Scholar Double Check

Just wanted to double check something. Scholar plays Expect the Worst which reduces all damage he takes to 0. Then Close Quarters combat comes out. The villain tries to deal the Scholar 4 damage (Or any damage really). It is reduced down to 0 and then increased to 1 so he takes 1. Is that right?

It'll still be 0. That is getting a little too finicky about order of play.

I do believe that the wording on Expect the worst reduces all damage to 0. He's more or less immune to any damage that isn't irreducible.

On a related order-of-operations note, how do Pipe Wrench and Driving Mantis interact?  Is the damage reduction applied before or after the condition check for redirection, or is it based on play order?

 

As a follow-up, if it's NOT dependent on play order, then why is the Superhuman Durability-Fortitude interaction dependent on play order?

It plays like this:

Fixer gets hit for 3 damage. PW reduces it to 2. Mantis redirects it, it goes back to 3. Boom.

The ruling for Superhuman Durability and Fortitude is quite old, in fact they may change their mind at this point because of the Wrench and Mantis. If you were to play it similar to that however Fortitude would always reduce damage first than SHD would trigger if the damage is still above 5.

At my table at least, we have found little need for the superhuman/fortitude ruling as more expansions have come out. It makes the entire game a lot less messy for me and my group to apply the damage modifiers as a universal static (in a sense). This effectivly means you apply any passive modifications before you apply any of the reactive effects (like triggers and such). I think most people play this way anyway just because it is more intuitive and it flows much better in regards to team and table interactions. Just my .02 on the matter.

The way we've been playing it has been to apply the various effects in a specific order every time, and it seems to work well and make more sense than pure play order.

1. Damage type changes

2. Damage bonuses/penalties and armor bonuses/penalties

3. "Would be dealt" and "would deal" on-damage effects (e.g. Superhuman Durability, Sewer Fiend, Jack Handle)

4. Immunity

5. "Would take damage" effects and "actually took damage" effects (e.g. Flame Barrier, Combat Stance, NPCU)

 

Originally we'd had Immunity at #3, but Sewer Rat being able to redirect environmental toxic damage means it has to be later.  On redirected damage you have to re-evaluate everything (skipping step 2 for Mr. Fixer's tools).

I kind of asked this as a devil's advocate to the Superhuman Durability-Fortitude ruling. I don't like the ruling that those are play order dependent. I play in the order that JimmytheRat and Foote described with static effects applied first and triggered effects like Superhuman Durability, Mantis, and Expect the Worst second. It makes way more sense that way.

Card order is important and still should be tracked. But I feel that the game has evolved past that ruling. If it had to be rejudged I'd expect a different Answer from Christopher to be perfectly honest. 

At one point I tried to create a consitent outline for how actions and reactions should occur.  I believe it mostly got shot down because it conflicted with much older rulings, and my name was not Christopher.

I don't think it had anything to do with your name, TheJayMan.