Dealing Damage Timing Clarification

Other Games SotM Game Engine
41

I'm making comments here, rather than directly editing the doc, because I prefer discussion to over-writing.

Steps 2 and 18 seem badly worded to me.

Current wording:

2. Determine the number of attacks.

18. Determine if the total number of designated defenders is less than the total number of attacks. If it is, go to step 3.

 

"Number of attacks" is variable and can actually change mid-stream.  I can think of at least two such sccenarios:

A) the well-documented End Of Days/Forced Deployment interaction

B) Tachyon uses Sonic Vortex.  As one of her damage instances she kills an Illusory Demon.  The Illusory Demon puts one of Tachy's Synaptic Interruption's in the trash, thus increasing the number of burst cards, thus increasing the number of attacks Sonic Vortex will do.

 

I would rephrase these as:

2. Ensure that at least one attack should be made. (For example, a Sonic Vortex with no burst cards in the trash will do zero attacks.)

18. Determine if another attack still needs to be made.  If so, go to step 3.

 

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New step between the current 2 and 3.  Or maybe add to 2.

* If the source of the damage says "may damage", or "damage up to (some number) targets", decide whether to do damage at all.  If not, this damage effect is over.

 

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I'm not sure step 4 (currently " Determine the actual defender. This may be different than the designated defender.") makes any sense.  Is there anything that can cause the defender to be different that *isn't* redirection?  If so, what do you actually do in this step?

 

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14. If the effect redirected the damage, go to step 5, and choose a different actual defender.

 

I suggest:

14. If the effect redirected the damage, determine the new defender, then go to step 5.

Subtle difference, but I like making it clear that the defender selection is part of the redirection step. 

Also, I'm not 100% sure that the new defender actually has to be *different*!  What happens when The Wraith is the only Active Hero, Smoke Bombs is out, and she takes damage?  Seems to me that the damage must be redirected from her, *to* her.  Unless I'm wrong about something...

42

 

If Fanatic has Undaunted in play then Fanatic cannot take an instance of one damage, so there is no choice, the damage cannot be redirected because she cannot take that damage.

43

@AlexxKay

A lot of what you brought up I actually considered, but that was when I decided to open it up instead of going back. Partly a little lazy, partly I had to go to work. :) There were some other things I was also going to add that you didn't mention, like "on destruction" effects.

I agree that step isn't worded in the best possible way, and that the only time it really matters is when you redirect. However, the step is needed and is essential. You have to initially designate something you are attacking, and, regardless of whether it takes the final damage, it is still considered targeted for future attack purposes. When you redirect, you can assign a new actual defender, but it doesn't take away the original designation of the original target.

For example, If you use your Assault Rifle and hit NightMist, then NightMist redirects that to a new target, NightMist is still considered the original target, and can't be targetted again by the Assault Rifle.

44

For example, If you use your Assault Rifle and hit NightMist, then NightMist redirects that to a new target, NightMist is still considered the original target, and can't be targetted again by the Assault Rifle.

Which is actually really aweome considering it allows the "unintentional" target to be hit more than once through redirects.

45

I believe you are mistaken.  According to my best understanding of the damage timing, prevention and redirection share a sub-phase, and so the timing is ambiguous.  If Undaunted was reducing the instance of 1 damage, it would come much earlier in the damage timing, and would definitely win.  But it isn't reduction, it's prevention, so the players have to determine the timing.

46

Personally, as a fan I’d be much more open to more opportunities for the players to decide the order. For me recently, rulings have boiled down to figuring out which subphase or substep or clause or phrase an action would take place in. And to me, that’s not fun and is comparable to strict and complex rulings that trading card games share. I realize it’s a structure that we can rely on to solve problems, but if we can give the same power to the players, that to me would make things go smoother, the way Sentinels was intended to be played to begin with.

47

Well much of what was ruled in this thread is for when things don't go too smooth, even by letting players decide

Most of it can be reached by appkying rule of common sense but it's stil niceto have official backing and a guideline to fall back on

48

 

All of this "Timing" is fan created.  It is not official.  What is official is that you cannot redirect damage unless that damage can actually be dealt.  1 damage to Fanatic with Undaunted in play cannot be taken, so it can't be redirected, the damage is prevented.

49

Damage isn’t dealt until a target is determined, though. If Fanatic would be the ONLY target, then no redirection would occur.

