Hi,

I read the other day on reddit that repulsor blast does not do all of it's damage at the same time due to the rule of activating abilities:

"When an ability has more than one sentence of text, the ability is resolved one sentence at a time."

This would mean that Repulsor Blast first does 1 damage and you discard the cards and then if you discard any energy resource, you deal the rest of the damage, so you could use this card to remove the "Tought" card with the first point of damage and then deal the rest of damage normally.

¿Is it like that?

The damage is dealt all at the same time. It is a single hero action.

The text instructs you to deal one damage and discard the top five cards of your deck. For each printed energy resource discarded deal 2 additional damage. This is all one hero action.

The key there is "additional damage". That modifies the original (single) damage rather than being a separate instance.

14 hours ago, Janaka said:

The damage is dealt all at the same time. It is a single hero action.

The text instructs you to deal one damage and discard the top five cards of your deck. For each printed energy resource discarded deal 2 additional damage. This is all one hero action.

13 hours ago, Buhallin said:

The key there is "additional damage". That modifies the original (single) damage rather than being a separate instance.

That's one interpretation. FWIW Caleb Grace on a recent podcast said that it's two instances of damage.

For reference: the card:

The Rule Reference - page 2 - Ability, Card Ability says:

Quote

When an ability has more than one sentence of text, the ability is resolved one sentence at a time.

So you must resolve that first sentence wholly, before moving on to and resolving the 2nd sentence.

9 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

That's one interpretation. FWIW Caleb Grace on a recent podcast said that it's two instances of damage.

Honestly, it should be the only interpretation. Otherwise, "additional" is wholly irrelevant there.

9 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

So you must resolve that first sentence wholly, before moving on to and resolving the 2nd sentence.

If later sentences don't have the ability to modify previous ones, the text is going to get astonishingly overloaded with parentheticals.

But I'm honestly not surprised. FFG always has, and apparently continues to, suck at templating. I'm not sure why I keep hoping that their next game will be the one where they finally get it together, but I do.

Oh well. Maybe they'll finally get it together with their next game.

We need a person who judges MTG tourneys to come in and proof read cards before they're sent to the printer. Those people are gonna be pretty good at spotting problematic wordings and such.

Rules clearly state: • When an ability has more than one sentence of text, the ability is resolved one sentence at a time.

Problem is not templating, but reading the rules.

7 minutes ago, cheapmate said:

Rules clearly state: • When an ability has more than one sentence of text, the ability is resolved one sentence at a time.

Problem is not templating, but reading the rules.

"Additional" is a modifier word. In this case they're using it even though you're not modifying anything at all. You could remove "additional" there and it wouldn't change the (Caleb-described) effect at all.

That's bad templating.

See... I’m not saying FFG couldn’t do better at this...

But it’s mostly the fault of the English language. 😛

8 minutes ago, cheapmate said:

Rules clearly state: • When an ability has more than one sentence of text, the ability is resolved one sentence at a time.

Problem is not templating, but reading the rules.

I want to agree, but I personally feel like either interpretation of this particular card has merit. The rules do state that if an ability hast two sentences you resolve them individually, but many players are used to games where the text on the card is king and supersedes everything in the rule book. To make matters more confusing this card offers a "hero action" rather than an "ability" so it's tough to say for sure if that rule applies. Then there's the word "additional" which could be viewed as modifying the single damage from the first sentence, when you take the card at face value. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see people doing it either way, so a ruling seems necessary on this one.

That's just my take. Personally I would Grim Rule it to do all the damage at once, since I just cannot say for certain what is or isn't correct and that happens to be slightly worse for the player should the villain have the right status. I won't knock people for doing it as two separate hits though.

Under Status Cards in the Rules Reference they have timing priority over conflicting abilities. So maybe (?):

1 Repulsor Blast deals 1 damage & player discards 5 cards from deck. Sentence 1 has fully resolved.

2 Tough takes timing priority , all damage is prevented, and tough card discarded.

3 Repulsor Blast deals 2 additional damage per energy icon discarded to same target.

4 "Additional" is not modifying the original amount, only adding to it even if is zero.

Interesting, I had this situation come up the other day where Rhino III was tough and I was sitting on a repulsor blasts and didnt want to waste it, but needed Iron Mans 1 attack to take out a minion.

Reading and activating one sentence at a time, the "additional" text just refers to the 1 damage the enemy has already suffered . I think its written this way so you have to target the enemy you are attacking by dealing 1 damage, and then discard. This way, you cant see first that you only dealt 2 total damage and just toss it on a minion instead, or if you are attacking a minion with 3 hit points and deal 8 dmg, you cant select the villain instead. That first 1pt of damage is the tracer for the rest of the damage to follow.

49 minutes ago, Hippie Moosen said:

To make matters more confusing this card offers a "hero action" rather than an "ability" so it's tough to say for sure if that rule applies.

