This trap card says:

Play this card when a hero opens a door. Unless the hero rolls a blank on one power die, his turn immediately ends and you may place one stun token on him. If the hero player rolls a blank, this card has no effect.

Now, is the door open if the hero is stunned or not?

I always played that the door was open in any case, but a comment on the "tactical compendium" site made me wonder (they said something like "simply use another hero to open the door", which makes only sense if the door stayed closed).

He was stunned as he tried to open the door, so the door stays closed.

Umm... The door still opens. The hero already spent the MP to open it so it must. The trap card doesn't stop that.

The tactical site you mention would be in error then.

The heros turn ends before the door opens is how I read the card, but if anyone else thinks thats wrong will be happy to hear another opinion.

Treasure is still distributed even if a hero dies while opening a chest. Or is turned into a monkey. Both of which end the hero's turn. Why should a door be any different?

never had a hero turn into a monkey when opening a chest so was not aware of that. hero has died before though so I take your point, however the card does say the heros turn ends when the gas goes, and lets face it there are lot of rules that dont make sense.

Not saying I am right mind you, just thats the we we played it so far.

The triggering condition of the card is the hero opening the door, rather than attempting to open the door so, unless the card is worded incorrectly (surely not! ) then the door must be open after the trap has been played.

BatintheBelfry said:

This was the line of reasoning I was going to post if I didn't see it beforehand =P. The triggering condition is that the door has been opened, therefore the door is open. I've never heard of this tactics website before, but I would be inclined to say they are in error to assume the door remains closed.

If someone wants a thematic reason, the trap was set off by the hero pushing the doors open. Even if the hero himself becomes paralysed, the momentum imparted on the doors will cause them to swing open. Not that I'm supporting thematic reasons as validation for the ruling, mind you. If the card were worded differently such that the door stayed closed, I'd come up with a different thematic reason to support that result. =P

The "tactics website" is the well-known www.descentinthedark.com , I just was too lazy to post the link, yet it is called "A Tactical Compendium" and I thought that people would recognize it. Not that they would have some brilliant tactics, but nonetheless there is this statement.

The trigger is "when opening a door" - which could mean any step during the door opening process, couldn´t it?

Parathion said:

Not in my mind, anyway. The "door opening process" is actually a binary state. At first the door is closed, then a hero (or monster) spends MP to open it, then it's open. If the MP are spent before the trap is triggered, then the door is open because the cost has been paid. If the MP are not spent then the door has not yet been opened, and I don't think there's any trigger there.

Parathion said:

Yes.
But since there is only one step you can't possibly trigger it before the door is opened.

Door opening.
Requirements: Adjacency to the door, pay 2MP
Step 1: Pay 2 MP to open the door.
Step... oops, finished already, there is no step 2.

That website has been in error before - not often, but it isn't entirely perfect.

What about simultaneous events?

Step 1: Pay 2 MP to open the door - OL intervenes on the trigger "hero opens the door" and plays the card.

Parathion said:

Hmm in my opinion if you want to take things to that level of detail (which I'm not sure I'd want to), I would be inclined to say that the OL couldn't play the card at this point. The cost to open the door has been paid, yes, but the door itself is still closed, so the triggering condition still hasn't been met. I can sort of see what you're getting at, but the way I read the card is that the door has to actually be opened in order for the card to be played.

BatintheBelfry said:

The triggering condition of the card is the hero opening the door, rather than attempting to open the door

+1 - The door is open after the card is played, as there's no text on the card indicating the door would remain closed.

Even apart from the fact that that's what the card text says, the card would be fairly pointless if the door remained closed. Paying 5 threat (plus an opportunity cost of 3 threat by not dicarding it instead) just to delay the heroes 1 round and get back 4 threat? That's a net loss of 4 threat for the overlord without really harming the heroes in any way. I suppose it does get the OL one turn closer to cycling his deck, and there's a chance he might draw a good card, but it still doesn't seem particularly worthwhile.

descentinthedark.com said:
Just use another hero to open the door or wait for next turn if you don't feel ready enough.

When I saw this on the website I'd assumed they meant to initially open the door with a non-runner so the runner could still go through this turn, not to open the door with a second hero after the first hero is paralyzed. But I suppose it does make sense that they were simply interpreting the card differently.

Steve-O said:
If the MP are spent before the trap is triggered, then the door is open because the cost has been paid.

I'm not sure if this works in every case (I think it would be fine to have a card prevent the effect but still charge the MP for the attempt to perform the action), but I agree with the conclusion in this case.