In any case, unless this is purely a hypothetical question for the sake of redirecting damage to a villian somehow I’m confused as to why you WOULDN’T just prevent it and be done with it.

50

I can think of a few reasons: Want to hit Tachy to get a better Supersonic Response or hit a target so that they are no longer highest...

51

I have no objecttion to people playing games the way they want to play them, with whatever house rules (or lack thereof) gives them pleasure.

I, myself, get a lot of pleasure out of figuring out the most elegant/correct way things could possibly work.  And I'm here to discuss approaches to that goal with like-minded people.

I know that not everyone enjoys this process as much as I do.  In an ideal world, all the cards and rulebooks would be clear and concise and unambiguous.  We're not in that world.  But I do hope that our collective efforts to sort things out will help make things clearer in future editions of the game, or in future expansions.

52

Not quite. My first post is "official". Christopher read it and approved it before I posted it. MigrantP's order is also official.

53

OK, I've made some fairly extensive edits.  In addition to the above-mentioned stuff:

  • Standardzed terminology and wording in many places.
  • Added new columns for "notes", and moved relevant text into them.  The idea was to keep the main list as clean as possible, with the complications in the other columns.
  • Covered the case of non-complete Prevention.*
* The only instances of non-complete damge Prevention are (pre-Enhanced Edition) Stealth and one of Bunker's incapacitated powers.  Interestingly, the App changed the relevant Bunker incap power to be "reduce" rather than "prevent".  Presumably, a newer-yet print edition would also feature this corrected version of Bunker.
54

Couple of things:

1) I purposely had that first step there, because sometimes a card indicates taht another card deals damage. If that initial card leaves play, even if the attacker is still there, the attack is over.

2) If a card has a "on destruction" effect, it is not first destroyed, but rather the effect happens first, then the card is destroyed.

3) I think partial prevention has been removed from the game. Now it just reduces, and goes with the other modifiers.

55

Do you mean this?

  1. Determine damage type
  2. Identify and apply all modifiers to dealing
  3. Determine if damaged is dealt, and reduce hp
  4. Apply effects based on damage being dealt
Because this is the only order in this thread, and MigrantP didn't post in this thread.

The post I was responding to was using a timing list in this thread to argue that you could redirect damage that could not be dealt.  Which we know is wrong.

 
56

Honestly, I assumed that was what you meant, but you did say all timing, so I just wanted to make sure.

57

Good catch; added a new note/example to that effect.

I've changed the wording to reflect this, but I'm not sure it's universally true.  I know it's true when a card has effects on its own destruction (Explosives Wagon), but is it also true for exterior effects (e.g. Ammo Drop, The Operative's revenge, etc.).  I'm not sure it matters in any current examples, but I'm also not sure it doesn't…

I'd guess that the intent is to have it removed from the game, but there are a lot of physical cards out there that have "prevent the next 2 damage" printed on them.  No Errata cards have been printed for them, nor can I find any reference to a ruling saying that the existing cards are errata-ed (though I certainly might have missed one).  The closest I did find to such a ruling was Spiff's FAQ, which mentions "prevent the next 2 damage" as a legitimate thing that can happen.

58

There are 4 hero cards (Flak Jacket, Undaunted, Resilient Hide and Hippocratic Oath) and 4 villain cards (Sewer Fiend, Speedy Sidestep, Uncatchable and La Capitan on her advanced Split Across Time side) which currently "prevent" damage (and 1 villain card that prevents destruction, Lady Luck), none of which prevent partial damage. I think what you are reading from Spiff's FAQ is the original edition's base power for The Wraith, at present this rule does not apply as no cards function that way.

EDIT: I am wrong! Bunker's incap is "Prevent the next 2 damage", I would argue that is hardly "lots", one out of a thousand

59

I've bitten the bullet and added several steps to handle this more completely.

I'm not 100% sure that steps 17 and 18 are, in fact, separate.  If they're not, then it leads to a somewhat counter-intuitive situation with the Dreamer, where (after she flips), you could avoid the negative effects of killing Illusory Demon and Treacherous Ape by chooing to put them under the Dreamer before their own "on destruction" took place.

 

60

I'm thinking in raw numbers, not percentages.  Every copy of the game printed to date has a copy of that card.  I don't know how many that is, but unless people pre-ordering the new expansion perversely don't own the base game, there's a lower bound of 4,498.  I think that counts as "lots".