Card text is an ability. So they’re one and the same.

1 hour ago, Hippie Moosen said:

but many players are used to games where the text on the card is king and supersedes everything in the rule book

That is not how that works...

Card abilities need to follow the rules as written and are not open for interpretation based on experiences with other games

That “card is king” only applies when rules contradict, which they don’t in this particular case

@cheapmate and @jonboyjon1990 , after going over the rules again, you both are absolutely right. It does feel a bit odd to me that this card is dealing two separate hits without explicitly stating that on the card, but at the end of the day it's not a big deal. This always happens when I start any new game from FFG. Gotta go back to the rules at least a half dozen times in the first few weeks of playing to actually do everything right.

1 hour ago, cheapmate said:

Card abilities need to follow the rules as written and are not open for interpretation based on experiences with other games

This is true, but good design will make things clear to the players in the simplest way possible. Considering player expectations based on grammar and common rule patterns is important. The rules could say that "additional damage" is always dealt to your hero instead of the target, and you could follow the rules as written, but that doesn't mean it would be a good rule or good templating.

In this case, this particular bit of templating ignores both player expectations and common grammar.

Oh for sure. If the intention was two separate instances then there’s no need for the word additional.

23 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

This is true, but good design will make things clear to the players in the simplest way possible. Considering player expectations based on grammar and common rule patterns is important. The rules could say that "additional damage" is always dealt to your hero instead of the target, and you could follow the rules as written, but that doesn't mean it would be a good rule or good templating.

In this case, this particular bit of templating ignores both player expectations and common grammar.

This game does stuff a little different and that's basically the core reason there was confusion in the first place, on my part at least. The rules do clear things up once you find the right clause, but it will throw some people (read: me) off at first. I've never seen a game where each and every sentence of every ability on any given card is handled separately. Most of what I'm used to follows the text of the card to the letter to understand timing of each clause of each card. That's not to say I dislike that rule, because frankly it's gonna greatly simplify more complicated abilities. If anyone here played a lot of MTG, you know how confusing a wall of text can be, so this rule will clear up stuff like that quite nicely.

I wouldn't call the design on this game bad, just different. Players who have played a lot of MTG or certain FFG games will experience an awkward learning period. The grammar on some cards may make it seem like they do something different from the rules as written, and player expectations certainly slipped me up too, but ultimately I think this will help keep complexity down in the long run. Timing was probably the single most daunting component learning of X-wing (there's a really detailed and kinda crazy flow chart for it) so having something in the rules that simplifies it is good in my book, even if it slipped me up at first.

8 hours ago, Buhallin said:

In this case, this particular bit of templating ignores both player expectations and common grammar.

Fair enough, agree to disagree

On 11/21/2019 at 4:51 PM, Buhallin said:

This is true, but good design will make things clear to the players in the simplest way possible. Considering player expectations based on grammar and common rule patterns is important. The rules could say that "additional damage" is always dealt to your hero instead of the target, and you could follow the rules as written, but that doesn't mean it would be a good rule or good templating.

In this case, this particular bit of templating ignores both player expectations and common grammar.

What? English grammar dictates that each sentence is parsed alone. If you wanted them to be taken in conjunction it would need to be written something like this:

Choose an enemy, discard the top 5 cards from your deck, and deal 1 damage, plus 2 additional damage per energy resource revealed, to the enemy.

But what they have on the card is entirely appropriate.

On 11/23/2019 at 6:04 AM, Derrault said:

What? English grammar dictates that each sentence is parsed alone. If you wanted them to be taken in conjunction it would need to be written something like this:

Choose an enemy, discard the top 5 cards from your deck, and deal 1 damage, plus 2 additional damage per energy resource revealed, to the enemy.

Yeah, not really. Actually, not even a little bit. Sentences can and do refer to the overall context of whatever you're discussing (an ability in this case), and you can and must understand how every sentence in the ability works together. Heck, basic pronoun usage makes this not true.

Take a look at any number of Arkham cards (like any weapon) for good examples where this doesn't hold. Sentences being parsed in isolation does not mean that they don't relate to the overall context of what is going on. You also don't typically stop at a sentence, resolve everything, then move on. Take Overzealous as an example - "Draw the top card of the encounter deck. That card gains Surge". If you drew and completed the card before moving on to the next sentence it would be resolved (and gone) before it gained Surge. You can't just start reading and executing each sentence before moving on to the next.

This holds true for some cases even in Champions. Like Relentless Assault, although they don't follow their standard templating there (compare to For Justice for a very similar effect).

See what I did there?

44 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

Yeah, not really. Actually, not even a little bit. Sentences can and do refer to the overall context of whatever you're discussing (an ability in this case), and you can and must understand how every sentence in the ability works together. Heck, basic pronoun usage makes this not true.

