So one of the players had divine retribution on him, and essentially became the Mage Suicide Bomb (long story).

However, at one point, an ogre with knockback attacked him, and did enough damage to kill him. Normally, this would pop DR and kill him. However, the character gets knocked back as well. The question then becomes, does knockback take effect before or after damage is applied? In this case, it is important. If it blows the guy out of range of DR, then the monster survives the divine retribution. Otherwise, he gets killed with the mage bomb.

I "ruled", and it was generally agreed, that knockback takes effect even if armor soaks up all the damage, so knockback would occur first, then the character would land, take damage, and die, blowing of Retribution.

Not that it mattered. Next turn the mage respawned, double-moved right up to the **** ogre, and the warrior ran over and cut down the mage, killing the ogre and ending the quest.

We now call the tactic Mage Bomb where you run the guy with divine retribution into the middle of a room and the warrior tools up right behind him to waste the mage, blowing DR and bringing the room down.

It sucks as OL, but I can usually set up a couple of staggered waves of cheapie enemies to make it not a good idea to try that unless the opportunity arises.

Firstly, I would say that Knockback (and all other effects) occur after damage and wounds have been applied. If the mage was killed by the blow, no Knockback would have occurred (or just for show reasons).

Secondly, the attack of the warrior on the mage wouldn´t trigger DR, as that happens only if an ENEMY figure kills the DR figure - so no tactical Mage Bomb.

Thirdly, why did it end the quest after the mage illegaly DRed? If the Ogre was a named monster, he was immune to DR anyway.

Parathion said:

Correct. And just to hold off any "Are you sure?" questions, from the FAQ:

Q: Can a hero kill another hero in order to trigger “Divine Retribution”?
A. No. Divine Retribution only triggers when an enemy figure kills the hero.

Also note the it must be an "enemy" that kills the DR hero. So, indirect deaths due to traps, burns, bleed, etc also do not trigger DR.

edroz said:

Oh wow I missed that FAQ question. Thank you!

And it was the second quest. They had killed the second giant, and popped the ogre master before he regenerated. He wasn't named, just a master.

Oh well, I had "won" the game earlier and we all opted to continue playing anyway.

Parathion said:

Incorrect and STRONGLY disagree as this is critical to the OL being able to counter DR. This has been discussed several times in the past. The only effects that occur after damage and wounds have been dealt are Poison and Leech to the best of my knowledge, everything else occurs after damage and before wounds.

Knockback says (both JitD and RtL say the same thing, emphasis mine):

After inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor) to a figure with a Knockback attack, the attacker may immediately move each affected target figure up to three spaces away from its current location . The figures must be moved to spaces that do not contain other figures or obstacles that block movement. The figure does not actually move through the first two spaces - it is knocked completely over them. As such, his "knockback movement" is not blocked by any intervening figures or obstacles (though a figure cannot be moved through a closed door or wall).

BEFORE applying the effects of armor. You can not give the target wounds and kill it before you apply armor last time I checked. That means, and this is very clear, that when hitting a hero with DR

1) The hero is hit, and the attack does at least 1 damage to that hero.

2) Knockback applies and the hero is immediately moved up to 3 spaces in any direction (barring any increases in Knockback ranks from items).

3) The hero lands in an empty square.

4) Armor is applied and wounds taken. If this kills the hero then, and only then , does DR trigger.

Remy, I was not aware of any such discussion in past forums or threads. Do you have any links to that?

Besides that, I STRONGLY disagree with you.

Knockback says: After inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor) to a figure with a Knockback attack, the attacker may immediately move each affected target figure up to three spaces away from its current location.

"After inflicting" clearly means to me that the damage was applied and the wounds were lost. How else would you interpret "inflict"? Rolled, but not yet applied??? The term "before applying armor" is not a timing phrase but merely to emphasize that you don´t have to actually wound the target. And finally, the term "immediately" means that you cannot do other things in between, like drink a potion, step back or make another attack.

I would love to have a way to counter DR in the manner you suggested, yet I don´t see that in the RAW.

In addition, your sequence 1-4 above can yield funny results if the target is moved to a damage dealing space (like Aura, pit or the OL plays a trap) and loses his last wound by that effect, before the damage from the original attack is applied - DR triggered or not and why?

Parathion said:

You are ignoring the difference between wounds and damage.

The sequence is clear. Damage (not wounds) is inflicted by the attack, then armour is applied, then remaining damage is converted to wounds.
See my sig for what actually kills (removing the last wound token, which is the response (after) to wounds that have been afflicted.
Knockback and similar effects clearly state that they are applied after damage is inflicted and before the effect of armour is applied.

