Background:
Guard clearly states it may be used during the OLs turn and not during a hero's turn.

However the FAQ pg7 answer states that the Guard can be used to "interrupt the OL at *any* time".

At least one player therefore believe that this answer overrides the original rules and a Guard order may therefore be used during a hero's turn to attack a mimic for example.

We all know he is wrong, but he does have a technical point.

Ideally therefore, this answer should be edited to say "...interrupt the OL at any time *during his turn*. ..."

Kevin has supplied an aswer which is now in the GLOAQ
"Hi David,

I sent you an answer a week or two ago, but I guess it didn't reach you. Guard cannot be used against a mimic until the overlord's turn, so it cannot immediately attack.

-Kevin

Proposal:
Amend FAQ pg 7 answer.
Replace "A: Guard orders can interrupt the overlord at any time. However, ..."
with "A: Guard orders can interrupt the overlord at any time during the Overlord's turn. However, ..."

I wasn't entirely sure whether the poster in question actually believed that Guard could be used during a hero's turn; he made at least one argument based on the claim that it was already the overlord's turn when Mimic was played, because Mimic resulted in the creation of a monster, and was therefore a spawn card, and therefore could only be played at the start of the overlord's turn...despite the text written on the card itself stating that it was a Trap (Chest) card played when a hero opened a chest.

All of which is to say that nothing we can possibly do will prevent that particular poster from making crazy arguments.

But, sure, the proposed amendment can't hurt.

I guess I'm asking for trouble with this, but...

while the mimic is being activated, the hero is not in his turn. Just look at the mimic card. It says: "After its activation, the hero's turn resumes." So I've always asume that when the overlord uses the trap card, the following happens:

1-The hero's turn is suspended

2-The Overlord moves the chest to an adjacent space

3-The overlord activates the mimic chest and "threats it as a beastman" (so he is sort of playing part of his turn here).

4-The hero's turn resumes

Now that there is an official answer, I have to ask the following: What happens to the Kobold in "A small problem" who never activates during the overlord's turn, but at the end of each hero's turn? Can a Guard be used during his activation? It's already hard enough to kill it like that, but if you have to wait for the OL's turn to use your order tokens, the chances are you will have lost them. The same applaies to the "dire warnings" and the "ambush" cards. Can the activations of those cards be interrupted?

Could we have a "more complete" answer then?

This is just my point of view, but isn't the purpose (and the thematic point) of a Guard order to "be prepared" for anything? If you are prepared then you should be able to counter cards like those.

Certainly, if there were going to be an official FAQ about Mimic, it ought to cover the other cases you describe as well. I see no reason they'd be different.

But interpreting "any time the overlord player is doing anything" as being "during the overlord's turn" is pretty perverse. That would make things very difficult to keep track of, and invites further arguments about using Guard orders when any trap card is played (e.g. to use up a Guard before you lose it due to wounds from a Spiked Pit or an Exploding Door), or the overlord playing a "during your turn" card while resolving another card effect during a hero's turn.

So if you were going to allow it at all, I think it would be much smarter to remove the "during the overlord's turn" restriction from Guard orders. Officially declaring that it is the overlord's turn during the resolution of a card during a hero's turn is going to get out of control amazingly fast.

And I see two reasons why removing that restriction is probably a bad idea:

1. It means that there is no longer any possible reason to make a regular attack when you could use a Guard instead, which makes both the Advance and Battle orders completely useless unless you have a special ability triggered off them.

2. It means the rules need to cope with nested interrupt effects. Which are generally fairly confusing, and would inevitably require a bunch of further rules to clarify.

And while we're at it, how do you feel about the overlord playing Ambush during his own turn when a hero attempts to use a Guard order, in order to interrupt the Guard? That seems about as valid as using a Guard to interrupt an Ambush. And if you allowed both of those to interrupt each other, you create a game of chicken where the player to declare their power first loses priority - I doubt that would be good for the game.

I believe the point of Guard orders is to allow the heroes to attack monsters that could otherwise hit-and-run with impunity - for example, flying creatures that retreat behind rubble at the end of each turn. The concept of Guard is necessary in Descent to cope with some monster abilities. But if anything, I think Guard is currently too versatile, not too constrained - it's already good enough that the Ready action is pretty close to pushing Advance and Battle into obsolescence.

