If they control the battlefield and they pass they get to keep it. Passing while you still have options or plays to make (like claiming) is always a gamble.

5 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

If they control the battlefield and they pass they get to keep it. Passing while you still have options or plays to make (like claiming) is always a gamble.

I did forget about the battlefield, that is a valid point of pass control. I guess claiming it early is a defense for that since it can only be claimed once a turn but keeping a battlefield would be a danger of this. Well played Wonder.

Well, if I claim the battlefield, and then the you take a blank and re-roll to a blank the turn will end. You may then lose the damage showing on your other dice because of this.

Mind you I still maintain that removing a dice and rolling it back in changes the game state.

1 minute ago, Amanal said:

Well, if I claim the battlefield, and then the you take a blank and re-roll to a blank the turn will end. You may then lose the damage showing on your other dice because of this.

Mind you I still maintain that removing a dice and rolling it back in changes the game state.

I know that's how it "should" be, but that's not how the rules are written, as far as I see it.

Passing (p14):
If a player triggers an action that does not change the game state, then they are considered to have passed their turn instead. If a player exhausts or plays a card that does not change the game state other than that card being exhausted or played, then they are also considered to have passed their turn instead.

That is the whole new bit, so is taking a dice out of my pool a change of game state, is rolling that dice back in to my dice pool a change of game state? Compare that to Backup Mussel where I exhaust it and as it has no tokens on it done nothing else.

You are looking at this as a before and after snap shot, I am saying it is a process and with the various steps in the process there are changes to game state.

9 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Damage dealt to a character in excess of its health is now ignored, regardless of whether or not that character is defeated. The big change here is that Second Chance effectively re-sets a characters HP to 5 if it would be reduced below zero by a single source of damage . Resolving multiple dice should be the same as before.

Hmmm... so, how did it work before? I'm thinking this is basically how I was playing the card, but I'm not sure.

Also, I was confused by this:

SECOND CHANCE (r137) • Second Chance is a replacement effect so if a character has two copies of Second Chance and would be defeated, only one copy resolves.

The other one can no longer replace being defeated and stays attached to the character.

I get the first part. One copy resolves instead of them being defeated. But when they say the second copy can no longer replace being defeated... for what time period are they talking about? In the same attack? For the rest of the game? Are they rendering the second copy useless as far as the ability goes or simply saying you can't stack them during the same attack? Or am I totally confused?

5 hours ago, ketemycos said:

Could you point to where the rules define "legitimate game action?" I must have missed that term.

What do you mean by "gaming the system?" When I play, I like to use my knowledge of the rules and the options available to me to maximize the chance that I will win, because I'm playing a strategy game.

Gaming the system is using a rule in an unintentional way in order to gain an advantage. Example, using back up muscle with no counters on it instead of using a pass action so your opponent won't just end the turn. Another example, claiming the battle field when your opponent has one die left in the pool and 3 cards in hand and the die not showing damage while your last character only has a couple health left. If your opponent re-rolls into damage, they would win. They have 3 cards in hand and hence 3 chances to do that. Gaming the system would be saying that they just re-rolled the same side therefore the re-roll counted as they were trying to pass and when it clear passing was anything but what they were trying to do.

21 minutes ago, jonwes said:

Hmmm... so, how did it work before? I'm thinking this is basically how I was playing the card, but I'm not sure.

Also, I was confused by this:

I get the first part. One copy resolves instead of them being defeated. But when they say the second copy can no longer replace being defeated... for what time period are they talking about? In the same attack? For the rest of the game? Are they rendering the second copy useless as far as the ability goes or simply saying you can't stack them during the same attack? Or am I totally confused?

The original wording said something about excess damage being ignored when a character is defeated, but the wording of Second Chance makes it a replacement effect, so the character was never technically defeated. Taking the 'defeated' part out leaves less room for confusion or interpretation.

Two copies of Second Chance's trigger would go into the queue simultaneously if a character died, so I guess they would both have resolved before. The new ruling is more of a band-aid to make the interaction work as intended, but I would still make an argument that they both go into the queue. That's FFG for you.

Ahhhh... go it, thanks. I see now.

1 hour ago, LordFajubi said:

I guess I am not understanding what the issue is with this on the pass ruling. The only time a turn will end is if both players pass. Am I missing something? If you do something that makes you pass and your opponent doesn't pass you get to continue to do things if you have them available. If they pass and end the turn you both can't do anything further and time resets. I guess I'm not understanding WHY you would ever be in a situation where them ending the turn screws you. In the example of discarding to limit mind probe, ok so what? If they pop mind probe you have still saved that one damage and if they pass they lose their special on mind probe and the whole thing starts over. Just don't understand how this ruling is causing any issues at all. Seems like common sense to me. Passing should be a result of a non action but the act of passing means squat unless they pass too and if they do it resets everyone. What am I missing?

