So something came up the other day, player had a card on them that made it so they "cannot disengage from enemies" this prompted some discussion so

Can another player engage the enemy off you, the feeling is no because the RR says "The enemy simultaneously disengages from the previous investigator and engages the investigator performing the action"

the confusion comes from the person doing the action isnt the one with the restriction

Secondly can it be evaded, the initial thought was if the above is true then no, however the RR under evade doesnt mention "disengage" anywhere in the text, from what we can see "disengage" itself isnt defined anywhere in the rulebook, from this the feeling is maybe we can evade it, thoughts??

What card was it?

Entombed

I played it as you can engage it to exhaust it, to avoid attacks, but it remains engaged with you.

Well, as far as I can tell, you can engage an exhausted enemy and it doesn't cause it to automatically ready, so it's possible that you could evade (maybe) and exhaust the enemy but remain engaged to it. I feel like this is probably not the case however.

In order to evade an enemy you would have to engage it with the exception of a very few cards like Cunning Distraction.

If you have Entombed in your threat area and are engaged with a non- massive enemy, another investigator cannot engage that enemy because you can't disengage it. The rules reference states that "cannot" is absolute and cannot be overridden. Even if your ally had a stray cat it would not work because you cannot disengage the enemy.

You can evade the monster as usual, except that when you get to the part where you disengage the enemy you don't. That part of the evade effect fails because you can't do that. The monster still gets exhausted though, so you're just engaged with an exhausted enemy.

14 hours ago, SGPrometheus said:

If you have Entombed in your threat area and are engaged with a non- massive enemy, another investigator cannot engage that enemy because you can't disengage it. The rules reference states that "cannot" is absolute and cannot be overridden. Even if your ally had a stray cat it would not work because you cannot disengage the enemy.

You can evade the monster as usual, except that when you get to the part where you disengage the enemy you don't. That part of the evade effect fails because you can't do that. The monster still gets exhausted though, so you're just engaged with an exhausted enemy.

Stay cat would still allow other investigators to evade your enemy for you no? It just wouldn't disengage from you

So the issue here is that at no place in evade does it say "disengage". It does say "the engagement is broken" and "the enemy is no longer engaged" but this seems very odd to use the word "disengage" very specifically but not in the rules regarding evading. It may be me being quite picky but this seems to imply you become un engaged without disengaging. There is presedent for this when looking at massive enemies where you "are considered engaged" but do not "engage them" im wondering if evade is similar in that "you become not engaged" but do not "disengage"

@Donel You're right; the ally could evade your enemy with their stray cat but it still wouldn't disengage you. I think.

@DaeMord That doesn't make logical sense to me, even though what you've said is reasonable, because it would seem to allow the exact circumstance the card is designed to prevent (specifically, evading). Since only engaging is defined by the rules reference, we're forced to infer that disengaging is the opposite of that: removing an enemy from your threat area.

The issue now is if your saying stray cat works, well several issues

1) stray cat does nothing that evade doesnt except remove the restriction on needing to be engaged with the enemy. Using this logic there is no reason i could not use stray cat any more than my ally could

2) if stray cat works, then in theory so would evading it just wouldnt "remove the engagement" well if thats the case then that could be seen as an advantage, example : Guardian has machete out, exhausts enemy but not longer looses engagement, the machete stays turned on, where as previously after evading they would need to re-engage the enemy, saving 1 action.

I agree that RAI the card is probably intended to prevent ALL forms of evasion, but the lack of using the word disengage (especially when this is used not 2 sections up in the RR) seems both odd and somewhat confusing, especially when the use of this would have simplified the entire section "Any time an enemy is evaded it is exhausted and disengaged". This is much MUCH simpler way of doing what they did and instead went out of their way to describe it step by step, something they didnt do above.

Ultimately i fall on the opinion that either "Disengage" is or is not a keyword, if it is and is going to be used as such it should be consistent and defined, if not then we are going to have fringe cases that will benefit the player and create the above confusions, regardless or RAI or RAW