I see your point. I just wanted to ask for a more detailed answer that considered those other cards. Some of these imply that certain monsters activate while in "nobody's turn" and I just felt that it would fit to ask for its details just as with the mimic.

About the nested interrupt attacks, it is already said that a Guard may never interrupt another Guard (at least not in a RtL or SoB game). So maybe (just maybe) these cards allow the overlord to activate some monsters as if he was using a Guard. Then Those activations would be imposible to interrupt.

I would still like to know what answer will be given about that kobold. Can a hero interrupt him?

Galvancito1 said:

That might be worth an extra, more general question.

However we do have a solid, clear rule on Guard now, with the exception of this obvious oversight in the FAQ answer. Guard may only be used during the OL's turn. End of story.
Interrupt effects do not create an entire turn. There isn't a reasonable case to think they do. They do their own little thing, which is invariably vastly less than a full turn. Therefore such things as the Kobold Activation, Ambush, Mimic etc, cannot be interrupted with a Guard action.

As far as the Kobold goes, I rather suspect that his entire purpose is to make the use of Guard, Aim and Rest order significantly more difficult.

In summary, I don't think we really do need to expand this question out. I think that you are asking questions here that we already have clear rules answers for (possibly partly because the answers we have aren't necessarily palatable).
But that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth thinking about this, so thanks for bringing it up.
And others may agree with you that these are questions that need asking. I am not any kind of authority to make that call, just offering my opinion. If you are still convinced that these are 'unclear' questions, then I suggest starting a thread to discuss them in the main forum. If that thread points to a need for clarification, then we'll have to put something together.

Galvancito1 said:

PS I don't think this is accurate actually. I think that generally (ok, possible exception of the Kobold which is a scenario special rule) there is no implication that the monsters activate during 'nobodies turn' - I think you have self-created that problem with the assumption that the currently activated hero's turn is 'suspended'. I think that these things are generally activated during that heroes turn, and it is still his turn right through their activation. So, for example, I would allow a hero (whose turn it was) to spend his fatigue for MP (but not spend the MP itself yet) during the activation of the monster, if that made a difference - such as a hero who was expecting to suffer a Leeching attack and preferred to suffer the extra wounds rather than loose the potential extra MP.

Corbon said:

Intriguing. Do you have a specific rationale for saying that converting fatigue to MP is OK to do during an interrupt, but spending MP is not? Would you let a hero use Ran's Mark, sacrificing wounds "during your turn" to heal other heroes? How about Koll's Mark, sacrificing wounds "during your turn" to make an attack?

My inclination is to say that you can only use reactive effects during the resolution of an overlord card, not "any time during your turn" effects, so no spending fatigue for MP (though you could spend it on Ghost Armor, for example, if the triggering condition is met).

But I would agree that it is the hero's turn, so if you can find a reactive ability that is also restricted to being used on your own turn (e.g. "use when you suffer a wound during your turn"), I'd allow that. I can't think of any examples of an effect like that, though.

Antistone said:

Yes. Spending MP is used for Movement Actions and similar things that are 'active' events, each of which must be resolved before the next. So you can't do these things while another figure is 'active' even if it is in the middle of 'your' turn.
But spending fatigue, and, since you asked sacrificing Wounds for Ran's Mark and similar (Koll's mark you could sacrifice the wounds, thus acquiring the extra attack, but could not use the attack, as that requires you to be 'currently active') I would allow. These are all things that simply have the requirement to be done during your turn, and I don't see them as being 'events' that need to be resolved in the same way as a space of movement, an attack, or a Movement Action.
Your inclination is also entirely workable. I just happen to tend toward 'liberal' interpretations (though some might disagree ) and I can't see any particular reason or definition of what is 'reactive' and what is not. So if it says you can do it in your turn, and it isn't clearly something you need to be 'active' to be doing (therefore can't do if someone else is officially 'active' unless they trigger you, or something that is itself 'interruptable' or a natural 'trigger', then as long as it is your turn I'd say you can do it. I guess I am saying that rather than use 'reactive', I prefer 'not-active'.
But this is definitely in the grey realms of interpretation I guess, though I don't see it as a high enough priority to spend resources on getting it clarified.