Getting a turn to end earlier than anticipated can often be advantageous for a player. E.G if you had already resolved more dice (or rolled poorly) or think that both sides gaining +2 resources would benefit you, or would like a chance to discard cards and draw into something. It is why before this change non-pass passing was beneficial sometimes as it let you wait out opponent's plays before resolving yours to play around disruption (or keep your disruption open) without giving them the chance to deny the remaineder of the turn. This change does the opposite, making certain actions give the opponent an opportunity to end when you perform them.

20 minutes ago, Gobberlerra said:

Getting a turn to end earlier than anticipated can often be advantageous for a player. E.G if you had already resolved more dice (or rolled poorly) or think that both sides gaining +2 resources would benefit you, or would like a chance to discard cards and draw into something. It is why before this change non-pass passing was beneficial sometimes as it let you wait out opponent's plays before resolving yours to play around disruption (or keep your disruption open) without giving them the chance to deny the remaineder of the turn. This change does the opposite, making certain actions give the opponent an opportunity to end when you perform them.

I get what you are saying but you have complete control on whether you do one of these non-action events. Your opponent can't make you do it. It seems to me they found a loop hole and closed it so crafty gamers didn't abuse the system. I really see no harm in this ruling outside the battlefield problem Wonder pointed out. There really is no good way to avoid that paticular issue. That being said they desperately need to clarify these non-action events so there is no question what is or is not a change in game state. I hate how ffg words things, this shouldn't be as confusing as it ended up.

I think the general issue is that it's a very inelegant way to close that loophole.

Typically, FFG games do this by distiuishing cost and effect. Destiny has no such distinction, and it seems they want to keep it that way (presumably to make it as mass-market friendly as possible).

So instead we get this convoluted mess that makes certain actions maybe count as a pass, depending on the game state, but certain parts of the action don't count as changing the game state even if they make changes which would otherwise definitely change the game state. And that's before we consider that nobody even knows what really counts as the "game state" in the first place.

Honestly, it reeks of an ill-considered panic ruling to force things to play the way they want without considering the long-term implications. Sadly, FFG is famous for this sort of thing, so it's neither surprising nor likely to be changed.

For the record, rolling dice would change the game state. The die facing is immaterial.

The action: discard to roll dice.

The result: dice are rolled.

The game state: changed, as your action had the appropriate result.

Yes, FFG needs to add some clarifications, but a lot of what folks are trying to poke holes in would be considered rules lawyer-ing, which is poisonous. If you have legitimate questions, I do not recommend engaging in endless debates in the forum -- new players will suffer for reading the back and forth, and no solution will be reached (those not willing to engage with the rules appropriately will likely not do so until FFG explicitly says something).

Towards this end -- if you have a legitimate question about the game, or a game interaction, contact FFG! Feel free to post that you've done so, and have some discussion come from that, then UPDATE YOUR POST with FFG's response. This is how things wind up in the FAQ, it will help bring new players up to speed, and it will hopefully stop this from turning into some other games that have much less healthy communities.

11 hours ago, Stranglebat said:

I wonder what they feel about a launch bay die being resolved when you have 0 cards in hand?

Resolving a die, despite having no effect, is still an action. I feel like removing a single red active die from your pool, even while having a value of zero and a symbol of whatever, should be considered a game state changing action. They will probably rule that as a pass.

I don't get the stigma about "rules lawyering." If the rules are unclear they're unclear, and I'd rather know how to play the game than shrug my shoulders and guess at what I'm supposed to do.

People are reading too much into this, in my opinion and, of course, trying to find more loopholes. This is a case where the spirit of the rule seems to be you can't use a card action or ability if it would be impossible for you to actually do what the card says and say that's an action. For example, with Backup Muscle, if no damage is left on it, you couldn't move a damage from it to a character. The ruling is preventing someone from exhausting it as an action that really doesn't take place. Same with the Veers example giving in the updated rules. It's basically saying you can't say you're using the action if there is no Veers die to remove (in a similar fashion, you shouldn't be able to use the Veers action if there are no support dice in the pool). With Noble Sacrifice it's saying if you try to play the card and do not have a blue character on the table then the card fails. Personally, in that last case, I wish they had just ruled that you couldn't play Noble Sacrifice at all since I think their ruling seems to allow you to play the card for no effect and that may come cause more issues down the road.

11 hours ago, Mep said:

Gaming the system is using a rule in an unintentional way in order to gain an advantage. Example, using back up muscle with no counters on it instead of using a pass action so your opponent won't just end the turn. Another example, claiming the battle field when your opponent has one die left in the pool and 3 cards in hand and the die not showing damage while your last character only has a couple health left. If your opponent re-rolls into damage, they would win. They have 3 cards in hand and hence 3 chances to do that. Gaming the system would be saying that they just re-rolled the same side therefore the re-roll counted as they were trying to pass and when it clear passing was anything but what they were trying to do.

