I am about to die in lava. How might I save my inventory?

I'm playing the Minecraft Feed the Beast modpack.

During a lengthy mining session, I made a dumb mistake and fell into lava (not for the first time).

I rage-quit the game before I died, and now I would like to know if there is any way of rescuing my inventory.

I know about the /gamerule command, but I won't have enough time to enter it before I die. I also do not have a bucket of water with me.

Is there a way to disable item drop on death without being ingame? I would prefer if I do not have to use external tools.

One option is to use MCEdit to load up the world you were playing in and move your character out of the lava. You will still die from the burning when you log back in, but your items will not fall in the lava, so you will be able to pick them back up.

Even better, as Robotnik suggested, you could move yourself into water to put the fire out.

There is a solution that does not require mods, you just need a way to track the location where you are going to die. So you're about to die... I was falling into lava and hit escape before I bit the big one. I didn't know what to do, I was literally a block away from lava.

1. Save and Exit.
2. Find your level.dat folder in your .minecraft/saves folder. Now back up those files to a different location.
3. Load up your game and die.
   • IMPORTANT NOTE: REMEMBER THE LOCATION WHERE YOUR CHARACTER IS WHEN YOUR GAME LOADS.
4. Set to peaceful and locate where you died. Now make that location safe. If its lava and in the over world just throw some water down. If its nether you will probably need to build a platform over the lava.
5. Save and exit.
6. Go back to the .minecraft/saves folder and delete the level.dat folder. Copy your back-up level.dat folder that you made earlier to the saves folder where you deleted the level.dat folder. Now load up your game.

The alterations you have made in your world are now changed but your character will be reverted to right before you died. Good luck, I hope this helps.