3 hours ago, Murth said:

The only thing I am aware of that I assumed was a change in the game state was discarding a card, and I feel confident in that assumption, given that discarding a card changes the number of cards in the players hand, the number of cards in their discard pile, and the location of the card discarded. Unless someone comes up with a convincing reason to assume that discarding a card doesn't constitute a change in the game state, or FFG says it doesn't, it seems like the only viable assumption. It also seems unlikely to me that FFG will come out with a list of what counts as a change to the game state, because it would likely be prohibitively long, missing things they intend to be a change in the game state, or both.

If there is another assumption I made, or a convincing reason to assume discarding a card doesn't constitute a change in the game state, I would like to hear it.

No, that's the assumption I was talking about. If changing the number of cards in your hand qualifies as a change in game state then how do you address the ruling on page 22 of the RRG that says playing Noble Sacrifice without a blue character in play qualifies as a pass? Because in both scenarios you have one less card in hand and no perceptible difference anywhere else. Now I'm not necessarily in favor of either ruling, because as I said before we don't have an adequate definition of what 'game state' actually means, just a few ad hoc rulings that, frankly, don't give us anything beyond one or two specific precedents.

@isthar I don't think that it is unreasonable to assume that player knowledge is part of the game state (and you kind of have to for this rule to work). How do you think that would work with inferred knowledge then (so using one street informat does change it, two in a row doesn't, and one this turn then one next turn might depending on if I can infer the contents of their hand? If I forgot am I allowed to use it again :D, or is it too bad for me, because I should know?)

I would have to disagree with you on dice movement though, at least by a standard definition of game state. If I described all the information needed to recreate the game and have the players continue where they left off (excluding the exhausted card) you would not be able to tell whether it was before or after the die roll. At the very least it is unclear enough that it should be called out explicitly (which I'm sure they will because it is madness to have an action be sometimes a pass dependent on a random roll IMO).

To play devil's advocate on the last one: If the die had two blank sides and I turned it from one to the other is it the same state? (I think the answer is yes But technically it is different depending on how you define state).

Just submitted the below to the Rules Question link:

___________________

Hello! I have a Star Wars Destiny rules question about the recent changes regarding passing on page 14. Could you precisely define the term "game state?" What is included in the game state? Per your examples, the number of cards in one's hand is not part of the game state, nor is the ready/exhausted status of supports.

Consider the action of discarding a card to reroll a die, and consider the case that the die face after rolling is the same as before. Is this considered to have changed the game state? Why or why not?

Consider the card Street Informants. Is knowledge of an opponent's hand part of the game state? If not, does using Street Informants' action change the game state? What if I have two Street Informants in play and I use them twice in a row without any change in my opponent's hand? Does the answer change if I forget what's in my opponent's hand in between the two uses?

If you have time, please refer to the Community forum and in particular this thread (https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/240771-sw-destiny-rules-updated-124/).

Thank you so much for your time and effort helping us understand and correctly play this amazing game!

Thanks,
Mike

_________________________

TBH, folks, I don't actually care what the ultimate answer is as long as it's clear, consistent, and most importantly, codified precisely in the rulebook.

35 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

No, that's the assumption I was talking about. If changing the number of cards in your hand qualifies as a change in game state then how do you address the ruling on page 22 of the RRG that says playing Noble Sacrifice without a blue character in play qualifies as a pass? Because in both scenarios you have one less card in hand and no perceptible difference anywhere else. Now I'm not necessarily in favor of either ruling, because as I said before we don't have an adequate definition of what 'gave state' actually means, just a few ad hoc rulings that, frankly, don't give us anything beyond one or two specific precedents.

The explanation of the ruling sorts this out:

Does the action only reference itself? Noble Sacrifice, if played without a target, only serves to remove itself.

Discarding a card causes you to re-roll a die. So the card has now acted upon something else, with a direct effect (re-roll).

Similarly, switching a die to another side, even with the same icon, would also have the card acting upon something else, meaning it is not a pass.

I'm not, however, defending the statement that discarding the card changes the game state enough -- in a vacuum, it clearly does NOT, but you can't just discard without rolling at least one die.

