curse of hungry backpack

[LT424]

our group disagrees greatly on how the curse works, if you are cursed with the hungry backpack and you are in combat, after winning combat and drawing your treasure cards can you discard items for gold to go up a level before rolling the die for the curse? my understanding of the card is after you draw your treasure you can play any cards in hand that are playable but then you immediately roll the die to see how many cards you will have to lose. sorry if this question has already been answered. we searched the forum and couldn't find the answer for this. a complete list of rules of how this card works would be wonderful, thanks in advance. MUNCHKIN RULEs!

[MunchkinMan]

I don't have time or a "complete list of rules" for the card, but I'll see what I can write up in 2 minutes:

The normal process is:

1. Get Treasure
2. Play cards from your hand.
3. Look at hand size and give away/discard cards if necessary.
4. Tell the next player it's his turn.

This is the process when you're cursed by Curse! Hungry Backpack:

1. Get Treasure
2. Play cards from your hand.
3. Deal with Curse! Hungry Backpack.
4. Look at hand size and give away/discard cards if necessary.
5. Tell the next player it's his turn.

In other words, Curse! Hungry Backpack doesn't override your ability to do normal activities before the Charity phase. The wording of the card is a little weird ("before Charity or discarding"), but that's implying that just before the process where you give away extra cards as part of Charity or discard extra cards because you're lowest or tied for lowest (also a party of Charity), you must first determine how many cards the Curse will "eat." And, you must do this even if you have too few cards to actually have to give away/discard.

Hmmm. That seems to be the complete list of rules, actually. Good on me!