Does inflict inflicting enough damage to kill a Hero (or creature) prevent any accompanying effect from happening?

For example: In the RtL dungeon with the passive Giant and his garden. The OL planned to use the Ogre to knock the Hero into a patch of herbs to enrage the Giant. But the damage from the attack killed the hero. Does the knockback still happen?

Another example: A wounded Master Ferrox attacks a Hero, hoping to 'leech' some health back. But its attack inflicts enough damage (before the leech) to kill the Hero. Does the leech still happen? Can it inflict the additional Fatigue/Wound damage and therefore remove its own wounds?

The FAQ doesn't specifically answer this exact question, but it tells us a few things that definitely suggest an answer:

• Knockback should trigger after wounds are inflicted. (p. 5)
• If a hero with the Divine Retribution Skill is killed by an attack with the Knockback ability, Divine Retribution takes effect before the figure is moved. (p. 5)
• Damage is dealt before other abilities take effect. (p. 11)

I take all this to mean that you apply wounds first. If the target dies from those wounds, none of the other special effects of the attack happen. Though it may not be explicitly spelled out, it seems consistent with the spirit of the FAQ rulings.

I agree that nothing is specifically mentioned, but that could be because it doesn't matter in 99% of the situations. These are the only two I could think of, and only because they came up in our last game (after years of playing).

JitD rules say (pg 16): "When a monster receives a number of wounds equal to its wound rating, it is killed." (does that mean, if it receives a number of wounds greater than its wound rating, it is not killed? ) They also say: "When a hero loses his last wound token, he is killed. The hero immediately moves to the town."

But these rules pre-date the appearance of the Ferrox (WoD) and the herb-loving Giant (RtL).

I dunno. I wouldn't mind having a DR-equipped Hero get smashed by an Ogre, smite the nearby monsters, and then land in the garden, enraging the Giant. Pretty cinematic.

Since we know that Knockback happens after wounds (and death effects like Divine Retribution), I'd say that's out, if only on the grounds that the hero is now in town, and so there are no legal spaces within range of his current position to knock him into.

My instinct on Leech would be that the attacker still gets healed; Leech says the attacker is healed of 1 wound for each wound it inflicts, and those wounds still happened, even if the figure died. However, I don't think the hero should lose fatigue after resurrecting, or suffer any further effects from attack (like poison, burn, etc.). That may not be entirely consistent reasoning.

For the Ferrox example, the leech would still take effect since you technically would resolve each wound one at a time to determine fatigue/double damage loss.

Leech (WoD pg 6)
For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound.

So if the hero has 5 wounds and 2 fatigue left and the Ferrox did 6 damage, the hero would die, and the Ferrox would heal 4 wounds. (2 wounds for the fatigue, and 2 more for the double damage hits).

Since 5 wounds were lost, the Ferrox would be healed for wounds as well. The ability says "Leech attack" not "Leech ability". One attack, one total damage, determining the extent of the healing.

Parathion said:

+1

Leech is listed in the "Special Abilities" section of the rulebook. How do you know the phrase 'leech attack' doesn't simply mean an attack with the 'Leech' special ability ?

WoD Rules, "New Special Abilities" (page 6) :
Leech
For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound.

WoD / AoD / ToI Rules, "Special Abilities Summary" (last page) :
Leech: For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue, and the attacker is healed of 1 wound.

• Does the healing happen as a result of the fatigue loss, or are those two things independent and unrelated results of the original point of damage?
• Is leech applied one point of damage at a time? The rules above only describe a ratio of wounds to fatigue lost (1:1); they don't tell us anything about timing or how to apply the damage.

Depending on how the rule is read, and depending on whether you consider leech to be a "special ability" or part of the attack itself (like pierce, which obviously must happen before wounds are applied), the outcome of an attack can change considerably.

For simplicity, I'll stick with Fizz's example. (Hero has 5 wounds / 2 Fatigue; Ferrox does 6 damage.)