41 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

No, that's the assumption I was talking about. If changing the number of cards in your hand qualifies as a change in game state then how do you address the ruling on page 22 of the RRG that says playing Noble Sacrifice without a blue character in play qualifies as a pass? Because in both scenarios you have one less card in hand and no perceptible difference anywhere else. Now I'm not necessarily in favor of either ruling, because as I said before we don't have an adequate definition of what 'gave state' actually means, just a few ad hoc rulings that, frankly, don't give us anything beyond one or two specific precedents.

Because playing a card is specifically called out, " 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. "

When you play Noble Sacrifice without a blue character, you follow the steps on pg 13 of the RRG under "Play a Card From Hand" that specify that you remove the card from your hand, if it is an event you attempt to resolve it, and then discard it. This is part of playing the card, and the reason you have fewer cards in hand, and more cards in discard is because of the rules for playing a card.

When you discard a card from hand to re-roll, you do not play it, and so the Play a card qualification of the counts as passing rule doesn't come into effect.

1 minute ago, Murth said:

Because playing a card is specifically called out, " 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. "

When you play Noble Sacrifice without a blue character, you follow the steps on pg 13 of the RRG under "Play a Card From Hand" that specify that you remove the card from your hand, if it is an event you attempt to resolve it, and then discard it. This is part of playing the card, and the reason you have fewer cards in hand, and more cards in discard is because of the rules for playing a card.

When you discard a card from hand to re-roll, you do not play it, and so the Play claws of the counts as passing rule doesn't come into effect.

This, other than the spelling of, "clause."

9 minutes ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

The explanation of the ruling sorts this out:

Does the action only reference itself? Noble Sacrifice, if played without a target, only serves to remove itself.

Discarding a card causes you to re-roll a die. So the card has now acted upon something else, with a direct effect (re-roll).

Similarly, switching a die to another side, even with the same icon, would also have the card acting upon something else, meaning it is not a pass.

I'm not, however, defending the statement that discarding the card changes the game state enough -- in a vacuum, it clearly does NOT, but you can't just discard without rolling at least one die.

You're inventing text that isn't in the RRG.

7 minutes ago, Murth said:

Because playing a card is specifically called out, " 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. "

When you play Noble Sacrifice without a blue character, you follow the steps on pg 13 of the RRG under "Play a Card From Hand" that specify that you remove the card from your hand, if it is an event you attempt to resolve it, and then discard it. This is part of playing the card, and the reason you have fewer cards in hand, and more cards in discard is because of the rules for playing a card.

When you discard a card from hand to re-roll, you do not play it, and so the Play a card qualification of the counts as passing rule doesn't come into effect.

The ruling also says "action," and discarding for a re-roll is an action.

35 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

The ruling also says "action," and discarding for a re-roll is an action.

The action part of the counts as rule doesn't say "other than taking the action" the Play/Exhaust part of the rule says "other than that card being exhausted or played"

That's... not very intelligible. Can you re-phrase?

Maybe this is one of those reasons why I don't play many games competitively.

A rule is written, I read it. I hope there is no ambiguity. If I find no ambiguity I am happy, I then wonder why other people find it ambiguous. I don't see this rule as ambiguous, there will always be corner cases in any game which is why there are references and faq's. That said I am more than happy with my original reading of the rule and explanation.

"I choose to discard a card (action) to re-roll a die (game state). The game state has changed because I have re-rolled the die. The result of the re-roll is not a game state contributing item, simply the fact that the die has been re-rolled". Sadly this is going to become one of those long, drawn out episodes in games (a common issue with FFG sadly) because the designers have said,

"hey, how does this rule change look to you guys (in the office)"

"looks good to us"....

they then release it on the player base who far, FAR out number the designers.... and someone invents a new way to interpret english followed by redefining the definition of "is"....

The Play/Exhaust part of the rule says " 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. " the action part of the rule does not say anything similar to the emphasis added part.

If you have to re-word the rules to get the point across then it's ambiguous. Can anyone here point to me where it says, in black and white, what the game state is? It's a yes or no question.

46 minutes ago, Murth said:

The Play/Exhaust part of the rule says " 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. " the action part of the rule does not say anything similar to the emphasis added part.

Does it have to? Either it says actions don't affect the game state or it doesn't. Re-rolling is an action. How is this more relevant than the number of cards in your hand? And did you read page 22?

Like I said, all we have right now are precedents, and cards-in-hand obviously don't count against the game state. Couple that with "actions that don't change the game state" and the fact that re-rolls are actions and you can reasonably infer that discarding for a re-roll would qualify as a pass.

