Sometimes when using the Pod cheat death skill, it will activate but you will be killed instantly anyways without enough damage going out to kill the pod.
It feels as though there must be some circumstances you die “too fast” for the pod to even activate or something. You’re dead and the pod visual is there, and there is less than 10k damage even done to the pod and you just die.
I suspect that things like Touch of Death is one of the things I’ve determined is likely to be the culprit, but it’s certainly not the only thing causing the ability to trigger and then fail to work.