On what basis do you declare that the term "before applying armour" is not relevent to timing? None! It's there, it informs us of timing even if it has an additional purpose, and to ignore it when there is a timing issue is simply not doing what the rules say. The same with "immediately". It's there, it tells us what to do, and you can't just arbitrarily ignore it because you think that it has a different purpose and is therefore gnorable unless you are focusing on that purpose.

Remy is right. The rules are clear in two different ways that both produce the same effect. Knockback (and other similar effects) is applied immediately, before the target has it's armour applied to the damage total, and therefore before the target can be killed by removing wound tokens due to wounds from the attack.

Damage inflicted is a seperate action from wounds dealt. Cards like ghost armor say "Spend 1 fatigue to cancel 1 wound being dealt to you" or "When you suffer 1 or more wounds. . ." or "For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack. . .." So I see the steps as

1. Damage inflicted

2. Passive defences like armor

3. Damage converted into wounds

4. Wounds dealt

5. Active defences like shields / ghost armor

The big difference is the use of damage vs wound in the language. When knockback triggers, the damage has not yet been converted into wounds.

Overall, this ruling is better for the heroes than the OL. It will be rare for the OL to have a chance to use knockback when the timing matters, but this interpretation clearly allows heroes to knock back creatures that come back to life from undying (in RtL, I'd think that the clean slate that a skeleton starts with after being killled followed by making his roll would keep knockback from happanening otherwise).

How can you possibly "inflict damage" without interacting with the target? Do you really read "inflict" as "rolled but not applied yet" here? Or do you mean the damage was applied to the victim in some unspecified form (since it didn´t cause anything but to satisfy the Knockback rule, yet it sticks at the victim and travels with it), then hold on a second before armor kicks in, I have to Knockback you, then causes wounds?

You can´t be serious.

The term "before armor" was written because the writer of the rules wanted to emphasize that it is not wounds that he meant that need to be inflicted.

The term "immediately" was written for a reason I already explained. Compare it with the use of "immediately" in other contexts like Rapid Fire, Quick Casting or Cleaving.

I am very well aware of the difference between damage and wounds (and you really should know that, Corbon).

So, please answer my question from above: If Knockback kicks in first (before any wounds are lost), and the target (with just one wound left as an example) is moved to a legal square onto which the OL plays a trap (triggering condition is met) or an Aura effect is present, which immediately takes away the last wound - would the Knockback damage then be wasted, and would DR be prevented from kicking in since the figure was killed by an indirect effect?

There would be any number of ways that the developers could have written this ability to clarify when, precisely, it should take affect. For instance, if it said "As long as the target is not killed by the attack..." or "As long as the attack roll does not miss...", there would be less room for 'interpretation'. Of course, when it comes to rules, there should be as little interpretation as possible. So, let's first take a look at the original rule book for attack rolls.

From pg 9 of the rule book:

Attack Sequence

1. Declare Attack
2. Confirm Line of Sight
3. Count Range and Roll Attack
4. Spend Power Surges, Power Enhancements, and Fatigue
5. Determine Attack Success
6. Inflict Wounds

The rule book details each step of the sequence (although the order of steps 4 and 5 are switched in the explanation, but this is irrelevant here). Step 6 states the following:

"If, after step 5 is resolved, the attack hits, the attacking player counts the total number of damage showing on the rolled dice and adds any bonus damage from power surges, power inhnacements, or weapon abilities. This the the total damage dealt to the figure in the target space. In order for the damage to have any effect, it must first penetrate the figure's armor .

"... To determine actual damage dealt (for clarification, let us reword this to say 'To determine wounds inflicted') , simply subtract the target's armor rating from the total damage dealt to it."

With this in mind, Badend is correct in the sequence of step 6 of the Attack Sequence. Damage is dealt, armor is accounted for, and then wounds are inflicted. Knockback, as well as many other abilities, has the text "After inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor)..." This clearly means that the Knockback ability is applied before armor is accounted for and certainly before wounds are inflicted.

The use of the word "immediately" always means just that. The effects are to be applied immediately... before anything else occurs. This means that NOTHING else may occur between the statements that proceed and preceed the word 'immediately'. You can not interrupt an immediate action by drinking a potion, spending fatigue, using an ability, playing a card, receiving threat, etc. This is to say that no action may be taken in response to "inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor)".

