I'm in a situation where I can go no farther because there are cannibals just at the door I go through and I get killed before I can do anything at all. What kind of attack do the cannibals use? There may be some equipment I could use.

Ah, thanks. In the end I realized I had less than a split second to, um, split, and ran for it it. Ended up with a whole troupe of baddies following but found a quiet corner to snipe from.

Fought my way through the first wave, working my way through a second when I retreated through the entrance to the level. Unfortunately as I tried to make my escape, I ended up walking diseased and almost-dead through the level's gate. Which creates a save point.

Now when I go to last save point, I just die again within milliseconds. Not even close to enough time to try to heal. It's just insta-death.

Anything I can do, or is that character just screwed?

Loving the game other than this one setback. Spent long hours of a boring car ride enjoying the retro RPG goodness. :-)

Well, you are out of luck.  It is not a good idea to go through a doorway when you are about to die and have dots on your character.

A way to prevent this would be to have a cure poison potion handy when entering doorways.  The cure poison potions actually remove all dots.  Having the skill Miracle would also work.

If you want to hack the file, you are welcome to try.  I would back up your character save files, start a new 'casual' game, save that game, then overwrite all files besides the player save file with the old files.  That may work.  Though, you might have to alter the player position and current dungeon level.  You can find out where these are by looking at a diff of the files in a hex editor.