During an Arkham Encounter in the Witch's House, a monster appears & the encounter card stipulates it possesses "physical resistance". I pull Barnabas Marsh out of the bag who already has physical resistance listed on his monster counter. Is the physical resistance now bumped up to physical immunity or does it remain the way it is? I would guess the former but I just want to make sure before I combat him in my solitaire game.

Esto said:

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

What makes you think that Tibs would contradict you? Anyway, I agree. If a monster already has Physical Resistance, and the encounter says to fight a monster that gains 'Physical Resistance', it has no effect on it. Similarily, if a monster has Physical Immunity it is not 'demoted' to Physical Resistance, since you could of think Physical Resistance being an ADDED ability.

Tibs always votes for worst-case-scenario for investigators.

Right, Physical Resistance and Physical Immunity should be thought of as separate abilities, and not "levels" of the same ability. If the monster already has Physical Resistance then it gains nothing new. If it already has Physical Immunity then it will have both . Although, this is almost meaningless. I don't think there's a situation where having both would be different from having just Immunity alone.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

well, only if it's on the card or if the intent of it is on the card, i'd say. doubt he'll contradict this..

Yeah, my interest is not necessarily to pick what's worst for the investigators: I have to think about things on an "intent" basis. Often this means the worst case for the investigators, but many times it doesn't.

You should not be able to cast Find Gate when you begin your turn Delayed, and you should not be able to cast Find Gate immediately after a Nightgaunt throws you into an other world. But this isn't to make it hard on the investigators—it's to prevent them from getting zero OW encounters before returning, which is most definitely the intent .

But Physical Resistance should not be upgraded to immunity, because there is no precedence or instruction to do so, or evidence that they are explicitly treated as "levels," outside of things like Bokrug's and Zoey's abilities, which are highly conditional.

Of course, if one felt like being difficult (and apparently I do), one might speculate that it's possible to have more than one simultaneous instance of an ability, which, on the most plausible interpretation, would mean that physical weapon bonuses are halved and then halved again.

Now granted, there's absolutely no precedent for that either--unless one read a lot into the cards that, for example, only give Nightmarish to creatures that don't already have it...though I'm sure the real reason for this is to avoid downgrading Nightmarish 2 monsters, which presupposes the very opposite of what I'm suggesting here--and in any case it's probably a terrible idea, but it's sort of fun to think about Double Fast monsters. Or Double Flyers!

I changed my mind slightly. Logically, you're either physically immune or resistant: it's your treatment of physical attacks. It's one or the other, and never both. However, care must be taken: you can't "gain" resistance if you already have resistance or if you have immunity. But if you had resistance and you were told to gain immunity, you would then become immune.

Tibs said:

There is only one case coming to my mind where having both or just one could be relevant: drawing a "Physical immunity" monster and having only a one-handed physical weapon & casting Red Sign of Shudde M'ell. But if you can't, it's just a question of timing: first comes the immunity, then you add the resistance, but there is no change because of the immunity and finally you cast the spell and enter combat with the monster

I don't think it's a timing issue. The monster is revealed before you get to take any action upon it. He gets the resistance immediately, which is negated because he already has immunity (because the monster "already had" the encounter's modification), and then you react to it by choosing to cast Red Sign.

If Red Sign can remove immunity against an immune monster, that should be enough to exhibit the spell's power. Casting it against this particular immune monster should not downgrade it to resistant simply because you've chosen to remove the "immune" ability and leave the "resistant."

Yep, that's my point too. I used "timing" to indicate a sequence of actions done linearly (probably bad English of mine, in case, sorry). But if you could have both, then the second one would last. Just ome lawyery. Since you can't have both, then no probs