1. Leech is a special ability that happens after wounds are applied. - Ferrox gets no healing because the hero is dead already.
2. Leech attack damage is aplied one point at a time; healing and fatigue loss are independent. - Ferrox gets 4 points of healing. (2 fatigue, 2 bonus damage)
3. Leech attack damage is applied one point at a time; healing depends on fatigue loss. - Ferrox gets 3 points of healing. (2 fatigue, 1 bonus damage)
4. Leech attack damage is applied all at once; healing and fatigue loss are independent. - Ferrox gets 5 points of healing. (2 fatigue, 3 bonus damage)
5. Leech attack damage is applied all at once; healing depends on fatigue loss. - Ferrox gets 2 points of healing. (2 fatigue)

mahkra said:

It does mean exactly that. A 'leech attack' is simply 'an attack' that has the leech ability.

There is more than enough precedent scattered around the rules and FAQ that an 'attack' is the whole attack and 'an XXXX attack' is simply an attack that includes the XXXX ability.
Whether that ability be Leap, Soar, Bleed, Leech Pierce or any other ability, an attack is an attack (that is, the whole of the attack sequence including wounds lost, surges spent, dice being rerolled etc etc).

Thus a Leech attack that kills a hero with 5 wounds left, removed 5 wound tokens and the attacker may heal 5 damage. What caused the wound token loss is irrelevent, as long as it came from the 'attack' - as long as the wounds were lost during the attack, by some effect of the attack, then a wound is healed for every wound token removed.
An attack with leech and bleed for example, would not cause extra healing from the bleed because bleed damage is not part of the attack damage but resolved separately.

Even abilities that are not resolved until after wounds are taken (say, DR or Knockback for example) are still part of the attack. The attack is not 'complete' until these have been resolved (eg you can't interrupt between taking the wounds and being knockbacked to drink a fatigue or healing potion). So even if leech is not resolved until then, the extra fatigue/wounds lost due to the first part of leech are still an effect of the attack (as opposed to knockback into pits, which is an effect of the pit) and so still qualify for the second part of leech. Thus, any wound lost as a direct result of the attack, including wounds caused by leech, qualify for the healing affect of leech.

Frankly, it so rarely matters with monsters usually dying either in one hit or in one round (especially leeching monsters) so that the healing part is almost never used.
It will matter enormously for the Count in SoB though...
Seriously, thats one scary, scary fight for the heroes. RGGYAu probably + AuAu, Mv14, Fly, Stun, Leech, Ironskin (one assumes the Leech + Ironskin for Razorwings upgrade is an automatic starter for the count!) He can get to you whichever hero he wants, wherever you are, Stuns, averages 10-11 damage per hit with only a couple of minor Avatar dice upgrades, Leeches for extra damage (imagine a max damage, 20 point leeching hit!). He can probably also get away far enough from many heroes to not be attackable with melee weapons too.

Corbon said:

Wow, an end-battle fight that won't be a pushover for the heroes? Cool!

-shnar

How do you know that healing and fatigue loss are independent? The rule says If (A), then (B) and ©. Do (B) and © happen separately, or are they linked? If they are linked, then it would not be possible to have © happen without (B).

An attack causes 6 damage (after armor). The hero suffers 5 wounds, then is dead. Leech says that for each of these wounds, the target loses a fatigue (or suffers an additional wound) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound. For the first two damage, this works. Target loses 2 fatigue and attacker is healed of 2 wounds. But what happens after that? The hero cannot lose a fatigue, because he has none. Can he suffer an additional wound if he's already dead? Can the attacker be healed without the hero losing a fatigue or suffering an additional wound? The rule does not actually answer that question.

The Knockback description in the rules includes the term "Knockback Attack", but the FAQ tells us death can happen before the knockback triggers. If the attack is not 'complete' until knockback resolves, does that mean your game gets 'stuck' when the hero dies, as knockback never resolved? And if death can interrupt knockback and cause it to never finish, why is it inconceivable that death could interrupt leech?

mahkra said:

1. Because of the wording.
Leech
For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound

"If A then B and C" does not create a casual link between B and C. It does not create any link between B and C except they both trigger off A. to be clearer, expand it. "If A, then B, C, D, E and F". That is a list of things that trigger on A.
"If A, then B, then C" would be a sequential link but still defines C as triggering off A rather than B - just not until B is resolved.
"If A then B, if B then C". would be a causal link that defines C triggering off B, not A.

The wording of Leech could be broken down to say "For each 'Trigger A' occurrence, effect B and effect C happen." There is no implication anywhere in that structure that effect C operate only on effect B - it very clearly operates on trigger A.

