Fog's also an obstacle, and according to your interpretation, by RAW, you can see into or out of fog regardless of distance (because the rules say that you can if you're adjacent, but never say that you can't if you're not adjacent). That's obviously not intended.

According to the alternate interpretation, by RAW, you can't see into or out of tree spaces. That's also obviously not intended.

In either case, there's an error. Under your interpretation, it's in the AoD manual. Under the alternative interpretation, it's in the FAQ. All else being equal, an error in the FAQ is far more likely, because it hasn't been examined as much (due to being more recent) and because the FAQ has an even worse track record that the rulebooks. But all else is not equal, because the fog rules are specifically about LOS and the FAQ ruling about trees is in regards to Acrobat "and others," making it ENORMOUSLY more plausible that the person writing about trees could have overlooked the LOS implications than that the person writing about fog could have done the same.

Unless you're arguing that you really should (by design) be able to see in or out of fog from any distance, "how the game works" works at least as much against you as it does for you.

Antistone said:

Firstly, Fog isn't really part of the general 'how do obstaces work for LOS' question because it has its own specific rules. It is unique and not really relevant to this discussion at all precisely because it actually has rules for LOS, whereas we are discussing general obstacles that don't have specific rules. I've already said that several times. Saying that my argument would have Fog being seen into or out of regardless of distance is specious, since fog has it's own specific rules and therefore is not subject to the 'general' rules.

It can be made to appear to be relevant because, surprise surprise, it isn't well written (IMO).

Granted, the Fog rules might seem to suggest that obstacles normally block LOS into a space. However if you look at the Fog LOS rules collectively it is quite clear that Fog should blocks LOS into and out of their space - except that adjacent spaces always ( always! ) have LOS. So both the 'standard' 'into from adjacent and the standard out of to adjacent spaces must be put back in.
The bad writing part is that they just wrote that Fog blocks LOS. What they actually mean is that Fog operates differently with respect to LOS than other obstacles. Fog 'blocking LOS' makes it sound exactly like figures or obstacles blocking LOS, but the additional special rules make it clear that they meant something different entirely.
What they clearly needed to write was something like "the Maximium LOS distance to or from a fog space is one space", or " only adjacent spaces can see into or out of a fog space.

Basically, when I read what you wrote above and what I wrote below that, and the fog rules, I see that I have a misperception that creates a fundamental disagreement (my fault) here. I simple disagree with your first 'that's obviously not intended' statement. I think it was intended, but they wrote it so badly that it doesn't say that! (which is why my last paragraph is fundamentally flawed, though I leave it in by way of explanation). I think it has never been examined properly (I may be wrong), simply because Fog is so rare that it almost never comes up.

So for that part at least, you are right, the Fog rules really screw up my basic assumption.
OTOH I completely disagree that it is enormously more likely that the FAQ writer screwed up by calling Trees obstacles than the AoD writer screwing up the Fog rules. In theory maybe (for the reasons you describe), but when you look closely at each example, Trees were clearly always supposed to be obstacles (they clearly aren't traps or treasure, which are the other two prop classes) but the RtL writers screwed up by not doing the definitions properly. And the Fog rules equally are very probably screwed up if you look at them closely, as I described above.

OK, your post contradicts itself on at least two major points:

1) You say that the general LOS-blocking obstacle rules don't apply to fog as written, then you say that they do but it's an error.

2) You say you disagree with my first "that's obviously not intended" statement (the one where I say that clearly fog should block LOS in and out if you're more than one space away), but you also explicitly agree with it ("if you look at the Fog LOS rules collectively it is quite clear that Fog should blocks LOS into and out of their space").

Then you go on to argue about the relative liklihood of various errors the writers may have made. Your arguments don't seem very cogent to me, but the more important issue is that it shouldn't even be possible for you to make such arguments until you've acknowledged that the rules are contradictory and therefore that one of them must be in error, because you can't possibly argue with me about how likely a statement is to be erroneous until we've agreed on what the statement is .

So if I have convinced you that the fog and tree rules make different assumptions and that one of them has to be in error, then we are in agreement that there's rule support on both sides, and I have no desire to push my luck by becoming embroiled in an argument over what specific kind of error these particular notoriously error-prone writers were more likely to have made. They screwed up, this is FAR from their worst screw-up, they'll probably never make a clear ruling, and the issue has enough thematic relevance and little enough tactical importance that anyone who didn't like the ruling would probably houserule it anyway.