Corbon said:

It looks like we agree on the details but not on the terminology. I consider rule set which you must accurately separate different functions with the same terminology as non-robust. What term would you use to describe such rule sets?

My point: You say Soar MUST be applied when counting range. I agree with you, Soar must be applied before determining hit/miss.

My disagreement is that your rationality is that 'affects to defending figure' MUST come after determining hit/miss. Where in the rules or ability descriptions does it say that Soar and Ironskin have different activation times. I would say a figure is affected by an attack as soon as its square is targetted or affected by the attack (in the case of blast). Ironskin merely states "A figure with ironskin gets.." As in constantly. It doesn't even say defending, so a figure would theorectically be immune to burn even when moving. A ridiculous statement but it merely makes the point that the figure would always have those immunities as the ability is written.

My case: Both abilities don't state when they activiate. You are merely choosing what you assume to be the timing of their activation. Worse, you are not consitant, which has no basis on how the rules are written. If Soar MUST come before determining hit/miss, why must Ironskin come after? Because you want it to aparently.

I understand that your ordef of operations works for you, but RAW its not correct. Its merely your interpretation of how it works.

granor said:

Ah, ok. I would call that poorly written. I would use robust to describe the actual mechanisms, regardless of the writing, and I think the Descent combat mechanism works quite well, under a lot of stress, if you parse it out carefully.

Neostrider said:

Where in the rules or ability descriptions? In the ability descriptions. We've been over this already. Soar's description tells you to count extra range when counting the range between the soaring figure and the other figure (which could be attacking or defending). Since by definition, range is counted to a space, when a Soaring figure is attacked the initial check for the attack success based on range will not count Soar (unless it is the soaring figure attacking!) However, because we are specifically told to add 4 range for the soaring figure, we need to recheck when the successful attack on the space attempts to affect the soaring figure. This is an awkward way of doing things yes, but that is a product of the way the rules are written, the FAQ answer, and the way Soar is written, and we need to do it this way to satisfy all three. Ironskin's description tells us that the Ironskinned figure has some immunities, and to reduce the damage etc. It doesn;t need to specify a timing for Ironskin because it used the word immunity, which has its own natural definition that strongly implies a certain timing anyway.

An immunity means some form of personal protection so that you are exempt from certain things. That is a personal, individual exemption. An immunity does not 'reach out' and affect the world around you, it protects you when things affect you. This is not just my personal definition of immunity, this is every definition I can find. Since an immunity protects you from things that are affecting you, it acts when things affect you. Before they affect you it is passive, when they affect you it acts. So Ironskin acts when an attack which contains elements that the imunities protect from affects the figure.

You seem to be the only person on the forum who cannot see this basic tenet.
Note: that doesn't make you wrong on its own, but it might give you pause to think about what you are missing.

Thundercles said:

A series of questions without doubt. How about this to start with...

Q1. Blast and Breath both say they affect spaces, as well as say they affect figures. If the attack fails (rolls an X, is 'Fear-ed' or has insufficent range to reach the target blast space), does it still affect the figures?

Q2. Do immunities 'act' before their owner is affected by whatever they are immune to, or when their owner is affected by what they are immune to?

Q3. actually those first two might almost be enough... ?

Soar was applied to the figure. Ironskin is applied to the figure. And yet you have 2 different timings.

I guess I cannot grasp your way of rationalizing that ironskin figures are only immune to some parts of sorcery. It seems very selective. I understand the process you're argueing but I just do not feel thats the rules as intended. Its your own intepretation of the rules as written. Conversely, my idea of how these abilities work is also my own interpretation. Again, FFG could fix all this in one quick FAQ entry.

I think Neostrider brings up a valid point in questioning why personal defenses would only activate after the attack "hits" based on Range alone.

Assume that personal defenses activate after an attack is ruled a success for the first time.
Success is checked at the end of steps 4 and 5: if the attack does not succeed in step 4, then all personal defenses would trigger after step 5 causes the attack to succeed. Fear is a personal defense ("when the space containing a figure with Fear is affected") which causes a miss if the player cannot spend enough surges. Surges may only be spent during step 5: any unspent surges are lost. Therefore, if an attack targeting a figure with Fear does not succeed in step 4, it will automatically fail because Fear will only activate after surges can no longer be spent.