The question of trap cards, however is different. A space trap card always states "Play this card when a hero moves into an empty space." This means that the trap card is played in response to a hero moving (or being moved) into an empty space. So, an expanded Step 6 of the Attack Sequence would/could look something like this (assuming no miss is rolled and there is at least one "hit" in the attack):

1. Dammage is counted (proceed if damage is >=1)
2. Knockback is applied -- the target may be moved up to three spaces away (keeping in mind that the target is knocked completely over the first two spaces, therefore a trap card may not be played in response to the target moving into these spaces)
3. The OL could discard cards to receive more threat if needed
4. A trap card is played in response to the hero entering an empty space (the space the target ended up in)
5. The effects of the trap are resolved -- trap wounds inflicted
6. Armor applied to the original attack roll
7. Wounds inflicted from the original attack roll

Therefore, if a hero were to be killed in step 5, the damage from the original attack would not be converted into wounds (and essentially wasted).

Parathion said:

With all due respect, and you know I mean that, are you really going to play the intent game here?

You do inflcit damage, its the triggering condition for Knockback. I fail to see why you are negating the part where it says "before applying the effects of armor". That clearly point to Knockback happening before armor is subtracted from the damage to get the wounds.

In the situation you put the DR would still trigger because you have to resolve the attack before Aura or a pit would deal damage.

As for the threads, I'll see if I can find them. I may have exagerrated or confused conversations with other players.

I negate the timing function of "before armor" because it refers to the term "1 damage" and not to "inflicting" - is my English that bad?

It is just an emphasis that the number of rolled hearts is meant.

The fact that most of the other appropriate effect rules are written exactly the same way supports my position. Why would you emphasize to apply a Burn token before inflicting wounds? You would have to place the tokens, then calculate the wounds and inflict them, and then in the cases the target lost its last wound, remove the tokens you placed two seconds ago? That would be outright stupid in my book.

Parathion said:

It refers to before armor, but it also indicates timing in this case in its usage.

The fact that they are written the same also supports my arguments as well since all those effects don't take place until the next turn. They are written that way based on the probable assumption that the attack doesn't kill the target.

Big Remy said:

Grammatically, I'm pretty sure that it can't be both. The syntax is ambiguous, and it could either be modifying the word "infilct" (indicating timing) or the word "damage" (clarifying damage vs. wounds), but not both.

Even if it could somehow apply to both, it would still be ambiguous whether it actually did or not, and context overwhemingly supports Parathion's position on this point--the exact same remark is applied to many abilities with no timing issue, and the ability summaries replace the parenthetical remark with a footnote that specifically says to determine damage before the effects of armor.

Big Remy said:

I am unable to see how this possibly counts as support for your arguments.

So that leaves "immediately." The rules for Knockback in JitD say "After inflicting at least 1 damage...immediately...", which does indeed specify timing: immediately after damage is inflicted. This would be more helpful if "inflicting damage" was a clearly delineated step in some defined process somewhere, but the aforementioned footnote implies that you can determine whether damage was inflicted before applying armor, so I think we have to assume that this must occur before the target suffers any wounds.

If the rules had said this occurs immediately after an attack that inflicts 1 damage, then it would be similar to Cleaving and Rapid Fire, and you would need to wait for the attack to fully resolve.

Contrary to Big Remy's suggestion, the wording on the Road to Legend ability is different, and it starts with "if an attack...", but "immediately" still seems to modify "inflicts damage," not the attack.

So by RAW, I think I'd have to go with jboulton98's summary. I can't find anything that would support Big Remy's suggestion that you delay the effects of entering a space until after the attack is resolved if the movement specifically occurs mid-attack--there's nothing in the rules to support a "queueing" of triggered effects.

All of that said, the interactions discussed in this thread all look unintentional to me, and they may or may not survive a ruling if FFG ever makes one. I think the effects for entering a space due to Knockback are particularly likely to be delayed if they make a ruling, simply for logistical reasons (the more stuff that happens between rolling the attack and resolving wounds, the more confusing it gets and the greater the probability of some bizarre interaction)--and of course, they won't be able to resist giving us a special-case ruling that changes RAW but only in one specific situation so that we have no idea whether or how it's supposed to be generalized.

EDIT: I had typed a response, but frankly it was pointless and snarky so it really has no business here.

I would also have to go with that summary, though I think purely for logistical reason the attack would resolve first and then the Trap/Aura.

Parathion said:

See here's the thing. You could interpret the card yet another way. Inflicting at least one damage means you hit. So you *could* read the card as saying "if you hit, immediately fling the character back 3 squares".

