This is a combo DM and player help, because I honestly have a question

[argentlupus]

It is about negative energy. Namely what happens when someone is killed by it. I am of the school of thought it is like other kinds of damage and you just drop dead. I met a few players who said you get turned to dust. So which is it. We honestly need some solid answers here. I am currently running a Pathfinder game where (thankfully a mess up on my end and not knowing channel neg energy had a saving throw[i.e. had i not caught my mistake, it would have been GNC for the party]) accidentally downed a party member.

[Alex12]

I've never seen anything indicating that it's any different from any other sort of damage, though I'm more familiar with 3.5 than PF.
Now, energy drain (which is negative-energy based, but different from negative energy damage) can make the corpse rise as a wight, but that's a totally different thing.
Spells that destroy the corpse when they kill someone tend to be higher-level, like disintegrate or implosion. Allowing Inflict Light Wounds to disintegrate someone seems...problematic.

[Winds]

Not that I've seen. (Even if it was, as a logical thing...Necromancers would be way less threatening if their usual attack made it impossible to raise their target...)


They may be thinking of Undead, which crumble to dust on hitting 0. Normal attacks (Even magic attacks) don't generally have that kind of spectacular effect.

[TheCountAlucard]

Actually, they're probably thinking of the Negative Energy Plane. If you die there, then yes, your body crumbles to dust. But ordinary negative energy spells aren't intense enough to do that.

[Alex12]

Also, black sand is negative energy, and if you die from exposure to it, you crumble into more black sand, but that's a specific effect.

[TheCountAlucard]

Yeah. D&D in particular, and many other RPGs in general, are based off of exception-based design. X happens unless Y specifically says something contradictory. Especially when it comes to spells.

People don't just crumble into dust upon dying; an effect's gotta specifically say that it does that.

[Malak'ai]

I agree with everyone so far. Neg Energy attacks do not make the corpse crumble to dust.
Purely a fluff thing here, but I'd go so far as to say it made the corpse look as if it had the life "sucked out of it", that is giving the fresh body a gaunt apperance and a blue-y/grey tinge to the skin.