Corbon, your detailed attack sequence implies that Fear grants extra protection against attacks, because you would be obligated to roll enough range using your Base Dice and any passive Range bonuses. Also, something's been bothering me for a while: Descent does not differentiate between different sources of damage or range once the totals have been tabulated for a single attack. If Sorcery is allowed to add to Range or Damage before Ironskin kicks in, then the totals would be set and Ironskin would do absolutely nothing. Thus, either your attack sequence makes the "Immunity to Sorcery" completely pointless, or the rules for how Range, Damage, and other attack parameters are defined cannot be interpreted literally. Since a literal interpretation is the source of the implied concept that each attack has one set of parameters applied to each and every single target, I'm not so sure your reasoning is indisputable anymore.

Neostrider said:

We've been over this...
You yourself wrote it out.
Soar is not applied to the figure, it is applied to the range requirements of any attack to or from that figure.

I do not claim that Ironskinned figures are only immune to some parts of Sorcery. Its kind of rude of you to go backwards in an argument, restate my position incorrectly - an incorrect position that I have already frequently repudiated, and then rail against the false position just because your own position has no legs to stand on. Please argue your own case - provide some evidence for it, or counter the evidence already provided against it.

I've consistently given reasons for my 'interpretation'. I've shown time and again why my 'interpretation' works and why others do not. I've even provided a rational thematic reason for you.
I'm sorry the rules don;t work the way you want them to.

Thundercles said:

I don't understand you. What is 'based on range alone'?
Personal defences activate at the appropriate time for each ability. The appropriate time for immunities is when the immune figure is affected. At what other time could an immunity activate? - any other time and it wouldn't be an immunity.

Why make any assumptions. Why not just follow through the sequence and activate each ability at the appropriate time?
I'm not sure what your purpose is in proposing a false hypothetical situation and then shooting it down?
Fear is not a personal defence in the same way that an immunity is a personal defence (it is more of a general defense). Fear affects the attack itself. By its own description it must activate during step 5 because it requires surges to be spent. Why are you activating it in step 4?

I don't understand (the first part of) your last paragraph at all, unless you are basing it on your previous parapgraph, which I find totally wierd and also do not understand.
On what do you base the idea that Descent cannot differentiate between different sources of damage? Why can't Y damage be made up of A dice damage, B equipment bonus damage, C surge expenditure damage and D+ skills/abilities damages? The same goes for Range and for extras like Bleed/Burn etc. There is nothing stopping us from remembering the source.
Aha! you say. Therefore Sorcery range will fall off an Ironskinned figure! Yes, say I , and have said so before. But it does not matter. The Ironskinned figure has already been successfully affected by the attack, so Range is no longer relevent. Range can be reduced after the attack is applied to the target, because range is no longer an issue.

Note: sorry if I am being particularly dense trying to follow your post this time. I am drowsy with meds at the moment. Perhaps it will be clearer later, in which case I will re-reply.

Sorry you're on meds, sounds lame. Personally, a tree took offense with my temple today, so I have a nasty gash and some blood loss: I'll try to write out more of my reasoning steps here.

My first paragraph's reference to "success based on range alone" is that you refer to an attack as succeeding and affecting a figure when it hits the space containing said figure. Basically, if you succeed at that point, before personal defenses kick in, you've succeeded by hitting your range, i.e. "succeeded on range alone".

To clarify, I took your idea that "The appropriate time for immunities is when the immune figure is affected" and that figures are affected by attacks when they get hit and applied them to the attack sequence. This would mean that the appropriate time for immunities and other effects that happen when figures are affected would trip on a "success". In essense, what I was trying to do with my assumtion was, "assume Corbon is right and 'affected' means 'hit by an attack'". I tried assuming this as true and then stepping through the attack process to see what happens. Since Fear is actually tripped when a space is "affected" (or, by your definition, hit), Fear has the same timing as Ironskin. However, if I use that interpretation, I can force Fear to activate during step 6, at which point the attacker is no longer allowed to spend surges and the attack fails.

As for the last bit, I realized that all damage from an attack is considered to come from the same source once you total it, if you read the rules literally. The damage parameter that has a single value for the entire attack (which gets applied to each figure individually) . The idea I was going for was not to contest that Range from Sorcery would be reduced by Ironskin thus negating your point: I understand that the crux of your argument is that Ironskin reduces Range in step 6, at which point Range no longer matters. My point was that I realized that the literal reading that prevents different range parameters for different figures for a single attack also prevents the differentiation of Damage sources once Damage is totalled.

I can't beleive that this discussion is still going on. The fact that sorcery has multiple parameters is irrelevant.

R = range: D = damage.

Level of sorcery = +R +D = 1

Let S = (+R +D = 1)

A figure with Ironskin is immune to Aura' date=' Bleed, Burn,
Pierce, Poison, and Sorcery.[/quote']

I = -S

S + I = 0

Therefore a creature with ironskin ignores both range and damage gained from sorcery.