Besides, you don't die until you pull off the last wound token, which doesn't happen until the attack is entirely resolved, including knockback, making any argument otherwise moot as far as DR goes. Your argument is that knockback occurs *after* the attack is completely resolved, and is not part of the attack resolution, which makes absolutely no sense at all.

Parathion said:

In your book it might be, but it's accurate. If I light something on fire, and in that process it's killed, the body still burns, especially while it dies. It just effectively doesn't matter any more to me or to it, because it's dead and no longer a threat. Same with web.

So while you may apply burn *after* you resolve wounds, burn still pops off, it just is irrelevant because the dude dies.

In DR's case, it *is* relevant, because where someone dies is important.

One interesting consequence of placing effect tokens before suffering wounds is that if an attack somehow placed a sleep token on a hero (I believe one of the RTL level leaders had this as a special ability - but don't have the cards on me), would it immediately be discarded if any wounds were suffered from that same attack?

RTL rulebook pg 31 - A figure that suffers at least 1 wound discards all sleeping tokens.

jman27 said:

I'm not playing RTL. I'd need to read the rules to see if RTL changes order around, so sleep isn't an issue for me yet.

But you have a point taking sleep technically. At that point, you'd need a clarification that the same attack you suffer can't pull a status off of you, which seems messy.

jman27 said:

If it says "wound" then it's entirely different.

jman27 said:

Sleep is something of a special case,as I believe it is the only effect token that can be removed by receiving wounds.

jman27 said:

The card in question is a giant on level 19, with the ability "Lodall's club can cause heroes to fall asleep. When a hero is hit by Lodall's attack, roll a black power die. On a surge, place a sleep token on that hero."

So the question is what constitutes getting hit. The level 16 leader's text further muddles this with the text "If Harg's attack hits a hero (before armor is applied). . .."

So is a hit sometimes before armor, and sometimes after? I'd rule that the first part of Lodall's description makes his sleep token be applied. If his damage removed the sleep token, he could never cause heroes to fall asleep. Therefor his sleep tokens must not be removed by the damage from his club. Specific trumping general and all.

Although his ability might be better the other way, since the hero has 0 armor while asleep, in effect making his attack have a 1/3 chance of ignoring hero armor (a hypnotic swing that puts the hero to sleep right before thwacking them maybe).

Badend said:

The way i'd interprit it is, after the wounds are applied you roll the black die for the sleep. That way the next hit would wake the person up, granted with a chance of putting him to sleep again.

Well, the whole (before armor is applied) indicates that even if the person takes 0 wounds from it, they'd still get the effect. Bleed is the same way. A hit is a hit, even if it does 0 wounds because of armor. Though things like poison, require wounds to go through (thus getting multiple poison for one hit, but you can only get one stun from one hit even if it does like 5 wounds of damage)

That's just how i'd read it all.

Badend said:

See, if you always apply effect tokens after wounds as I suggested above, RAW in this case is perfectly clear and straightforward - no trumping necessary. Since nothing is mentioned that this is a special case trumping the general rule, this strongly supports my position.

Parathion said:

It supports nothing of the sort.
There is no clear indication of timing in this badly written effect - unlike Knockback and similar effects which clearly say 'immediately' and/or '(before armour is applied)'.

An attack 'hits' (as best as can be determined given that 'hit' is not clearly defined anywhere) if no X is rolled and the range is sufficient to reach the target space. Normally that is step 4 (determine attack success - which includes the phrase " The attack hits if...) in the attack sequence, but this can be changed in step 5 by acquiring additional range from spending surges etc.
An attack can 'hit' without actually doing any damage at all. It is not uncommon to see this from Hellhounds with the blue and yellow dice having multiple sides with no hearts.

Given that there is no clear timing on Lodall's description and given the nature of the special effect I'd make the common sense ruling that the sleep token is applied after his attack, if it hit. Which means that all the effects of his attack are completed, then the sleep is applied.

Harg's attack on level 16 apparently does have a specific timing (before armour is applied).
Indeed, ironically, the combination of Harg's and Lodall's specials strongly supports that the opposite position being true, if Badend's quote is accurate (I haven't checked the card, though I did check Level 19). Harg's ability uses the same phrase as Knockback etc and clearly uses it for timing as there is no requirement for damage/wounds, just a hit. If the phrase is clearly used for timing here, it is more likely that it is 'clearly' used for timing elsewhere as well, though I don't quite understand Antistone's insistence that it can only have one purpose.
Still, frankly that is probably all coincidental as they are probably written by different people with different ideas anyway.