In response to Steve-O's comment, I was looking up the text of the Mimic card to see if that fit with the "open because the cost has been paid", and there's no conflict. (The chest is open, but the treasure cannot be distributed until the Mimic dies.)

However, descentinthedark.com suggests:
If you had anybody with the Guard ready action, try to kill the mimic to get the treasure now.

But isn't it still the hero's turn? Can the Guard interrupt really be used? I'm pretty sure the site is simply wrong, but would like to hear other opinions.

Corbon said:

Even though there's one step, a card could take effect either before or after Step 1. It could either be an interrupt before the door is opened, or it could be an event occurring in response to the door being opened. In this case, though, I agree that it's a response to the door actually opening.

Parathion said:

The OL can't use the trigger before the trigger occurs . Much the same as you can't play a space trap on an empty space in front of a hero (not that you would want to) and prevent the hero from ever entering that space.

I'm not sure which events you are arguing are simultaneous. It doesn't work with any way I figure it.

I am inclined to agree with everyone else here that the door should be open. Will discuss with the other players, as we all take turns playing Heros and OL, will not be an issue.

Comes of wanting to get on and play the game I suppose, ah well its not the first thing we got wrong lol.

Corbon said:

The OL can't use a card before the trigger, but the OL does use a card when the trigger occurs, unless the card says it is to be played after a certain trigger. Parathion could be suggesting that the card is played simultaneously with the door opening, in which case you could decide whether to resolve the card first or the action first. I don't think it quite makes sense, though, because if you chose to resolve the card first, then the trigger would never happen.

By the way, looking at the Alarm card, it seems the treasure should not be distributed before the hero's turn ends. The hero's turn ends with the chest opening, not with the treasure being distributed. (And from the Mimic card, we know it's possible for something to interrupt between chest opening and treasure distribution.) Thoughts?

Parathion said:

Simultaneous events still have to be resolved in some order. I believe the ruling regarding two players doing things at once is that the active player decides the order things are resolved in. If that's how you choose to read this situation then it would be the hero's choice whether to resolve the door opening or the trap first, since it is currently his turn (until the trap resolves and ends it.) Of course, then we have to deal with the question of "if I resolve the trap first then the door doesn't open because my turn ends before I spend the MP to open the door, so has the trigger for the trap really been made?"

As far as the question of the MP being spent and the door remaining closed, that's a rip off to me. Firstly, that's just balls that the hero is expected to pay the cost without actually doing the thing he paid for (not that it really matters in this case since his turn is ending either way, but it sets a dangerous precedent.) Secondly, I'm of the opinion that "opening a door" is a single, uninterruptable action much like making an attack.

You can play a card in response to the trigger of "declaring an attack" in which case your card resolves first and then the attack resolves as best it can, but you can't interrupt an attack in between rolling and dealing damage. This has been well established in the past. To my mind, opening a door is the same. Maybe you can interrupt the opening before the action has begun to resolve, but you can't interrupt in between the spending of MP and the opening of the door. If the MP are spent, then the door is open, period. And that leaves us with the paradox above if the trap resolves first and the door is still closed.

Personally, I prefer it my way. Keeps things simple, doesn't involve splitting hairs to interpret the card.

Steve-O said:

Is there actually a general ruling about this? I thought we were all just extrapolating from that "start of turn" effects response in the FAQ.

The actual rule in the FAQ says that the active side has priority, which would lead to the same result in this case.

However, there is at least one (admittedly rare and somewhat constructed) case in which the sequence "1) MP paid 2) action resolves" is interrupted: If a hero spends 3 MP to jump over a pit space and he is grappled mid-air after moving onto the pit-space then a part of his action he had spent MP for is not resolved.

mahkra said:

If 1 hero runs and opens the chest and the other 3 heros are 10 squares away the treasure still gets handed out with no regard to distance between the heros. So I suppose if the hero dies the disrubution of treasure should wait until the next time that hero can move ie come back on the board, once he is back in the dungeon should be able to distrubute the treasure/potions as per normal, ie ignoring distance between heros.

Where is Antistone on this one?...He is always all over these basic rules questions.

I have always played the door is open, The hero spent the MP to open the door, and the trap card states that "when a hero opens a door..." as the trigger.

mahkra said:

But the trigger is opening the door , not 'declaring the opening of the door".

You can't play off a trigger before the trigger occurs. It really is that simple.
And even if you could, you can't resolve something off a trigger that never happens because you prevented it.

Corbon said:

I was just saying that if there's one step, a card (not this card in particular) could take effect before or after that step, depending on the wording. I agree that this card takes place after the step.