By "reactive", I mean something that has a triggering condition required to use it, as opposed to something you can choose to use at any point during a time window (such as "during your turn").

But I don't see any obvious definition for "active", the way you're using it. You say that "Spending MP is used for Movement Actions and similar things that are 'active' events, each of which must be resolved before the next," but neither "active" nor "must be resolved before the next" are defined game concepts, and as descriptions I don't see any obvious reason they fit movement actions more than spending fatigue for movement, since both are things you declare that you are doing purely on your own initiative and are fully resolved before you declare the next thing you are doing.

So spending fatigue for movement or sacrificing wounds to heal others are "non-active", but spending a movement to drink a healing potion is "active"? Why? It can't be because it modifies movement or health totals (since the other examples do that as well). It can't be because of the times you're allowed to do them (since they're all "during your turn"). It seems like you're deciding purely by intuition what's allowed or not; I have no clue how I could reproduce your rulings other than by asking you to repeat them.

Antistone said:

It isn't an obvious definition, and mostly intuitively arrived at, I agree.

But my informal definition of 'active' is when you are doing anything that can trigger something by an opponent or an event (generalised out). It might not be a very good definition, and as we discuss it it might change or be thrown out the window. I haven't thought about it closely, I'm just expressing my intuitive reasoning, so it could well be entirely faulty.

Moving a space can sometime be a trigger (eg space trap, or Alertness), or create an event that interrupts the flow of the game and must be resolved before the next event can happen (eg an encounter marker or an X marker that has web tokens for example). So movement is 'active'.
Some Movement Actions can be triggers (opening doors, chests,, activating or using (corrupted) glyphs, and in EE drinking potions), so Movement Actions are 'active'.
Declaring an attack can trigger some things, so attacks are 'active'.

I guess I don't mean that 'spending MP' is active, it just happens that everything can think of that requires spending MP is active.

OTOH, I can't think of anything that would trigger off spending fatigue (corrupted terrain, sort of, but that seems more like part of the cost than an event somehow, not quite sure how to explain that) or sacrificing wounds, so these things are not, informally, 'active'.

There are some movement actions that do not serve as a trigger for any effect I'm aware of (even if you include my homebrew mod). For example, closing a door. I can't fathom why you're lumping all movement actions together if spending movement points is irrelevant to the determination.

I also think it's a very bad idea to categorize actions according to whether or not any effect triggering off of them currently exists. In addition to the fact that that can change with each new publication, it requires an encyclopedic knowledge of the game to figure out what fits into which category. Besides, are you seriously arguing that attacking would be OK to do during the resolution of a card as long as overlord cards like Dodge didn't exist? Or perhaps that moving onto empty spaces is taboo because of Trap (Space) cards, but moving across non-empty spaces would be OK?

Antistone said:

Because movement actions are a 'class' of 'things' that are lumped together in the rules. Generally speaking, the rules treat them all the same except for their specific rules. Therefore, so do I.

Antistone said:

No, I'm not arguing that attacking would be ok, nor that non-empty spaces are ok. I'm looking at categories of 'actions' which are 'active', in which the hero is question is creating an event that has a resolution that entails multi-steps (often because something else can trigger off it, which must be resolved before the hero can do the next thing he wants to do).

I still working through this as we discuss it.
I think that I am still doing better at description rather than rule, if you understand what I mean (and not necessarily well at that either!)

If a figure doing one Movement Action is 'active', then because movement actions are a class that are treated the same except for specifics, then as we are working on a 'general' rule then all movement actions get tagged the same. and all movement actions are tagged as 'active'.

If we create the game as a timeline, there are discrete point events, and floating point non-events. Some things create a discrete point, at which a number of actions and resolutions can be made, and sometimes we have to figure out what order those go in. But the discrete point itself is defined by a certain 'action'. Entering a new turn step, playing a card, entering a space, making an attack, doing a movement action - these all create a discrete point on the timeline.
But other actions don't have a discrete point for themselves. They either rely on other discrete timeline points (reactive), or have a time range and don't necessarily create a point themselves.
Maybe the ones with a time range that are not reactive should create a discrete point? But if that point is not required for any other effect, and we aren't told anything that forces the creation of a point, then I don't create a point for them. Which means they can happen anywhere along the timeline, within their range. Even on another point, even though they are not reactive to that point.
This means that I am following the rule for them exactly, without adding or subtracting anything, and not breaking any other rule.

