Professor Nathaniel Peaslee and similar cards

By Amante, in CoC Rules Discussion

I was playing a friendly game a few days ago that caused an unexpected rules debate to arise over Professor Nathaniel Peaslee. His triggered ability reads: "Response: After Professor Nathaniel Peaslee enters your discard pile from play, pay 2 to put into play all characters that entered a discard pile this phase."

We were resolving a story where my friend had committed Peaslee alone, under the assumption that Peaslee's response could be used to revive him after he lost the Combat struggle. After Peaslee was wounded, my friend attempted to use the response to bring Peaslee back. I reminded my friend that doing so would be an illegal move, due to the restriction against playing actions and/or responses during story resolution. My friend acquiesced on this, but then insisted that he should be able to play the response during the "responses to struggle and success results may be played" step that occurs directly after story resolution.

I argued against this, based on two rationale. The first was the following excerpt from 'Actions, Disrupts, and Responses' in the official FAQ: "Responses are played after the resolution of the action or framework game event that meets their play requirement, but before the next player action is taken, or before the next game event resolves. Any number of responses can be played in response to any occurrence that allows them to trigger, with response opportunities passing back and forth between players, starting with the active player. Once both players pass a response opportunity, play proceeds to the next action or game effect." I backed this up with an unrelated but seemingly supporting fragment of evidence from the example involving Living Mummy in 'Card States', which reads: " Once both players pass, play proceeds and the window to respond to the card being placed in the discard pile is now closed ." For what it's worth, Living Mummy's forced response also happens to use the exact same template as Peaslee's response: "After Living Mummy enters your discard pile from play..."

With those official sources in hand, I made the argument that he could not use Peaslee's response, as it was too late to respond to him leaving play during story resolution by the time it was finally legal to play a response. Was I right in this situation? Given that this could significantly change my interpretation of how a number of cards work if I'm not, it'd be nice to know! Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide. :)

You were right in that he could not use Peaslee while the stories were resolving. This is due to it being a Response and not a Disrupt, Forced Response, or passive effect (all of which share 'Disrupt timing' so are valid to happen during story resolution).

However, your opponent is correct that after ALL stories have resolved, the response windows open up for things that happened. You'd then be able to trigger any normal Responses in response to events that happened during the story resolution.

Note: Had Living Mummy, for example, been on the story instead of Peaslee and lost the combat struggle, it would *have* to resolve immediately when he is wounded due to it being a Forced Response. This is, again, due to the rule that Forced Responses and passive effects must occur. (and FR occur with disrupt timing).

+1 to KallistiBRC. Your opponent can only use Peaslee's ability during the first response window available, which happens to be after all stories are resolved in your example.

However, if you had killed Peaslee early in the Story phase, in another example, and your opponent then had a bunch of characters die during the Story resolution, he would not be able to bring everything back to his hand that entered the discard pile for that phase because he missed his Response window for Peaslee. The first response window would've been immediately after Peaslee died.

Peaslee would have brought everything back. There is a single response window for everything that happens in a story's resolution. This window may have multiple responses but it is still a single response window. You could trigger a dozen different responses and then Peaslee's and he would still go off bringing everything that had gone to the discard pile that phase, including those characters that went there after him.

Penfold said:

Peaslee would have brought everything back. There is a single response window for everything that happens in a story's resolution. This window may have multiple responses but it is still a single response window. You could trigger a dozen different responses and then Peaslee's and he would still go off bringing everything that had gone to the discard pile that phase, including those characters that went there after him.

This.

I'm glad you both agree with my post. :)

Yes, I was sort of clarifying it a little bit more for AUCodeMonkey.

Penfold said:

Yes, I was sort of clarifying it a little bit more for AUCodeMonkey.

What he said.

Hellfury said:

Penfold said:

Yes, I was sort of clarifying it a little bit more for AUCodeMonkey.

What he said.

What he said.

Hellfury said:

Hellfury said:

Penfold said:

Yes, I was sort of clarifying it a little bit more for AUCodeMonkey.

What he said.

What he said.

You guys are just asking for Shoes to get involved and make all of our brains hurt...