.
That can't be right, the base retraining rules say that Oracle can be retrained into and out of. If that wasn't possible, a clause regarding drawbacks would be included. Or in this case, an abstraction.
To quote retraining rules:
When you retrain a class level, you lose all the benefits of the highest level you have in that class. You immediately select a different class, add a level in that class, and gain all the benefits of that new class level.
So, all positive features of the class (such as the Curse benefits) are removed. The negative energy effects would still remain, and as stated prior, would not be lifted without divine intervention.
Which is fine; in fact, I'm counting on it in this case, since I could then play a valid Antipaladin that isn't Dhampir or some other negative energy class, and be almost as unkillable as any other Paladin.
The issue here is that an Oracle's Curse is a mix of good and bad things, so losing the benefits of a class should involve a partial or total loss of the associated curse. At the very least, you should lose any beneficial aspects of the curse. For completeness, I would go with removing the curse completely in order to eliminate corner cases like this one where a player is benefiting from supposedly negative curse effects.
Of course, one way around this problem might be to go VMC Oracle, if you are willing to give up half of your feats to avoid having to take any non-antipaladin levels.
One point to keep in mind is that the game has a lot of abilities where you make a choice, and the game rules say that once the choice is made, it can't be changed -- but retraining can still be used to change these choices.
Losing your last/first level in a class to retraining would in many cases involve making a fundamental change to the nature of your character because is renders many such initial choices moot.
Interesting answers. I didn't get the answer I wanted, and I can expect table variation, but the answer I was mainly looking for (retaining a certain aspect of a curse) was given.
It's not a big deal, since I was mainly wanting to get full Antipaladin progression while acquiring a negative energy affinity without being locked to certain races, and as such having functionality on par with a Paladin would be nice.
But there are other benefits to having the Oracle level besides my initial question, so I'll live with the consequence of the dip.