Yes, they are not 'reactive' as they don't have a trigger. Yet I see no reason they can't enter a queue of simultaneous events, as long as that queue is within their 'range'.

In the case of spending F for MP when an Alarmed Ferrox is activated, the hero would stack his spending on the ferrox entering an adjacent space. The hero might arguably stack it with the declaration of attack by the ferrox, and choose to resolve it before the attack. I wouldn't let the decision be made and the fatigue spent mid attack though (basically once the dice have been rolled).
I might even borrow the guard precedent and let the ferrox rewind his attack declaration, I haven't really thought about that. But that is mostly so we don;t have to worry about the timing etc too much, and slow the game down too much, but can just move along quickly and enjoy the fun. A little relaxed 'rewind' makes the game so much more fun, if you can agree on what is a fair rewind and what is not.

it all feels internally consistent to me, even though I don't have it articulated properly. (It might not be internally consistent of course, which might be why it is so hard to articulate it - I am aware of that, but not up to the mental task of thinking it through hard enough for that and might not even be up to it unless the return matches the cost.)

You've now invented at least five new pieces of terminology to try to describe this categorization, and I still don't have the faintest idea how to tell what you would allow or not. Even assuming that your elaborate description of "discrete points" and "floating points" is internally consistent and corresponds in some way to the actual rules, you still haven't told me how I can tell which points are "discrete" and which are "floating" (or whatever new words you're using this post).

It's apparently NOT based on an explicit list in the rules, neither any specific term used in describing the action, nor upon what parts of the game state it affects, nor upon any preconditions required to use the ability; nor the ability's source, nor cost, nor any formal system of categorization used for anything else in the game. I'm running seriously low on ideas for any objective quality that could even theoretically be used to divide actions into two categories.

I'm looking at some action X that a hero wants to do mid-Ambush. What's the procedure for deciding whether or not it's allowed? If you can't tell me that, then whatever you are describing is not a rule, even hypothetically - just flavor text.

Antistone said:

Umm, lets be fair here. The rules we have don't give us anything to work with. You yourselve used the term 'reactive', which is just as entirely made up as the terminology I am using.

The explicit rule I am basing my 'adjudication' on is things that are described as being usable during your turn, or similar wording.
If the turn ownership doesn't actually change during an interrupt type effect (and nothing says it does, while we have several indications that it doesn't) then the default is that you can do X (during your turn, even if it is mid-Ambush) unless another rule says you can't. So if you want to say you can't do action X, you have to show how the rules prevent you from doing so.

I don't know what the 'rule' is that should be written for adjudicating this. Ideally we could work this out by conversing, although I have to say that you aren't making any effort to help (I understand that you have a system you are happy with, but that relies on you entirely making up a new rule - "if your turn has been interrupted you can only do reactive things until the interruption is complete" which has no rules basis I can see and also uses a made-up term).

My current procedure, in my poorly worded and not deliberately thought out phraseology/methodology, in deciding whether action X could be done mid-ambush, is (seems to be?) to ask myself whether action X could be a simultaneous action (see other abstract threads. I think the Rapid Fire/Guard one?).
If yes, then I'd allow it. If no, then I wouldn't.
I think.
I think that works.... maybe... possibly. My head hurts!
Is that the 6th 'made-up' term? Or the 7th? (Did you count your 'reactive'?)

A simultaneous event, IIRC my own explanation correctly, is something that can share a trigger with another event (something with a 'range' can use any event within that range as a trigger) and can be resolved either before or after that event. The events are simultaneous both in that their timing is identical, and they are resolvable independent of each other - if the ability to resolve one relies on the other (mechanically, not result-wise) then they are sequential, even if they have the same trigger and same official timing.

Examples:
Q. Can I drink a potion mid-Ambush?
A. Can drinking a potion be a simultaneous event? No. There is no situation where I could drink a potion and at the exact same time something else is happening, which could resolved before or after my drinking. Or at least, we infer this from not being allowed to drink a potion mid-attack, and not being allowed to drink a potion after entering a space until all the space entering effects have fully resolved*. So no, I can't drink a potion mid-Ambush.