2. Read the trigger carefully. For each wound token lost ... It really is quite simple if you just follow the text. If the hero loses 5 wound tokens due to the attack then the monster may heal 5 wounds. The amount of fatigue lost, or not lost, or spent, or whatever is irrelevant. The amount of wounds dished out by the attack is irrelevant. The only relevent factor for healing is the amount of wound tokens removed by the hero.

3. Some really odd arguments here... Whether effects resolve bfore or afetr death makes no diference. Knockback could still resolve on a dead hero, it just does nothing! The hero is in town and there are no adjacent spaces. Or the (killed) hero is knockbacked - which does nothing to him, he is already dead, about to lose any lingering effects etc anyway and there is nothing that could be triggered by his landing (at least that I can think of) that would affect anyone else anyway.
There is no reason for the game to freeze.
And there is no reason for death to interrupt leech. Death does not finish the attack. If you have an ability that gives you wounds for killing blows during an attack (one of the ToI swords IIRC), you get the wound only after the victim dies - the attack resolution doesn't simply cut off immediately on the death, the wound still must get given. It is a special ability on a weapon, which is only used during an attack, so the attack isn't over until all effects of the attack have finished resolving. That some of them might be pointless doesn't prevent them from resolving. Whether Leech resolves before or after the hero is 'killed' or removed makes no difference. The hero still lost the same number of wound tokens during the attack.

Corbon said:

But what about the original example (the Giant with the Garden), where something IS triggered by the landing - in fact I assume that is why the Orgre is the leader on that dungeon level?

Do you think the Giant can be 'enraged' by a dead (killed during the same attack) hero being knocked back onto a garden square. During the game, we ruled "yes"; it semed to make the encounter more interesting. I just thought I'd get some other opinions.

You're double calculating leech when the target doesnt have fatigue left and you can't do that. I worded my example specifically to address this point.

If target takes a wound, then check fatigue:

One of the three possibilities will happen:

>>> If they lose one fatigue, the attacker is healed for one wound.

>>> If target is out of fatigue, attacker takes additional wound and the attacker is healed for one wound.

>>> (per the FAQ): If the target is a monster, ignore the fatigue loss part of leech.

The "additional wound" generated by an attack with leech against a target with no fatigue left does not also heal the attacker.

klempad said:

Ahh, so there is something that matters. In that case I guess I would agree with Antistone and use the first option above. Since the hero is dead, he is in town and there are no spaces for the knockback to affect.
I think choosing that way will create less problems down the track - a dead hero is dead and nothing should be affecting him nor should he be affecting other things, but that still doesn't mean the attack stops from concluding.

Fizz said:

Why not?
Is it caused by the leech attack? - yes.
Is a wound token lost? - yes

If a wound token is lost due to a leech attack the attacker may heal a wound.

I'll repeat.

"If A then B and C" means that B and C are independently calculated, based on A.
When you check for C, your only interest is A. If 5 wound tokens are lost during the attack, then you heal 5 wounds.

In addition, a Leech attack that causes 1 wound + 1 fatigue loss should only heal 1 wound on the attacker (for the 1 wound lost on the victim) - there is no indication for healing the attacker for an actual fatigue loss.

Corbon said:

By that logic then as soon as a target runs out of fatigue, Leech causes infinite wounds. If a target has no fatigue left, then every wound dealt causes an additional wound and heals the attacker 1 point. If the additional wound caused by this effect is treated the same as the wounds rolled on the dice, then the additional wound will cause an additional (third) wound, which causes a fourth, etc. This is clearly not how the ability is meant to work, in my opinion. That is supremely broken. The healing and the extra wound (or fatigue loss) are both caused by the same event, thus they must both happen or not happen together.

Steve-O said:

Right, but the ADDITIONAL WOUND caused by not having enough fatigue does not heal the attacker just the wound that was "rolled".

Corbon said:

See, but here's the thing, you might have rolled 5 wounds, but since some of those wounds *might* cause double damage, you have to check them separately. If you don't, that like saying, "I rolled 5 wounds, so I heal 5, even though you had 2 points of armor, and only took 3 damage." The target may be dead before the full complement of damage is applied.

