We are having a bit of an argument over on the SWDestiny reddit over emoVader's special.

" Take a look at young Vader. His ability is deal 3 damage then take 1 damage. If you don't deal 3 total damage (opponent at 2 HP or something) then you don't take the 1 damage as you would need to fully resolve the first part before moving on. For abilities that don't have "then" you just resolve as much of it as you can."

I have never heard of this, and do not believe this correct at all. I believe, that if you resolve his special, no matter how much damage you actually deal with it, you take 1 damage.

Vaders ability never does anything besides dealing 3 damage, regardless of how much health it's target has. If it does extra, then it does extra and it's ignored and you continue to resolve the rest of the text.

For those curious, relevant rules from FFG:

When a player distributes damage “as they wish,” players cannot deal excess damage (damage above their health) to their characters.
Example: A player has two characters with 1 health remaining each. They are forced to distribute two-damage from the special on the F-11D Rifle (r8). They must deal each of their characters one-damage, instead of dealing one of the characters two damage.

And

In order to resolve an effect that is preceded by the word “then,” the previous effects on the card must have fully resolved (i.e., the game state changes to reflect the intent of the effect in its entirety). If the part of an ability that precedes the word “then” does not successfully resolve in full, the part of the ability that follows the word “then” does not attempt to resolve.
Example: Scavenge (r132) says “Discard the
top 3 cards of your deck. Then you may add
an upgrade or a support from your discard
pile to your hand.” If less than 3 cards remain in your deck, you cannot add a card to your hand because the previous effect did not fully resolve.

28 minutes ago, SparklySunshine said:

We are having a bit of an argument over on the SWDestiny reddit over emoVader's special.

" Take a look at young Vader. His ability is deal 3 damage then take 1 damage. If you don't deal 3 total damage (opponent at 2 HP or something) then you don't take the 1 damage as you would need to fully resolve the first part before moving on. For abilities that don't have "then" you just resolve as much of it as you can."

I have never heard of this, and do not believe this correct at all. I believe, that if you resolve his special, no matter how much damage you actually deal with it, you take 1 damage.

You are correct. Anakin dealt 3 damage, even if the recipient didn't "take" 3 damage. The same would be true of shields, even though they're technically removed in place of "damage that would be dealt." You can thank FFG for their obstinacy in creating uniformly templated cards.

Once the damage is successfully dealt it is done. How much the character can take before it dies does not matter. A character with 2 HP would die and the remainder fizzles. This is in the rule book. The "then" effect resolves and the one damage is dealt to Baby Vader. The only way this would not happen is if the damage was cancelled before it resolved. blocking is not cancelling. So shields and blocking is only dealing with resolved damage.

Please read the rules as everyone looks to be skimming or referencing different rules to answer this question. We are not discussing blocked or taken damage. We are discussing excess/ignored damage.

Excess damage cannot be dealt. We've now determined that if a character has 2 HP remaining, baby Vader doesn't deal 3 damage to that character.

We can't move on to the "then" effect unless the precious effect is fully resolved, as per the rules which I've quoted further up. We know that the previous effect wasn't fully resolved as Vader only dealt 2 damage. The 1 damage to Vader does not resolve.

By everyone's logic in here, scavenge would work regardless of how many cards you discard off your deck but we know that's not the case due to the very specific example used in the rules.

Again, excess damage can't be dealt. If Vader doesn't deal 3 damage he doesn't move on to the next part of the ability. Anything before the "then" is essentially part of the cost of the ability. We should be discussing what the rules are as written rather than how we think it should work or how we want it to work.

I have sent this question to Lukas Litzsinger so we can get a ruling we shouldn't need...

On 2017-5-23 at 1:51 PM, Mikenuguy said:

For those curious, relevant rules from FFG:

When a player distributes damage “as they wish,” players cannot deal excess damage (damage above their health) to their characters.
Example: A player has two characters with 1 health remaining each. They are forced to distribute two-damage from the special on the F-11D Rifle (r8). They must deal each of their characters one-damage, instead of dealing one of the characters two damage.

This part is actually irrelevant, since it is dealing with 'When a player distributes damage as they wish', those situations when you can actually split the damage dealt to multiple targets, to prevent players to overkill one target to prevent damage on a second character.

Vader special damage cannot be split. The 3 damage is still dealt, regardless of if the target character has 1 2 or 3 health left.

2 hours ago, Mikenuguy said:

Please read the rules as everyone looks to be skimming or referencing different rules to answer this question. We are not discussing blocked or taken damage. We are discussing excess/ignored damage.

Excess damage cannot be dealt. We've now determined that if a character has 2 HP remaining, baby Vader doesn't deal 3 damage to that character.

We can't move on to the "then" effect unless the precious effect is fully resolved, as per the rules which I've quoted further up. We know that the previous effect wasn't fully resolved as Vader only dealt 2 damage. The 1 damage to Vader does not resolve.

By everyone's logic in here, scavenge would work regardless of how many cards you discard off your deck but we know that's not the case due to the very specific example used in the rules.

Again, excess damage can't be dealt. If Vader doesn't deal 3 damage he doesn't move on to the next part of the ability. Anything before the "then" is essentially part of the cost of the ability. We should be discussing what the rules are as written rather than how we think it should work or how we want it to work.

Cute, but no: "Damage not taken is still dealt." RRG, page 21. By contrast, nothing on page 16 indicates that damage operates as you suggest.

/thread

RRG - page 16 in the defeated characters section - "any excess damage dealt to a character above its health is ignored". So the 3 damage is still dealt even if a character only has 2 health left. The excess damage still happens, it is just ignored in terms of being able to placed somewhere else.

Ah, the latest in 'questions that don't need answers, but are asked anyway because people continue to attempt to game the system'

Thread over. Here is the reply from the lead designer, Lukas Litzsinger.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."