Ok situation I've never seen before cropped up ina game

heres the situation:

player is stressed with poe (who has R4)

they reveal a 4k

Rules stipulate that you'd perform a white 2 forward.

since R4 modifies the performed move does it make it turn the white 2 to a blue 2?

We agreed no, but Im not a 100% sure on it. I can see both sides of the argument, but if it does modify it, it does make R4 a LOT more powerful than its 2 points cost. Especially on ships like the fireball and poe....

Effects like R4 can, in fact, alter the difficulty of the 2 forward forced by a stress maneuver in 2E.

It was 1E where it could not.

By contrast, an ion maneuver cannot be altered, and specifically states that.

Quote

The ion maneuver is a blue [1 forward] maneuver. The bearing, difficulty, and speed of this maneuver cannot be changed unless an ability explicitly affects the ion maneuver.

The maneuver for stress has no such restriction.

I think you can make a small case that it can fall against exploitation of the rules in saying it should not be allowed , but as the rules are written, the move becomes blue.

i agree, there is nothing indicating it shouldn't become blue. on the contrary, even if you observe all the clarifications about reducing the difficulty of a maneuver, it checks out.

it does not, however, really increase the value of R4 astromech that much, since becoming stressed after having planned a red maneuver is quite rare - and planning a red maneuver while stressed is in almost all scenarios just plainly a bad gameplay dec ision.

sure, it makes R4 slightly better, but it's already a very viable option on poe.

So far, I think the only combination that could reasonably be called a rules exploit, is Cova Nell, Leia Organa, and R4 Astromech. If Cova gets herself stressed on purpose, she can dial a preferred red maneuver, then decide as of the moment of her activation whether or not she wants to use Leia to make that move white instead. If she doesn't do so, then her maneuver defaults to the 2-straight maneuver, and gets turned blue by the astromech. Then, assuming no ship overlap, Cova still gets an action... while also gaining the extra attack/defense die for the engagement phase, granted by the red maneuver on her dial!

18 minutes ago, emeraldbeacon said:

So far, I think the only combination that could reasonably be called a rules exploit, is Cova Nell, Leia Organa, and R4 Astromech. If Cova gets herself stressed on purpose, she can dial a preferred red maneuver, then decide as of the moment of her activation whether or not she wants to use Leia to make that move white instead. If she doesn't do so, then her maneuver defaults to the 2-straight maneuver, and gets turned blue by the astromech. Then, assuming no ship overlap, Cova still gets an action... while also gaining the extra attack/defense die for the engagement phase, granted by the red maneuver on her dial!

That just sounds to me like clever play, not an exploit.

5 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

That just sounds to me like clever play, not an exploit.

Those aren't mutually exclusive. It is both clever and a rules exploit.

5 minutes ago, Maui. said:

Those aren't mutually exclusive. It is both clever and a rules exploit.

But it doesn’t seem exploitative, is my point... at least not in any “bad for the game” or “against the intent of things” way. It just seems like someone found a clever way to use an interesting combo to do something slightly unusual. But I’m brand new to this, so I probably shouldn’t get into discussions about design intent and all that.

1 hour ago, Maui. said:

Those aren't mutually exclusive. It is both clever and a rules exploit.

Yeah... technically, almost EVERY upgrade and pilot ability in the game is a "Rules Exploit," given that they let you violate the underlying, fundamental rules of the game. The main difference is how the term "rules exploit" is perceived... Some consider it rewarding and clever, to find (and utilize) those edge cases that push the rules to their breaking point. Others feel that doing so is disrespectful to the opponent, and to the game itself. Me, I figure that the best way to head off arguments at the table is to discuss interactions that might come up before they rear their head... and come to an agreement on a ruling beforehand (either via judge ruling, player consensus, or random coin toss).

I think the underlying issue in this discussion is that they didn't figure out a proper wording and timing for change the difficulty of maneuver effects. This is one of the great failings of 2nd Edition. These sorts of effects around changing maneuvers and changing difficulty of maneuvers made all sorts of messes in first and then they didn't bother to straighten it out and clean it all up for second edition. Then they made it worse with the Cova/R4 thing and didn't really straighten it out.

I wonder if the designers even understand the rules sometimes.

19 hours ago, Frimmel said:

I think the underlying issue in this discussion is that they didn't figure out a proper wording and timing for change the difficulty of maneuver effects. This is one of the great failings of 2nd Edition. These sorts of effects around changing maneuvers and changing difficulty of maneuvers made all sorts of messes in first and then they didn't bother to straighten it out and clean it all up for second edition. Then they made it worse with the Cova/R4 thing and didn't really straighten it out.

Completely agree. They should look at a upgrade/pilot that they have release before, and (if nothing was wrong with it) word the new upgrade/pilot that way. Model Cova's wording after Hera's wording. Model Oddball's wording after Oddball's wording. Don't just wing it, thinking that they are close enough.

31 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

Completely agree. They should look at a upgrade/pilot that they have release before, and (if nothing was wrong with it) word the new upgrade/pilot that way. Model Cova's wording after Hera's wording. Model Oddball's wording after Oddball's wording. Don't just wing it, thinking that they are close enough.

I wasn't speaking so much to consistency (which I agree they missed on a bit as well) as I was to making it clear in the gosh-darned first place. They essentially kept first edition wording for Hera and Nien and some of the similar other stuff despite the confusion caused and despite several changes to activation.

Folks were asking questions about 2nd Edition Nien and Hera about two minutes after they were revealed.

They should have defined Nien and R4 as "always on" or given them proper timing triggers and as you are suggesting made more consistency about while executing and such. Probably should have given a couple of sub-steps for Phase 3 Activation under Reveal Dial and Execute Maneuver and made the language about not being able to perform actions if stressed part of the "Perform Action" sub-step. They didn't do that then they added all the mechanics around what the "revealed maneuver" was and still didn't do that.

They went with our intuitive sense of how the whole thing worked and then they decided to throw that out the window to allow the Cova/R4 combo to work and had to then overhaul all sorts of things to retcon that.

I'm salty about all this because I feel that having not sorted this stuff out properly is one of the big difficulties for running the VCX. 😬