In this case, each wound has to be looked at as it applied since different conditions may apply. Now, if the target didnt die because it had say, 16 wounds left, the yes, you would get healed for 5 wounds because the target would not die before the damage is applied. on the other hand, if the target only had 1 wound left, and you rolled 16 "leech" damage, you would only heal for one wound, not 16.

Corbon said:

No, actually, this is not strictly true.

If A, then B and/or C would specifically tell us one can happen without the other.

If A, then B, then C would specifically tell us that there is a cause-effect relationship; B can happen without C, but C cannot happen without B.

If A, then B and C does not specifically address what to do if only one of B and C can actually happen. If only one can happen, " B and C " cannot be fulfilled, which may or may not invalidate the entire statement.

Your reading is not incorrect, but it is certainly not the only reasonable reading of the rule. I think any of the five options I illustrated earlier could be reasonably defended.

To the Knockback point, if death changes the way Knockback is resolved ("it just does nothing!"), why couldn't death change the way Leech is resolved?

mahkra said:

That would also tell us that neither necessarily happens when A occurs, even if it is possible they would. Usually that would mean that someone can choose whether to do B, or C, or both, or neither. In any event, it's not an instruction that can be carried out by itself, because it doesn't fully describe the conditions under which B happens or the conditions under which C happens. If that is the only information we are given about B and C, then the rule is incomplete.

Normal game rules-writing convention is that if you are instructed to do several things, but some of them are impossible, you ignore the impossible ones but are required to do all the remaining ones...unless the game specifically establishes a causal relationship between them, or makes some of them optional.

A card that let you "spend 1 fatigue to remove one Poison token" couldn't be used if you didn't have 1 fatigue to spend.

But a card that let you "remove one Poison token and gain 1 fatigue" could be used to gain 1 fatigue even if you don't have any Poison tokens to remove, or to remove a Poison token even if you're already at maximum fatigue.

Antistone said:

Interesting example here, because "remove one Poison token and gain 1 fatigue" certainly seems to imply a causal relationship. It doesn't actually state a causal relationship - that would be, as in your other example, "remove one Poison token to gain 1 fatigue" - but it does imply one. The way the sentence is written, the meaning is ambiguous.

If we have to rely on "game rules-writing convention" (which seems rather artificial - is there an AP Stylebook -type manual documenting these 'rules'?) to determine a meaning, then the rule does not have an explicit meaning. You're making an assumption that a sentence should be read a certain way.

mahkra said:

basically, yes. In one way you are right that we have to make a choice betwen possible readings. However we really should not be choosing options that should be written better a different way, over options that should be written they way it is written.

1. We know the Descent writers use casual language.

2. The other options have casual language usages that are just as easy to write as this one and clearer.

3. This option does not have a casual language option that is clearer.

4. Therefore it is irresponsible of us to assume any other option is correct

mahkra said:

5. Sure it would, but it also says they can happen together and is not casual (conversational?) language as typically used by the Descent authors. Look through the rules. I bet they never use and/or under any circumstances.

6. Not necessarily. It tells us that C happens after (any) B, it does not tell us that C cannot happen if B does not happen. C is still related to A rather than B but is delayed until B occurs or has fails to occur. It does tell us that B cannot occur after C.

7. Ahh, you prove my point in a better way than I had. By your reading the statement can be entirely invalidated. By my reading the statement cannot be entirely invalidated. Therefore yours cannot be right (or is not reasonable) and mine can (or is reasonable). SInce you just eliminated B and C being dependent, that leaves C ignoring B and looking just a A, which is the option where 5 wound tokens are lost so 5 wounds are healed exactly as written .

8. You seem to miss the point. It doesn't change the way it is resolved, its just that the resolution has no effect. Knockback reolves on the hero who is dead, therefore the effect is nullified, so to speak. But Leech resolves on the attacker who is alive and has no reason to not take effect.

mahkra said:

"Game rules-writing convention" is also the only way that we know heroes can't slay the boss instantly by looking at him (any move not explicitly allowed is forbidden), or that the rules for Fly trump the rules for rubble saying that it blocks movement (specific overrides general). If you intend to throw it out, you're going to have a very hard time playing the game at all.

Also, as we've established that "if A, B and/or C" means somethign entirely different, do you actually have any serious suggestion of how they would write "if A, then B, if it is possible, and also, separately, C, if it is possible" without that level of verbosity?