fate stealer and frostbite both have similar abilities, but are worded differently in their text. fate stealer ( and rune sword ) says " if you cause a player to lose a life" and frostbite ( and icefang ) say " if you choose to take a life ". we were battleing at the coc and i was trying to use frostbite to make my opponent lose a turn, but he had armor to deflect the damage and thought he shouldnt lose his turn. it seems to me based on the wording that i fulfilled the requirement to cause him to lose a turn just by choosing life loss, regardless of whether it actually gets through. any thoughts?

darthmax said:

I would play them the same, even with a slightly different wording.

On a side note, if you win a combat at CoC, first take Armour and ditch, then starts making him miss turns with those weapons .

if there hasnt been an official faq on this then im sure there are peeps who play it both ways. heres my thing. its not that we get into fistfight over games here. were all above that,,, but,,,im growing very discouraged and frustrated at the number of instances we have arguments over rules. the developers are not stupid and they know that we can only go by the letter of the spell. why the different words. CHOOSE and CAUSE. its very very clear to me i dont think it was an oversite on the playtester, i think they mean for the ability to go off when you CHOOSE to take life, not if you CAUSE it. i assume we all know the huge difference between these two words. ......yes...very very frustrating

darthmax said:

It would be fine if they kept wording identical from base game through all the expansions. Repeating the same text helps classifying the effects as similar.

In this case, Frostbite text is different and I think it should be consistent with Fate Stealer and Runesword, because it's not choosing to hurt but hurting the Character that activates the effect.

I didn't notice the difference so far because we try to make things simpler. If any weapon needs to cause a Character to lose a Life in order to take effect, then also Frostbite should. Perhaps authors wanted to make a more powerful weapon out of it, but I don't care. I don't want to argue on the words when we play (considering we're not English speakers), so rules stay the same as long as it's possible.

Frostbite needs a FAQ, though, and I hope they're amending it and not making an exception.

i agree with you about them needing to clarify things a bit. frostrazor and icefang are the only 2 weapons i see that have this different wording.. both deal with cold damage ( ice / frost ) to cause a loss of turn. i just dont know. could just be an oversight , or it is meant to be more powerful that way. since i do speak english, its hard for me to ignore what the words mean. again, back to CHOOSE or CAUSE. 2 words with 2 completely different meanings

darthmax said:

Surely the meaning is completely different, because each word leads to a different scenario according to Talisman rules. Making a choice and causing something is very different, both in gameplay and in real life.

I said what I said because we like to read the cards once, understand them well, and don't waste any more time re-reading word by word and making such distinctions. I wish they could always use the same words and make similar powers work the same way. I don't see a good reason why frost-related weapons should ignore armour or other means of damage prevention.

I hope we get this answer soon.

I'm going to have to go with the literal on this. If you CHOOSE to take a life, then the affect is based on what you choose to do, irregardless of the outcome. So if armor saves the life, you still made the choice, and the extra effect occurs. If the condition is that actual loss of a life, then a life has to be successfully taken. Intention vs. actual effect is implied.

Regardless that this is the way my group has interpreted it (because specific wording... or rather meaning... should matter), I agree with others in that a clarification or confirmation is needed. In the past, a number of "rulings" have gone against or sideways from what is actually written on a card or space.