A good character with 3 lives landed in the chapel and declared that she was going to heal. At that point, another character cast temporary change to change her alignment to evil. The question came up weather the character healed back to her starting quota of 4 lives since she already declared she was healing, then loses a life back to 3 lives, or lost a life instead of healing, and is now at 2 lives. We ruled that she was at 3 lives, since the spell was cast after she declared, but not everybody is happy with that ruling.

What is the proper way this should have been handled?

bejohn2 said:

The correct way to handle this scenario is:

The good character is turned to evil and loses 1 life in the Chapel instead of healing his lives. The good character had only declared that she was going to heal her lives, she had not actually taken her lives. If she had, the Temporary Change would not have forced her to lose 1 life!

Ell.

I apologize, but I don't understand why it works like this. My group would have gone the opposite way (but then again we play "friendly" at my table). We generally play our games that if you say you are doing something then you have done it at that point, regardless of how quickly you can dive across the table to grab life counters. Is there anywhere in the rules that talks about interupting actions, because I can't find it.

Does everything work like this? If my opponent says that they are casting temporary change on me but haven't grabbed an alignment card do I have time to cast magic shell (or whichever spell it is as I am too lazy to go grab my box right now) to prevent them from casting on me? Or is it just generally assumed that spellcasting trumps everything and everything else stops until the spell is finished?

If the Druid draws Mephistopheles and he is good, he can turn himself evil to benefit from the card. So just because you go into the Chapel and say you are healing lives, a player may still cast Temporary Change on you before you actually heal your lives, forcing you to lose 1 life instead. You can of course cast Counterspell or Reflection to prevent the Spell from affecting you!

Ell.

It's just like a player casting Random on a character at any time. The Spell is resolved before any other action takes place.

Ell.

Elliott answered in the meantime and his answers are to be trusted more than mine, especially when I'm getting it wrong.

Daefaroth said:

Any Spells "cast as required" can work like this. To make an example, if a Character attacks you, you're able to cast a Spell like Random and solve it before the battle takes place. It's not that declaring the attack means that the battle must be solved and then the game proceeds.

If a Character declares he lands on the Chapel, Temporary Change can be cast to change his Alignment to Evil and alter the outcome at any moment before he resolves the space encounter. There's no big difference if you know what the Character is going to do while encountering the space. The steps are: land on space - choose to encounter space (if a Character is already there you might choose to encounter him/her instead) - encounter cards on space (if any) - follow instructions on space. The latter is not split between "choose what to do / resolve the effect", so anything can happen in the meantime. If the Character takes the Lives or rolls the die for praying you can't change his Alignment and make him lose a Life instead, because the encounter is already resolved.

Moreover, a Character may be of only one Alignment at any given time: you can't heal lives and then lose 1 Life. This would mean that you were both Good and Evil while encountering the Chapel!

Daefaroth said:

The only Spells that work like "interruptions" are Counterspell and Reflection. Any other Spell cannot precede an already cast Spell and cancel the conditions that made the casting possible.

You can still cast other Spells "cast as required" that alter the outcome of the Spell. As an example, if someone casts Toadify on you you may cast Misfortune to make his Toadify roll a "1". On the contrary, you cannot cast Invisibility or Immobility to Evade the Character that cast Toadify. If you have the opportunity to Evade, you must use it before any other Spell is cast. This means the battle has begun and there's no evading anymore.

Thanks for the clarification. I think I may have been overthinking the timing and how this is likely to happen. My group plays fairly slowly, with people taking time on even obvious choices. So, in my head someone lands on the chapel <pauses> <looks at the board even though it says the same thing it always has> and says "okay, I guess I'll heal up to maximum". I'd be left thinking, did you really have to wait for all that to just cast the spell? Reality for most games is probably drop the character, "I heal" with the other player saying "wait, I wanted to cast a spell".

I have done temp change on the chapel before, but I always hit the character with the spell as soon as they place the character on the square. Of course, I've never done it when there was another character at the chapel, so I can see how the timing becomes more important if that were to be the case.

Daefaroth said:

I have to agree with this, it seems foolish to judge whether an action has taken place or not by something so arbitrary. By these rules whoever is sitting closer to the box of counters gains a massive advantage. If fact is you play with these rules, if player 'A' on the chapel is able to shove player 'B' (the caster of Temporary Change) out of the way and grab Life counter before player can put the evil alignment card down then he's finished his encounter with the Chapel before the spell went into effect. By these rules the most effective strategy would be to constantly slap cards out of people’s hands or throw the bag of counter across the room!

We play with rules where once a player has declared their action it happens. If you play this way there is a degree of separation between the character and the player. The Character lands on the Chapel and heals and then the player picks up a counter to keep track of their character's health. If character 'A' is on the Chapel and says "I'm going to he.." and player 'B' interupts with "Spellcasting Temporary Change" then 'A' looses a life, and no one gets shoved!

Mattousai said:

Having thought about it more, I just don't think there is a perfect answer to this question. Ideally all players should be allowed a reasonable amout of time to react to any given situation. Using my original logic, you could end up with the equally bad situation of players talking fast and pounding through their actions so that other people can't get a response in. Everyone will probably have to figure out the balance points for themselves. I'm kind of thinking of the rule given as "tournament rules". If you aren't playing fast paced, intense games, then going the opposite direction is unlikely to change how the game plays out.

Okay, now I am getting really confused.

From the thread 'Bunch of questions' Page 2 http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=129&efcid=1&efidt=519452&efpag=1

talismanamsilat said:

Final Clarification

If a good character lands on the Chapel and declares that he is going to heal his lives, another player may turn him to evil with a Temporary Change Spell thereby forcing him to lose a life instead of healing his lives.

The ruling I gave in the other thread was screwed up because I forgot to add a heading above it which should have said "Alternative Rule" for people who prefer to play it the other way (in response to what was said in this thread). However as you all know the editing facility on this forum sucks, so I couldn't edit the **** thing. Sorry for any confusion.

The bottom line though is there is no actual rule to cover this scenario. However having played the game for 28 years and being involved with the development of the new edition, this is the way we have always played it and continue to play it!

Ell.