18 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

Exhausting the card isn't the effect though, back up muscle itself would do nothing. Exhausting the card is what you have to do to get an effect.

This is a distinction which doesn't exist in Destiny. There is no "cost/effect" or "what you have to do to get the effect" structure for Destiny. It's all just abilities and effects.

I trigger Backup Muscle as my action. I do everything it says - I exhaust it, and try (but fail) to move a damage. Did the game state change? Yes, because the card is now exhausted.

This is why the new rule has to explicitly say no change except for exhausting or playing the relevant card.

15 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

This is a distinction which doesn't exist in Destiny. There is no "cost/effect" or "what you have to do to get the effect" structure for Destiny. It's all just abilities and effects.

To me this is very poor game design then and is getting me to rethink playing this game at all. This thread is like taking a course on Philosophy. People arguing intents vs word for word expressions is way more thought than this deserves. I peacefully agree to disagree on what this ruling means with some of you but with the rest of the garbage and baggage that has come with the launch of this game it is becoming less attractive by the moment. Cheers and good luck to those still searching for truth vs fact.

@LordFajubi If you want to be truly zen: Is not the effect of the card part of playing a card? So if you were to ignore game changes related to playing a card, you must ignore all changes due to the effect of the card too (for they are part of the card being played). As such all cards are but pass actions in disguise... </zentroll>

41 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

To me this is very poor game design then and is getting me to rethink playing this game at all.

I'm not disagreeing that it's poor design. Rethinking... I'm still in, because the game's a lot of fun, but I'm getting distinct echoes of the rules disaster that was X-wing. FFG seems to get themselves in trouble whenever they try and "simplify" rules to make a Star Wars game more mass-market appealing.

7 hours ago, Gobberlerra said:

@LordFajubi If you want to be truly zen: Is not the effect of the card part of playing a card? So if you were to ignore game changes related to playing a card, you must ignore all changes due to the effect of the card too (for they are part of the card being played). As such all cards are but pass actions in disguise... </zentroll>

Do not try to exhaust the card, that's impossible, instead exhaust yourself in the search for the real truth. There is no effect.

Seems like the core ambiguity here is the definition of "game state". I think that if you interviewed 1,000 random Destiny players across the world, most of them would consider a change in the number of cards in a player's hand OR a card going from hand to discard pile to be a game state change. FFG's rulings clearly indicate that this is not the case. They are clearly defining "game state" in a way that contradicts many players' assumptions.

If my opponent has a Mind Probe die in his pool that doesn't show the special and another die with a focus, it's to my advantage to discard or otherwise play a card from my hand to reduce the potential damage I'll take if he focuses to the Mind Probe's special. Playing Noble Sacrifice without a blue character changes the number of cards in my hand, reducing my opponent's capacity to deal damage. How is that not changing the game state. My playing a card has had a measurable, but indirect impact on my opponent's future actions. How is that not a change in game state?

FFG needs to opine and clearly define the term "game state".

14 hours ago, Buhallin said:

I'm not disagreeing that it's poor design. Rethinking... I'm still in, because the game's a lot of fun, but I'm getting distinct echoes of the rules disaster that was X-wing. FFG seems to get themselves in trouble whenever they try and "simplify" rules to make a Star Wars game more mass-market appealing.

Only thing I disagree with here is that X-Wing is or was a rules disaster. FFG has done a pretty good job of adapting the game when new releases come out and, considering the length of the game and the current content, the "FAQ" isn't terribly long.

That Destiny is trying to get a jump on theirs is a bit disheartening, though.

Here is another troll scenario along these lines.

Your opponent has a die showing 3 damage. You play Unpredictable to reroll his die. You roll the same 3 damage side. Your opponent then accuses you of just passing, since you didn't change the game state and you don't get another action from the ambush on Unpredictable.

This is all getting a bit silly.

Even if we are going to accept the conclusion that a re-roll resulting in the same face showing is not changing the game state (which I don't) you would only not get the ambush action if your opponent had passed his last turn as the round only ends with consecutive passes.

Furelli

It would still be a bit confusing as to whether or not you're even allowed to act immediately after passing.

1 hour ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

It would still be a bit confusing as to whether or not you're even allowed to act immediately after passing.