This card states that you add one die to the opponents dice pool equal to your depth in Con/reckless stance (depending on side)

There is a "special" comment that says you may adjust to 1 deep in reckless/Con (opposite to the side of the card used) if so, add 1 to the action's dice pool.

So my question is, are these either/or options or can you combine them if they are both applicable?

For instance, if the PC is 2 deep in reckless and plays this action, and decides to move to 1 step into conservative (i.e. use the special condition) do they get to add 1 to the opponent's pool (because they have gone to 1 deep in conservative) OR do they get to add 3 dice to the pool; 2 because they start the action 2 deep in reckless plus 1 because they use the special condition to switch to 1 deep in conservative?

how are other people reading this?

pumpkin said:

Flip to 1 deep in your stance and 1 to your opponent. It's not cumulative.

I'm with Kryyst, moving stances so quickly is a benefit in and of itself.

The text it doesn't sound like things are cumulative, and even if they were you'd be looking at 2 and not 3 .

I can happily agree it might not be cumulative, but not sure how you are working out that it would be only 2 if it were?

Simple, because:

This card states that you add one die to the opponents dice pool equal to your depth in Con/reckless stance (depending on side)

So you get from that rule because you're only 1 deep into the stance from the special action taken. It would truly be schizofrenic if you were not only changing stance mid action, but using different states of said stance to calculate the dice pool. For example, if you change to 1 stance into reckless you're not going to be rolling 2 conservative dice with that pool, right? So why do you get 2 ?

The rules of this game aim for simplicity and whenever a situation crops up that leads to such madness it's FAQ'ed as being the simplest solution. So if you change your stance to whatever, that's the stance you're in. You don't look back to what it was a few seconds previous, and there's definitely no building of a partial dice pool, then using abilities to add additional dice based on changing circumstances without updating the dice pool to reflect the current situation.

as you add a number of misfortune dice equal to your depth in, say, conservative stance... and the special effect says you may adjust your stance, in this case, to 1 deep in Reckless... what I understand is that if you trigger the special effect, you could be in any depth on the Conservative Stance, and you would automatically to 1 deep in Reckless.

for the regular effect of that card, that wouldn't be able to add any misfortune dice to your target. so the special effect also states that, if you use it, you add 1 dice.

Wardances are full of mood changes, aren't they? this elves are so touchy...

Lexicanum said:

That explains why the bonus is only one if the special condition isn't cumulative with the main effect; I don't see how you worked out that if the effects were cumulative than the bonus is two , rather than 3 ; that was my question.

I think for simplicities sake the main effect and the special effect won't be cumulative, for the reasons you point out and it is an either/or style card.

Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'll try to illustrate with an example.

Imagine the character is 2 deep into conservative ©. The first effect of the card, which reads: "add one die to the opponents dice pool equal to your depth in Con/reckless stance". Since we're 2 into conservative we add two to the pool.

If we used the other option, we would go from 2 deep into conservative to 1 deep into reckless, and per the card we add one .

Assuming the card is cumulative, the effect of "add one die to the opponents dice pool equal to your depth in Con/reckless stance" is no longer 2 , because we're now at 1 deep into reckless. In other words we need to take away one of the dice from the pool because we've changed our stance. Having 3 total assumes we get the 2 from the first effect and the 1 from the second effect. But in order to get 2 from the first effect we need to be 2 deep into any stance, which we're not, because the effect was to change to 1 deep into the opposite stance. So at best the first rule would give us 1 .

In other words we can't have both a dice from when we were 2 deep into conservative and 1 deep into reckless. We use one or the other.

But as you say, once you break it down it becomes clear that the card tells to add one because that's the net effect, and it's not cumulative. They've just summarized the rule for you so you don't have to think through it much.

pumpkin said:

The effect is designed to be somewhat complex. The reason it lets you trigger two effects at once (the stance change and the ongoing defensive bonus) is because there is another Dance (don't have my cards here so I can't recall the name off the top of my head) that allows you to change stance by another step each time a recharge token is removed - so in the original example, with the second dance running concurrently, the Wardancer could start the turn in Con 2, flip to Reck 1 while activating Shadow's Coil, and then further move to Reck 2 during the end phase of their turn. They've just flipped stances (ordinarily 4 turns' worth of stance changes) and maintained the same defensive bonus from Shadow's Coil (since Con 2 = Reck 2 = 2 Misfortune added to an attacker's pool).

I'm going to have the opportunity to play an advanced Wardancer in a test session our GM is running in advance of starting a campaign (we're finishing out the current story arc in our D&D game first before dragging the rest of the weekly group into the Old World), and I'm really looking forward to exploring the intricacies of the Dance system combined with the Wardancer's career ability.

So last night I was looking over this card, to get a look at the actual text, and not just the summary included in this thread. I'm now not entirely convinced about my previous argument. I'm starting to lean to the side of thinking that it might actually be cumulative, and you do get 3 if you use the special ability.

Here's my reason for changing opinion:

The card makes you place recharge tokens on it in order to get the additional dice, so you're paying a cost for it. It would seem a bit crappy to pay that cost but lose the dice. And the Special effect says you add one dice, not that you replace the previous dice. Maybe we should put this up as a rules question.

And also reading the actual text, since you have to put recharge tokens, and the text explicitly mentions the particular stance "get one for each step into Conservative" (for the conservative side), then changing 1 deep into Reckless would void that line anyways.

Lexicanum said:

Well ideally the Wardancer use Shadow Coil as a setup, flips stances, then critically hits and use their career ability to flip the recharging Shadow Coil to its Reckless side - the defense bonus is keyed to being to the same stance as the card face its printed on.

Alternately if they wanted the defensive bonus but didn't plan on changing stances yet, they wouldn't activate the stance flip line.

Okay, got a very quick reply from Jay Little on this:

Yes, the effects stack. When using Shadow's Coil, if the Wardancer chooses to take advantage of the stance-shifting option denoted in the "Special" line after resolving the "Effect" portion, a single additional misfortune die will be added.

Keep in mind, though, that in order to use Shadow's Coil, you must have at least one other Ritual Dance currently recharging, as indicated in its requirement box.

So if you were 2 deep into Conservative, used the Effect then the Special you would have added 3 misfortune dice to the attacker's pool and you'd end up 1 deep in the reckless stance.

Lexicanum said:

I'm honestly shocked. That's a very nasty card. I'll have to read it, I was basing my assumptions on the OP. But thanks for the clarification via Jay.

Wow, that's very sweet - like a free Speed of Asuryan while the Dance lasts. Thanks for getting us an answer on that, Lex, I never would have guessed those effects were intended to stack.

Yeah, but remember you'll have to place the counters on the card if you use it, so you'll have to wait until the counters are gone before using it again. I'm curious if you still have access to the effect regardless of counters since it's ongoing as well.