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I'm currently playing a Witch in a Kingmaker game. After having to be resurrected twice, there's a lot of things that are making me question my character as a whole.

While I don't get hit often, whenever I do, it's either always all my health + Con or at the least half of it. For context, we're level 7 and I have 33 hit points. My Witch has a Con of 10, and our table does either average or roll; I've just been taking the average, as I've always had bad luck with d6 hit die classes.

I looked up some solutions myself to not be so squishy, and asked my GM; his advice was to take spells that prevent instant death. I thought Pathfinder didn't have these type of spells, but with there being so many spells, I could have clearly missed it.

Are there any spells that prevent you from flat-out dying from taking too much damage? Be it placing you at 0 hp or reducing you to just 1.

Currently, with adding Shield on top of my Mage Armor, it really only feels like delaying the inevitable.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to the site! Take the tour. Could you edit the question to include your PC's Constitution score and how the table determines hit points? (I think answers might want to address that, too.) Thank you for participating and have fun! \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 13:22

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Bleed for Your Master

This brutal level 3 spell can save you from one attack (per round if they survive) if you have a familiar/fiendish servant to sacrifice. It's probably better than dying yourself.

False Life

This level 2 (level 4 for Greater) spell can increase your effective health pool by 1d8+CL (so 8-17 at your current level). While not strictly "preventing instant death", this should help you survive the off-chance of you being hit.

Death Knell

This level 2 [evil] spell is another method of gaining temporary hit points; it also temporarily boosts your CL, making future spell casts more powerful.

Wave Shield

This level 1 spell can take the edge off one physical or fire attack by reducing the damage by 1/2 CL.

Battle Trance

This double-edged level 4 spell provides significant staying power... which is good because it doesn't allow you to retreat.

Death Ward

While not as all-powerful as the name suggests, this level 4 spell is amazing when fighting undead and other situations where you're being targeted by actual Death effects.

Fly

It almost goes without saying, but flight makes it much more difficult for many things to effectively attack you.

Honorable Mentions

  • Celestial/Infernal Healing can cause you to stabilize if you're brought into the negatives.
  • Accursed Glare can force an opponent that's gunning for you to always take the lower of 2d20 rolls. Ill Omen is the weaker version of this.
  • Blindness/Deafness and Glitterdust are classic ways to cause martial opponents difficulty and shut down enemy casters from using directed spells.
  • Obscuring Mist/Fog Cloud/Barrow Haze etc can prevent line of sight, but can be difficult to use for defense without also causing yourself trouble.
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  • \$\begingroup\$ Great calls on death ward and false life – I’d meant to mention those myself and forgot  –  and fly – which I’d completely forgotten. Battle trance looks really dubious though, on-theme though it is, and death knell isn’t going to have valid targets very often at 7th level. Also, celestial healing is bizarrely weak, particularly compared to infernal healing – it will stabilize, sure, but so will stabilize; that seems worth mentioning, because I don’t know that I’d recommend anyone actually learn or prepare celestial healing. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 16:17

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