Q. Can I spend fatigue for MP mid-Ambush?
A. Can spending fatigue for MP be a simultaneous event? Maybe. We aren't given anything to preclude it from being a simultaneous event, and it fits the definition, so our default has to be yes, it can be a simultaneous event and yes, we can spend fatigue for MP mid-Ambush.

*Actually, interestingly, I can't find any reference to this in the rules. We have always played that, for example, a hero must take the wounds from a trap and let the trap resolve fully before he can spend his next MP to drink a potion and regain wounds. Does anyone else play this way? Or do people drink their health potions mid-trap, to keep their heroes alive?

Just chiming in with my experience.

We've always played traps as having to be resolved before a hero could drink a potion. Damage gets applied first otherwise a hero who is down to a couple of hit points but has a handy potion doesn't need to fear most traps unless trapmaster is in play.

Just to see if I can clarify Corbon's point concerning spending fatigue for movement.

At any point on your turn you may spend fatigue for movement points.

As this is a passive event, having no immediate effect on any other actions being taken by the player or the interupting player there is no reason to disallow it during said interupt attack. The one caveat to that being that once dice are rolled that sequence of events (re-rolls, damage and range attribution etc) must be resolved in it's entirety.

As the hero is just trading one spendable resource for another spendable resource on his turn in accordance with the rules, this one sequence of events dealing with fatigue for movement makes sense to me under RAW. Not sure about extrapolating that to any other action however.

Corbon said:

Yes, but I defined it and gave clear instructions on how to decide whether an ability is "reactive" - an effect is "reactive" if and only if it has a triggering condition. Which is an official game term, and one most people are familiar with, even if it's not explicitly defined.

If that's still not clear to you, I can elaborate further.

As for the rules basis, there isn't an explicit one, but my reasoning proceeds as follows: If I allowed all effects in the game to preempt any other effect, the game couldn't proceed: each player would want to do their actions first, and so would preempt their opponent whenever they did something. Therefore, I only allow an effect to preempt another effect if it is explicitly allowed (e.g. Guard) or if it is clearly impossible to use at all without preemption (i.e. reactive abilities).

Even with no rules basis, my proposal is ahead of yours by virtue of actually being a set of rules that someone could theoretically follow.

Corbon said:

OK, so moving, attacking, drinking a potion, opening a door or chest, placing an order, and spending fatigue are all provisionally allowed, until we can find a reason to disallow them...

Corbon said:

You just did a 180: if the default is that something is allowed, you need to tell me the definition for things that are not allowed, not the things that are allowed. You started by saying "everything is allowed except...". Now it seems like you want to say "nothing is allowed except simultaneous events."

Also, I don't understand this definition. You're talking about triggers, but "any time during your turn" actions don't have triggering conditions, so either you're backpedaling or you're using "trigger" to mean something else, which I am unable to discern.

If you really mean "triggering conditions", then it's always theoretically possible for any given triggering condition that appears on one ability to appear on another, so the rest of the paragraph is superfluous and you're describing exactly what I called "reactive abilities", which does NOT include spending fatigue to gain movement points (no triggering condition).

So I turn to your examples to try to figure out what you mean:

Corbon said:

Um...you can't spend fatigue on movement points mid-attack, or between the playing of a trap card and its resolution, either. Every reason you gave for potions applies equally to spending fatigue on movement. And your reasoning for your fatigue decision is just "there's no reason to forbid it". So you have failed to identify any difference between those two things that would cause us to categorize them differently under any possible scheme.

Corbon said:

I'd start with this:

"Guard orders can interrupt the overlord at any time. However, each action should be resolved in its entirety once it’s been begun. (For example, although you can interrupt the overlord if he declares an attack, if you choose not to the attack is resolved in its entirety before you have another chance to use your Guard order. You can’t wait to see if the attack missed or not before deciding to Guard.)" (FAQ p.7)

I would say that reactive effects are obviously an exception to this, because otherwise they can't be used at all (e.g. if you can't exhaust a shield during the action that causes you to receive wounds, then there is never any time that you could use it). But otherwise, "each action should be resolved in its entirety once it's been begun."