Caleban said:

I'm just gonna wait for the Final Report on this comes out to get caught up

Thundercles said:

There is not a lot of wiggle room in the definition of the word immune. You either are or you aren't. If sorcery had said that it only added 1 point of damage and ironskin was left unchanged (immune to sorcery): no extra damage would be added to the attack from sorcery. If instead sorcery had said that it only added one point of range and ironskin was left unchanged: no extra range would be added to the attack from sorcery. If there is agreement about the conclusions in the preceding two statements then it follows that neither damage nor range from sorcery is added agianst a figure with ironskin.

It is only when you try to figure out when ironskin occurs that you get confusion, but there is nothing in the way ironskin is written that suggests that it isn't always in effect. Ironskin is not so much a process that occurs during the chain of action as it is a negation of a process from the chain.

Caleban said:

The point being argued is the second supposition. Corbon's argument stems from the belief that if sorcery only added 1 point of range and ironskin was left unchanged (immune to sorcery) that extra range would still be added to the attack since the immunity should be applied to the figure, not the attack, and that the attack doesn't target the figure but the space the figure is occupying. The timing is what he is using to support this claim.

I can see both sides of the argument, but it seems rather counter-intuitive that sorcery can still be used to attack a creature with ironskin, provided the sorcery is spent on range and the damage comes from power die instead of vice versa, allowing heroes to totally negate this immunity (to say nothing of Laurel's convert-extra-range-to-damage ability). For this reason, we have house-ruled that spending sorcery on range to reach a creature with ironskin is not allowed. If we were to run into the whole beastman-moving-through-a-golem-guard-attack situation, we play that you make one attack roll. You can apply sorcery against the beastman (range or damage) but not against the golem, regardless of missing the golem due to range yet being able to hit the beastman due to sorcery even though they're in the same space.

That being said, I added this to Thundercles' list of unanswered questions in the hopes that it gets added to a future FAQ as both sides have compelling arguments. Until then, we'll just use what makes sense for us.

I have a little side-question..

In this topic I see a lot of examples using multiple figures in the same space. I don't think that is possible, is it?

Creatures with flying should always end their movement on an empty space (no idea about soaring, as I don't have RtL). I also don't think you can interrupt (guard) to attack a monster when it is in the same space as another monster figure..

and to be a little more on-topic: I'm with thundercles, but I realy hope we get an official answer on this, because I see the logic in both camps.

FastLane37 said:

The problem with that premise is that it is only true if the definition of immune is ignored. Range is never added to an attack for any reason other than adding damage to the result. If an attack misses it does 0 damage but if adding one to range causes the attack to become a hit the result is damage being greater than one. The figure IS being effected by sorcery in the way of increased damage. The most logical place to check for ironskin's immunity to sorcery is the instant sorcery is activated but before the results of sorcery have been applied.

I know that this is restating my previous post but, the rules for sorcery are the exact same as the description of a power enhancement. If sorcery said: "the attacker may add one free power enhancement for each level of sorcery".: and ironskin is left the same (immune to sorcery); I don't see any way to logically argue that you could use the power enhancer granted by sorcery for any purpose against a figure with ironskin without breaking the meaning of the word immune.

Siebeltje said:

You better believe you can interrupt the OL if they're moving one figure through another. The attack simply affects both creatures. Was this way in Doom, and after a heated debate on the old forums, Kevin verified that he meant it this way in Descent as well (check out the FAQ).

-shnar

None of this is actually disproving Corbon's thesis: you're just saying "it sounds unreasonable". I agree that it sounds unreasonable, but that doesn't make it illegal. Meanwhile, my position has its own problems with unreasonability, so I'm pretty sure subjective appeals won't help gain any ground.

Perhaps, but my method of resolving ironskin (check ingimmunity imediatly after a process is activated but before the process is resolved) agrees with the "common sense" reading of the word immune and doesn't require any special knowledge of game timming to resolve. My method also is easily applied to all of the other processes listed in ironskin without creating any buggy results.

Caleban said:

My 'common sense' reading of immunity says that: Immunity protects you from things that are affecting you. Immunity does not reach out into the world outside you and affect the world.

From my post #87, provciding both rules reasoning and thematic reasoning.
1. What benefit is immunity to something which does not affect you? You still have the immunity, it just does nothing for you. The range of an attack is completely independent of any figure which may get hit by the attack. Range is determined space to space and an attack explicitly targets a space, not a figure(s).
So you are immune to the sorceried extra range? Who cares, the sorcery affects the attack itself, and the space targeted, not you. That little glowing burst of power on the bowstring - you're immune to that, it will bounce off your Iron skin. Too bad its happening 20 yards away, affecting the way that arrow is being shot out of the bow and not affecting you! OTOH, that glowing nimbus of energy on the arrowhead (extra damage), thats going to disperse harmlessly off your Ironskin. (While thematic reasoning is pointless in descent, I need an example to get through to some people...)

