Leo's reaction ability is to "Play an Ally asset, reducing its cost by one". I suppose it costs zero action (because it's a reaction ability). But does it trigger an attack of opportunity ?

Same question for Ursula. She has a free Investigate action, but does it trigger an attack of opportunity ? If the answer is yes, what would happen with Jake Williams in play ? Let's imagine Ursula is engaged with an Enemy. Her first action on her turn is to Move. No attack of opportunity thanks to Jake. Then she has a free Investigate action, but I suppose this one triggers an attack that Jake can't prevent, right ?

I confess this "free action" business is very unclear to me...

they are reactions, so they do not trigger an attack of opportunity.

Right, attack of opportunity are only triggered by full actions, not reactions or actions with the keyword Fast .

Also, those are the 2 investigators we're playing with, so I'll just add that they work freaking great!

Okay this gets tricky:

Leo says:

(reaction) After your turn begins: Play an Ally asset, reducing its cost by 1.

This does not provoke an AOO since its a reacton.

Ursula says:

(reaction) After you move to a location: Take an investigate action. (Limit once per round.)

This does trigger an AoO because it says "Take an investigate ACTION" instead of simply "investigate"

At least thats my understanding.

EDIT: This type of nuance drives me up a wall. I wish they made it cleaner so you didn't have to analyze.

Yes, I usually have no problem with the rules of this game, but here I have some doubts and I feel the need to over-analyze. This clearly deserves some more detailed wording.

I found a topic an BGG, and apparently it was confirmed from official sources that Ursula's Investigate action triggers an attack of opportunity, because it's a full action (even though it's a free action). So Jobu seems to be right !

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1994849/ursula-downs-free-investigate-action-and-enemies

21 minutes ago, Chakado said:

Yes, I usually have no problem with the rules of this game, but here I have some doubts and I feel the need to over-analyze. This clearly deserves some more detailed wording.

I found a topic an BGG, and apparently it was confirmed from official sources that Ursula's Investigate action triggers an attack of opportunity, because it's a full action (even though it's a free action). So Jobu seems to be right !

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1994849/ursula-downs-free-investigate-action-and-enemies

Huh. Well there you are.

It is worth remembering then, that it is a triggered action and therefore does not have to be initiated.

Well that's dumb. Leo's ability is playing an Asset, which is very clearly also a "full action".

Just now, Network57 said:

Well that's dumb. Leo's ability is playing an Asset, which is very clearly also a "full action".

While I am frustrated at this minutiae, if Leo's card was worded "Take a play card action to play an Ally asset, reducing its cost by 1. ", he would suffer an AoO as well. But it doesn't so he doesn't.

Frankly it strikes me more of lose wording that then got interpreted by rules text after the fact than intentional design. FFG never does that, do they?

I actually had always assumed you would take an AoO when using Leo's. This is a good point I guess. I find 'Play Card" as a weird action name. I would prefer if they used "Play" as the action name (You would see "Take a Play Action" as opposed to "Take a play card action") .

I don't know if I've seen this anywhere else.

9 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I actually had always assumed you would take an AoO when using Leo's. This is a good point I guess. I find 'Play Card" as a weird action name. I would prefer if they used "Play" as the action name (You would   see "Take a Play Action" as opposed to "Take a play card action") .

I don't know if I've seen this anywhere else.        

The actual action name is "Play"

This is an unfortunate side effect of action names sometimes matching the results of those actions. This is probably the worst oversight they made in the game design.

Evade is an action that you take. Depending on the results of a chaos bag pull, you may or may not evade an enemy. Note the use of evade in the second sentence is not referring to an action but the outcome of that action.

Fight is an action that you can take. Depending on the results of a chaos bag pull, you may or may not inflict damage on an enemy.

When you take a Play action, you chose a card, pay its cost and play it. The 1st "Play" is an action, the 2nd "play" is the results of that action. What worse is that paying a cards cost is part of the Play action and not part of the act of playing the card. On Bill's card it is clarified that he has to pay the cost. On Leo's it's implied that he does so at -1. Ditto for Ever Vigilant. I guess without these clarifications those cards would go into play for free.

Plus we have bold statements that make it clear that it is an action but that can also be phrased as X action.

4 minutes ago, Jobu said:

The actual action name is "Play"

When you take a Play action, you chose a card, pay its cost and play it. The 1st "Play" is an action, the 2nd "play" is the results of that action. What worse is that paying a cards cost is part of the Play action and not part of the act of playing the card. On Bill's card it is clarified that he has to pay the cost. On Leo's it's implied that he does so at -1. Ditto for Ever Vigilant. I guess without these clarifications those cards would go into play for free.

Except they do have a paraphrase to get around this issue, that's been used before in LOTR:LCG and maybe Arkham: "Put an Ally asset into play, paying its resource cost." Boom, done. No AoO, no ambiguity. The fact that they didn't makes me think that.... maybe you do suffer the attack of opportunity?

