This odd situation came up in our campaign last week.

• Rebels attack a Probe Droid (5 Health) and put 6 damage onto the Probe Droid.
• Probe droid takes 5 Damage (rules state that any excess damage is ignored) and is about to be defeated.
• Imperial player uses Final Blast

Quote

Deplete this card during any mission when one of your non-unique figures has suffered [damage] equal to its Health. Before it is defeated, it may interrupt to perform an attack.

• The Rebel that the Probe Droid attacks is holding a Quickdraw Holster:

Quote

1[strain]: Deplete this card when an attack targeting you is declared. Interrupt to perform an attack targeting the attacker.

Here is where the questions begin:

Assuming the Rebel's attack results in damage, is the Probe Droid defeated before it gets to resolve it's Final Blast attack? In the game, it was ruled that this would not kill the probe droid because the droid cannot "suffer damage in excess of it's health", (basically making the Probe Droid invincible until his Final Blast completes). The logic was that the droid is not suffering any extra damage, that there are no rules which trigger a check to compare the Damage vs Health of the Probe Droid and therefore the Droid is not defeated until after Final Blast. The other part(s) of the argument are:

a) Is the droid still "suffering damage" even though no more tokens are placed on it? And therefore, during the Quickdraw Holster attack, the Probe Droid would die due to suffering damage equal to it's health.

b) Is the check for Damage = Health a constant check, and therefore the probe droid would die during the Quickdraw Holster attack? If that is the case, what would happen if the Quickdraw Holster attack did ZERO damage? Would the Probe Droid still die during the Quickdraw Holster attack?

c) If there were a hypothetical card out there that otherwise caused the Probe Droid to be defeated during the Quickdraw Holster attack, would the Probe Droid still survive until it was able to carry out it's Final Blast attack, since Final Blast prevents the Probe Droid from being defeated until it it completes it's Final Blast attack?

Can you help us out?

Hi, you've got nested interrupts happening here, all happening during the initial regular attack.

I'm thinking the probe will die just because another round of attack steps will go through against it. The probe droid initially stays alive because the initial attack is interrupted before figures are defeated where the probe droid triggers to declare an attack. This however triggers the Rebel to again interrupt the process and declare their own attack. Following the steps here, the probe droid should be defeated before completing this attack and going back to the probe droid's interrupt(which will fizzle out).

a)Yes, damage would be placed on it, then excess damage removed.

b)The check for defeating a figure is one of the last steps in an attack. It would die even if the attack misses.

c)No, nothing says to keep the droid alive, just to declare an attack, opening up a series of steps that must be resolved, before becoming defeated. Such a card would have to stop the droid's attack to get back to the original attack's steps. Or open up a brand new attack in this case.

Hope this makes sense.

Figures are not defeated as part of the steps on an attack. Step 7 is simply damage calculation. The rules for defeated figures is under the Damage section of the RRG, not the attack steps.

So the Probe Droids attack still occurs.

43 minutes ago, hyveedoughboy said:

• Rebels attack a Probe Droid (5 Health) and put 6 damage onto the Probe Droid.
• Probe droid takes 5 Damage (rules state that any excess damage is ignored) and is about to be defeated.
• Imperial player uses Final Blast

So final blast gets triggered, and Probe Droid will be dead after we finish with Final Blast

44 minutes ago, hyveedoughboy said:

• The Rebel that the Probe Droid attacks is holding a Quickdraw Holster:

This is kind of irrelevant here. Rebels are free to target the Probe Droid but you cannot "double kill" it. Final Blast WILL happen regardless how much damage the Rebels did from their quickdraw holster

and because Probe Droid has already suffered damage equal to its health, any excess damage is discarded (i.e. Rebels cannot put any damage on Probe Droid from quickdraw holster)

So the correct order is

Rebels put 6 dmg on Probe Droid

Probe droid suffers 5dmg

Imp plays Final Blast

Rebels trigger quickdraw holster (bad idea), put 0 dmg on Probe Droid

Final Blast resolves

Now if Probe droid manages to roll a surge for ~: recover then it's an entirely different story

Surprise! The probe droid does not die

This happened with "invincible rodians" with Imperial Industry attachment card and they had to issue errata to change to "...then, you are defeated" but no such text exists on Final Blast

Yeah, Final Blast on a Probe Droid isn't as abusive as a Industrious Rodian (was).

I've managed to pull this one off in my campaign once, and the Rebels were not pleased.

Granted the Droid is near death anyway, but's a neat little trick when it comes off...

41 minutes ago, Majushi said:

Yeah, Final Blast on a Probe Droid isn't as abusive as a Industrious Rodian (was).

I've managed to pull this one off in my campaign once, and the Rebels were not pleased.

Granted the Droid is near death anyway, but's a neat little trick when it comes off...

It's pretty reliable (and potentially much more devastating) when you do it with an E-Web or (even worse) an Elite E-Web.

Recovering from the attack you get from a Final Blast seems like the worst possible interpretation of the rules. It fails thematically as well as logically and only works due to rule-lawyering. I would never go for it in a campaign where I'm the Imperial player and I would see it as extremely poor sportsmanship if I was a Rebel player.

Final Blast can only happen once (per mission). It's not overpowered if the figure recovers from it using another ability they have won during the campaign.

The Parting Shot + Imperial Industry loophole was already fixed.

It your own choice if you even purchase Final Blast, or how to use it (if you even manage to get an unevaded uncancelled surge).