Take a look at any number of Arkham cards (like any weapon) for good examples where this doesn't hold. Sentences being parsed in isolation does not mean that they don't relate to the overall context of what is going on. You also don't typically stop at a sentence, resolve everything, then move on. Take Overzealous as an example - "Draw the top card of the encounter deck. That card gains Surge". If you drew and completed the card before moving on to the next sentence it would be resolved (and gone) before it gained Surge. You can't just start reading and executing each sentence before moving on to the next.

This holds true for some cases even in Champions. Like Relentless Assault, although they don't follow their standard templating there (compare to For Justice for a very similar effect).

See what I did there?

1) Pronouns generally impede reading comprehension and should be avoided for that reason.

2) That Arkham card should have a comma for the subordinate clause, and not a period into a second, fragmentary, sentence.

3) Why do you think that Relentless Assault has problematic wording?

50 minutes ago, Derrault said:

1) Pronouns generally impede reading comprehension and should be avoided for that reason.

2) That Arkham card should have a comma for the subordinate clause, and not a period into a second, fragmentary, sentence.

3) Why do you think that Relentless Assault has problematic wording?

1) Yet they are still part of grammar. Whether you use pronouns or not, the idea that different sentences are only parsed in isolation without any sense of context, relation, or modification isn't really true.

2) The vast majority of Arkham cards are structured that way. Same with LOTR. So if this "should" be done that way it's been wrong for a couple thousand card texts.

3) I don't think it's problematic, but you do And arguably, the rules do. It uses separate sentences for the conditional portion of the ability, just like Overzealous. If you resolve each sentence in isolation before moving on to the next you wouldn't have Overkill when dealing the 5 damage. Basically, the Overkill portion wouldn't work.

<shrug> We can debate grammar all day I suppose, but IMHO considering all sentences of an ability together is necessary and honestly better. Trying to avoid that with excessive commas and parentheticals is just going to get ugly. If there is specific sequencing to be had due to multiple effects that can be included in the text in other ways - Magic does it with paragraphs, "then" is overloaded in FFG games but does the job too, bullet points, whatever. Pretending that sentences don't exist within the larger context of the ability just leads to confusion.

18 hours ago, Buhallin said:

1) Yet they are still part of grammar. Whether you use pronouns or not, the idea that different sentences are only parsed in isolation without any sense of context, relation, or modification isn't really true.

2) The vast majority of Arkham cards are structured that way. Same with LOTR. So if this "should" be done that way it's been wrong for a couple thousand card texts.

3) I don't think it's problematic, but you do And arguably, the rules do. It uses separate sentences for the conditional portion of the ability, just like Overzealous. If you resolve each sentence in isolation before moving on to the next you wouldn't have Overkill when dealing the 5 damage. Basically, the Overkill portion wouldn't work.

<shrug> We can debate grammar all day I suppose, but IMHO considering all sentences of an ability together is necessary and honestly better. Trying to avoid that with excessive commas and parentheticals is just going to get ugly. If there is specific sequencing to be had due to multiple effects that can be included in the text in other ways - Magic does it with paragraphs, "then" is overloaded in FFG games but does the job too, bullet points, whatever. Pretending that sentences don't exist within the larger context of the ability just leads to confusion.

1) Grammar is syntax; pronouns are a type of word, not the syntax that words are arranged in.

2) A large number of cards being badly worded doesn’t make it better.

3) Don’t lie to my face.

“You can't just start reading and executing each sentence before moving on to the next.

This holds true for some cases even in Champions. Like Relentless Assault, although they don't follow their standard templating there (compare to For Justice for a very similar effect).“

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

1) Grammar is syntax; pronouns are a type of word, not the syntax that words are arranged in.

How pronouns are used and arranged has a very big impact on the clarity of their use, which was your main point.

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

2) A large number of cards being badly worded doesn’t make it better.

Not in itself, no. But if people have managed an understanding of those several thousand cards across many games it kind of points to it not being all that badly worded.

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

3) Don’t lie to my face.

“You can't just start reading and executing each sentence before moving on to the next.

This holds true for some cases even in Champions. Like Relentless Assault, although they don't follow their standard templating there (compare to For Justice for a very similar effect).“

I'm not actually sure what you're referring to here. You're suggesting that separating a sentence into abilities is bad because they have to be parsed in isolation. If you do that with Relentless Assault and follow the rules by completely resolving each sentence before moving to the next, the Overkill doesn't work. If you take the ability as a whole ability and apply all the sentences, including the later conditional, it's fine. I think that structure is fine, you're claiming it's not, and the rules suggest it's not. How exactly am I lying about anything?

I'm not sure what the point of the context-less quote is (see? context-less sentences in isolation are bad) but my point was that they typically use parentheticals for this kind of modifier. Which I happen to think is really ugly, but it at least is consistent with the rules. Relentless Assault doesn't seem to be, and doesn't work.

Is there actually some answer to that here, or are we down to technical nitpicking and vague accusations of dishonesty?