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When using the Spheres of Power rules for Pathfinder, if you have taken the Restore Soul talent and Resuscitate talent from the life sphere, would restore soul prevent or remove the negative level gain from Resuscitate?

Restore Soul

Your cure ability heals an additional 1d8 hit points. When restoring a target, the target is also cured of all ability drain and temporary negative levels.

Resuscitate

Your cure and invigorate abilities function on creatures who have died within no more than 1 round. If the target’s new hit point total is at a negative amount greater than its Constitution score, then it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. Otherwise the target remains dead. Creatures brought back to life in this manner gain a temporary negative level.

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Yes, but not as a single action.

If you have both talents, you can indeed raise the recently deceased and remove the negative level they would normally have - though you would need two standard actions to do so.

Why?

The Life Sphere offers you three abilities - Cure, Invigorate and Restore - each of which requires a standard action to use, and has different effects. The talents further modify these abilities and expand what you can do with them.

The way Resuscitate works is fairly obvious; you gain the ability to use your Cure or Invigorate abilities on the recently deceased, and if doing so brings their hit point total back into livable values, they are raised.

You might have a misunderstanding of the wording of the Restore Soul talent, however, as it has two effects; firstly, your Cure ability is improved by healing an extra 1d8 hit points when you use it. Secondly, your Restore ability is improved by allowing it to heal ability drain and remove temporary negative levels. It does not allow you to heal drain or negative levels when using your Cure ability, nor does it let you heal a subject of normal HP damage when using the Restore ability. Though it is one talent, it offers distinct and separate benefits to both abilities, for balance reasons (the ability to heal drain/negative levels is the primary draw, but the buff to Cure is added to help balance it with other talents).

So, if you use Cure or Invigorate with the Resuscitate talent, you can raise the dead - but you have not used the Restore ability when you do this. You can then use your Restore ability separately in order to heal the negative level the recently raised subject has incurred.

Can I do it in one action?

You could invest further in the Restorative Cure talent:

When using your cure or invigorate abilities on a target or targets, you may spend an additional spell point to restore them as well.

With this talent you can add the effect of your Restore ability to your uses of the Cure or Invigorate abilities, which would allow you to first raise the deceased target, and then restore them - immediately curing the negative level they have just incurred.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Restore soul clearly states it works on cure, and the other works on both. \$\endgroup\$
    – Fering
    Dec 21, 2017 at 23:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Fering you are misreading these abilities. I will try and address this in my answer. \$\endgroup\$
    – Carcer
    Dec 21, 2017 at 23:23

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