There's still some ambiguity here because "action" is not formally defined (or rather, it's formally defined to mean something entirely different that is clearly unrelated to this usage). But it clearly gives us a guideline to start from.

Corbon said:

I'm trying to find something in your posts that I could extend into a workable rule, but you're not giving me much to work with. And I've already suggested several alternative angles, and you've rejected them all. What else could I possibly do to help?

dragon76 said:

I think the word you're looking for is something like "internal," not "passive."

I considered that as a possible distinguisher, but it doesn't work. First of all, Corbon wants to allow Ran's Mark, which explicitly does affect other players. Secondly, spending fatigue on movement points can have an immediate effect on other players: it gives the overlord threat if you're on corrupted terrain (which could even theoretically allow him to play a card, e.g. Dodge, that he couldn't otherwise afford).

So that's not workable.

Sorry for the triple post.

Corbon said:

I initially read "range" here as meaning action-at-a-distance; upon reflection, it occurs to me that you probably meant something with a window of opportunity, which makes that paragraph make a little more sense.

But I still don't see how this can work. By that reasoning, it seems that attacks should qualify; two attacks made on a turn (even if one of them is a Guard attack) could target different things and be resolved independently, with nothing happening in between them. If you disqualify them because the effects of one attack could conceivably impact the resolution of the next, then you disqualify everything, because I guarantee I can come up with a scenario where any two actions you name could have different results depending on the order they're resolved.

And nothing in the game happens "simultaneously" from a formal resolution perspective.

Antistone said:

As I haven't read the text for Ran's Mark I wouldn't know. I'm pretty sure I had finished by saying that I was only refering to fatigue for movement. If that happens to be the mechanic by which you power Ran's Mark then there may be some interaction I hadn't considered.

However, I don't think that the overlord accumulating threat on corrupted terrain invalidates the argument. The OL gains a resource that may affect his choice of future actions but sequencially those actions are going to occur after the fatigue for movement occurs. If the hero player is willing to give the OL threat or take more wounds (ie, Leech) as a result of his spending of fatigue than the consequences of that should have been weighed and measured.

It's a problem in that it contradicts your stated rule for deciding what actions can be used in the middle of the overlord resolving a card and what actions can't. To whit: "having no immediate effect on any other actions being taken by the player or the interupting player". Therefore, barring a special rule that specifically allows "spending fatigue for movement" and nothing else, no one can reproduce your ruling.

Obviously, the fact that the overlord might get an advantage from it isn't a reason that a hero would object to being given the option to doing it. The hero has no strategic reason to object to being given any options under any circumstances. The issue is, why is the hero allowed that option, but not others? And your suggested criteria doesn't work.

You can imagine the hero arguing "...but I'm allowed to spend fatigue for movement points in the middle of your card, which can also have a direct effect on other players. So why can't I also drink a potion in the middle of your card, or move into another space so I'm out of range of your monster's attack?"

Antistone said:

I didn't state any other actions that can be used in the middle of the OL resolving a card. I've only spoken to and discussed spending fatigue for movement points. IMO as it is the hero's turn, regardless of interupting factor, under the rules as written he may spend fatigue in order to gain movement points at any time (with the above noted caveat of an attack having been rolled against him which IIRC has been established as having to be resolved in it's entirety once the dice hit the table).

This may be the only action to which this applies however I can't find anything in your arguments or the rules in general that contradicts or invalidates it.

I'm also going to bow out of this discussion. After re-reading some of the earlier posts I'm just retreading old ground with my opinions rather than adding anything new.

dragon76 said:

Then you should also believe that the hero can drink a potion, move a space, or make an attack, as those things can also all be done at any time during the hero's turn. You haven't identified any reason that a hero might be allowed to spend fatigue on movement points but NOT do any of those other things.

Antistone said:

As it turns out on further reading Ambush is a weird example to use as it doesn't happen on a hero's turn, it happens before a hero's turn begins. I would have to say IMO that hero actions that are 'reactive' (ie subject to some kind of triggering condition) would be the only possible actions. Actions that are allowable on your turn would not be allowed as your turn has yet to begin.