Totally agree. I wish there was some kind of formatting at least to note when Evade and Play (and for consistency other 'full actions') are meant to be full actions. Even something like an underline (since bold is already used to denote a TYPE of action, but not necessarily action cost, I don't think ). It could be visually simplified if wording it otherwise would have been awkward.

I agree that it's probably the biggest issue with the overall game design.

I think they should put them in bold to denote "you are taking this Action ".

3 hours ago, Network57 said:

Except they do have a paraphrase to get around this issue, that's been used before in LOTR:LCG and maybe Arkham: "Put an Ally asset into play, paying its resource    cost." Boom, done. No AoO, no ambiguity. The fact that they didn't makes me think that.... maybe you do suffer the attack of opportunity?           

Yeah, you can see that on "A Chance Encounter" (although you would take an AoO from playing "A Chance Encounter")

You are making me wonder about Leo. As an aside, if I played Ever Vigilant, would I potentially take 4 AoOs? On the other hand, I don't think anyone is saying you take an AoO from triggering Bill-Ys ability.

1 hour ago, Jobu said:

Yeah, you can see that on "A Chance Encounter" (although you would take an AoO from playing "A Chance Encounter")

You are making me wonder about Leo. As an aside, if I played Ever Vigilant, would I potentially take 4 AoOs? On the other hand, I don't think anyone is saying you take an AoO from triggering Bill-Ys ability.

You're probably right, especially with Ever Vigilant having the same wording. I wonder if we can get a designer ruling as to why that interaction works the way it does.

5 hours ago, Jobu said:

Yeah, you can see that on "A Chance Encounter" (although you would take an AoO from playing "A Chance Encounter")

You are making me wonder about Leo. As an aside, if I played Ever Vigilant, would I potentially take 4 AoOs? On the other hand, I don't think anyone is saying you take an AoO from triggering Bill-Ys ability.

You are playing those cards as part of the ability resolution, so they do not count as a separate actions. In contrast, Ursulas's ability gives her a free action to take

Leo's ability: Not an action, so does not trigger Attack of Opportunity.

Ursula's ability: Grants an action, can trigger Attack of Opportunity.

Yeah, Matt's ruled on this. Ursula gains an extra action, potentially each turn, to investigate. But certain conditions need to be met for that to kick in (unlike, say, Daisy's tome action that's always available, irrespective of if she has tomes', which is why it wasn't written simply as 'you have an additional -> each turn, which may only be used to investigate, and only if you've just moved'.

Matt went on to say: "You're doing the full process / rules for taking an action. It's different from something like Yorick's or Leo's ability, if that's the comparison being made"

I've not added it to arkhamdb yet because I've been snowed with work and with just getting the deluxe cards up (vengeance ate up some time!). But I'll update Ursula and Leo with clarifications when I can.

The more i thought of this, i think the confusion could have been avoided by adding "additional". Like this perhaps:

"Take an additional Investigate action."

Because then players would know its an action a la Daisy's ability or Skid's ability.

can Ursula use a Flashlight on her bonus action?

2 minutes ago, awp832 said:

can Ursula use a Flashlight on her bonus action?

Yes. She can take any Investigate action. Not simply the standard investigate action. This means she can also, for instance, use the Ancient Stone.

1 hour ago, awp832 said:

can Ursula use a Flashlight on her bonus action?

She can even play events with the investigate action as her bonus action, like Unearth the Ancients. I only know this because this specific interaction is used in the description for her decklist (p.13 in this document: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/66/77/66774095-b51a-4587-a763-cb6d33f8da97/ahc_decklists_40.pdf ).

Yeah I wouldn't have thought was possible without that text.

Me neither, but it does illustrate the difference between her ability and someone like Leo, which helps to clarify why hers provokes AoO and his doesn't. To wit, she really is getting a complete Investigate action for moving, not a partial or conditional one, whereas Leo is getting a very specific, partial action; full actions provoke AoO, partial ones don't. Even knowing that though, it still feels weird to use it with an event.

On 5/21/2018 at 6:09 PM, Jobu said:

Yeah, you can see that on "A Chance Encounter" (although you would take an AoO from playing "A Chance Encounter")

You are making me wonder about Leo. As an aside, if I played Ever Vigilant, would I potentially take 4 AoOs? On the other hand, I don't think anyone is saying you take an AoO from triggering Bill-Ys ability.

You don't take additional AoOs from Ever Vigilant. It is giving you the effects of the "play a card," basic action from the RRG, but you're not paying the cost (use an action) or taking the play a card action.

This is also, fundamentally, why Leo and Ursula behave differently. Leo's react gives you the effect of an action, without using an action (the cost is, instead, triggering a react). Ursula prompts you to take an entire action. While you don't have to spend one of your actions (the normal formulation of a basic action in the RRG is that you "use an action" to gain an effect; Ursula's ability covers the whole process, so she grants the action you use), you are still "taking an action," which is explicitly what provokes an attack of opportunity: "Each time an investigator is engaged with one or more ready enemies and takes an action..." ("Attacks of Opportunty," RRG).