Fell Drain vs Death Ward

[CommandTortoise]

I was making a Dread Necro for a game I'm going to be playing and one of the feats I took was Fell Drain. But now I'm confused as to whether Fell Drain is stopped by Death Ward. I fully expect the DM to rule that it would be and this is merely to satisfy my curiosity about what the RAW is.

Death Ward says that it protects against energy drain and any negative energy effects but it looks like (to my untrained eyes) protection against energy drain wouldn't also give immunity to negative levels from other sources and the negative levels from Fell Drain aren't explicitly called out as negative energy effects (unless all negative levels count.)

So yeah, can someone more rules savvy than me please clear this up for me?

[Brookshw]

I was making a Dread Necro for a game I'm going to be playing and one of the feats I took was Fell Drain. But now I'm confused as to whether Fell Drain is stopped by Death Ward. I fully expect the DM to rule that it would be and this is merely to satisfy my curiosity about what the RAW is.

Death Ward says that it protects against energy drain and any negative energy effects but it looks like (to my untrained eyes) protection against energy drain wouldn't also give immunity to negative levels from other sources and the negative levels from Fell Drain aren't explicitly called out as negative energy effects (unless all negative levels count.)

So yeah, can someone more rules savvy than me please clear this up for me?

Offhand I believe the rules for negative levels are subsets of energy drain and thus death ward applies.

[searlefm]

i personally believe it is stopped by the ward

[CommandTortoise]

Offhand I believe the rules for negative levels are subsets of energy drain and thus death ward applies.

I was thinking that it only protected against negative levels from the Su ability Energy Drain but I checked the Conditions Summary section and it referred to having negative levels as being Energy Drained so yeah, they're synonymous. Thanks.

[ddude987]

As written negative levels are nowhere in the srd called out as being part of negative energy. Core only has negative levels written under energy drain because it was probably assumed that is the most likely way players will be getting them. IIRC there are sources that give negative levels not from negative energy, and things that do give negative levels as a negative energy effect call that out.