I think we have a different understanding of how the rules of a competitive game work. We absolutely need to follow the rules exactly as they are written. 100% to the letter. As far as tournament play is concerned, the rules are more important than the player's intentions and the rule-writers' intentions. If the rules say something happens, it does. This is why understanding every single detail and corner case and consequence of the rules needs to happen, because it is imperative that the rules are applied consistently in every case.

If the rules state that rerolling to the same face is the same as a pass (and by my reading, they do), then it DOES NOT MATTER what actions the players took before or after that, or why. You can't have a situation where the reason that a player takes an action impacts how the action mechanically affects the game.

2 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

I don't get the stigma about "rules lawyering." If the rules are unclear they're unclear, and I'd rather know how to play the game than shrug my shoulders and guess at what I'm supposed to do.

Lawyers look for loopholes, not understanding. They want to be right, by any means they can spin it.

That isn't to say you can't be extremely strategic, or engage with the rules, or seek clarification.

Clarification is important.

Back-and-forth bickering about one's personal opinions or interpretations, however, is not healthy for the game's community, whether or not the subject at hand is vague or not.

I'm not convinced that rules lawyering is any worse than language lawyering. Misconstruing our words and vilifying our intent doesn't change the fact that FFG has written an incomplete set of rules. How do you propose to resolve those scenarios when someone brings them up during a game? What is the intent of these forums if not to have open and meaningful discourse about the things we might not see eye to eye on? If I was interested in wasting my time in an echo chamber I'd rejoin Facebook.

Rules need to be "rules-lawyer-proof" if they're ever going to be used for a serious competitive tournament. The "spirit of the rules" is insufficient for Organized Play, and Organized Play is critical for a game's survival.

FFG needs to make changes to the rules so that they operate in a manner consistent with themselves and consistent with the obvious intent / "common sense."

1 hour ago, ketemycos said:

Rules need to be "rules-lawyer-proof" if they're ever going to be used for a serious competitive tournament. The "spirit of the rules" is insufficient for Organized Play, and Organized Play is critical for a game's survival.

FFG needs to make changes to the rules so that they operate in a manner consistent with themselves and consistent with the obvious intent / "common sense."

I agree, the written description needs to be such that rule lawyering/gaming the system is difficult to do. This new rule was put into place because people were gaming the system, and it opened up a whole new avenue for people to game the system. Sadly we are going to get one of those novel length FQAs again to cover everything ... eventually.

And pretty sure rolling a dice will be considered a change of game state regardless of the outcome. Too many dice have identical faces to say the die wasn't rolled to another side.

9 minutes ago, Mep said:

I agree, the written description needs to be such that rule lawyering/gaming the system is difficult to do. This new rule was put into place because people were gaming the system, and it opened up a whole new avenue for people to game the system. Sadly we are going to get one of those novel length FQAs again to cover everything ... eventually.

And pretty sure rolling a dice will be considered a change of game state regardless of the outcome. Too many dice have identical faces to say the die wasn't rolled to another side.

The most reason why re-rolling a die is known as "game state change" is, that you are not really able to know what side the die will show after throwing it correctly... so you made an action which at least tried to change the state of the game (even if die will show same side after re-rolling)...

if you play only a card which has no effect and does not really try to change the game state, it is seen as "passing"...

Well as there is not a single word on what game state is, this discussion as to what amounts to a change in it will never quite end.

I understand "my" concept of it, as being what you would need to return to where ever it was if a table was bumped and game components moved. But for this rule to be "rules lawyer" free you may need to define your terms FFG.

2 hours ago, ketemycos said:

Rules need to be "rules-lawyer-proof" if they're ever going to be used for a serious competitive tournament. The "spirit of the rules" is insufficient for Organized Play, and Organized Play is critical for a game's survival.

FFG needs to make changes to the rules so that they operate in a manner consistent with themselves and consistent with the obvious intent / "common sense."

When I said spirit of the rule I was referring to intent and rationale for why the rule was added in the first place. It seems clear to me the types of situations FFG is trying to avoid in regards to this ruling. The problem is it is probably going to cause other issues down the road because things probably could have been written better or handled differently.

To be honest, I never would have considered trying to exhaust Backup Muscle when it had no damage on it or trying to play Noble Sacrifice if I had no blue characters on the table as my action on a turn because the effects couldn't resolve in those cases and, in my mind, those are restrictions to being able to activate the support in the case of Backup Muscle or play the card in the case of Noble Sacrifice. Clearly, FFG doesn't want people to be able to do that either just to avoid formally passing or trying to get cards out of their hands and that's why they issued this ruling. But then, as we see, its raised other issues in regards to whether or not game state changed because they haven't defined "game state".

1 minute ago, yodaman1971 said:

When I said spirit of the rule I was referring to intent and rationale for why the rule was added in the first place.

Yes, but the intent and rationale for why the rule was added doesn't and shouldn't have any impact on what the rules actually are nor how they should be applied in a competitive setting.

FFG needs to change the rules. At the least, they need to publish a clarification, but that could lead to inconsistencies.