2. If immunity to sorcery affect the range of an attack, then it also benefits the non-immune figure that are (or would be) affected by that attack. If you though that non-ironskinned figures should get the benefit of ironskin on a different figure, then you would be the first to state so publicly in this forum (to my knowledge).

Frankly, IMO your reading is not at all common sense because it has immunity reaching out beyond the immune to affect the outside world.

My method of resolving the attacks (including immunity) is designed to follow all RAW, avoid problems with personal defences providing defenses to others, avoid endless loop attacks and avoid problems with attacks both hitting and missing the same space.

Your method creates one of those problems (depending on how you apply it) and is only necessary because you choose one out of several possible workings for 'immunity' and deny the rest.

Thundercles said:

Thank you for clarifying. I'm sorry to hear about your temple.

1. Generally yes, although Soar may re-evaluate this success before the figure is affected (ie as the very first thing in step 6).

2. Ok. However your assumption that Fear has the same timing as Ironskin is in error. Fear affects the attack, so is involved during the resolution of attack 'success'. Ironskin affects the defender, so is involved during the resolution of a successful attack's effects. Its step 5 vs step 6. Since your starting position is incorrect, your conclusions are necessarily flawed.

3. Ok. I simply disagree. To clarify, Range and Damage both have multiple components. However, once they have already been applied their components can no longer be separated. So by the time an ironskinned figure is being affected by a successful attack, the range has been resolved already and you cannot separate out components of the range to remove them (well, you can, but it has no affect as the Range has been resolved already). However the Ironskin activates/kicks in before/during the resolution of Damage, so it is possible still to affects damage components.

Corbon said:

2. By your definition of the attack rules timing, I can make it so that Fear kicks in during step 6. Watch what happens:

a) Neither spaces nor figures are affected by an attack until a success is achieved.
b) The attack rules define that success happens either during step 4 or "after step 5 is resolved" (emphasis mine)
c) It's possible that an attack that misses in step 4 will affect a figure with Fear after step 5, due to spending surges on Blast.
d) Fear triggers "When an attack affects a space containing a figure with Fear" (emphasis mine)

Combine these four and you can get Fear to trigger for the first time during attack step 6.

My starting position isn't necessarily flawed: it's your position, after all (if you want to call it flawed, well, you're doing my work for me). Anyways, your attack rules allow me to defer checking for success on an attack on a creature with Fear until after step 5 is over, thus not allowing you to spend surges on Fear. Due to the wording of the attack rules, any effect that only takes place after a figure/space is affected can be deferred until step 6: I understand that you're saying Ironskin triggers when applying damage to each monster, but Fear would still trigger after spending all surges. The only things allowing me to do this are your interpretation of what "affects" means and is the way step 5 works: first you spend all fatigue/enhancements/surges/what have you, then you go to step 6 and check success.

3. I re-read the attack rules: damage isn't tabulated until step 6. However, first you add up all your damage, then you apply that total damage number to the figure in the target space. Furthermore, the attacks that can hit multiple spaces say that said total is applied to all affected figures. So, the rules actually explicitly state that you add up all components then apply the total, not the component bits.

My point is that I'm having trouble agreeing with your literal intepretations, since further literal readings of the rules conflict with some of the basic tenets of your position. If attacks only affect spaces/figures after the attack scores a success (which may be later modified to a failure), then Fear can be activated during attack step 6 instead of 5. If we trigger Ironskin when a figure is dealt damage, it will be triggered after Sorcery is folded into the total damage number, which is fully applied to all affected figures.

Thundercles said:

But it is not my position. You are misrepresenting my position to counter my argument.
Fear is an ability which affects an attack, therefore it activates during (or at the end of, step 5 is an evolving process necessarily) step 5, on the attack , before the figure in that space has been successfully affected.

There are several processes/methods, and thus several points through the process, by which an attack can fail. You don't seem to recognise this?

In your d) above, the attack has affected the space, but not yet been transferred to the figure(s) in that space. Step 5 has not yet been finalised as the attack is currently successful on the space, yet there is an affect on the attack which has not yet been resolved.

There is no reason why components of damage cannot be taken into account when the total damage is applied. It doesn't matter that it is total damage that is being applied, the components are still present.
The same can be said for range, the components are still present. However since range has been resolved already, removing components is now irrelevant. THe resolution step has passed already.

Corbon said:

I do recognize that attacks can fail all the time. I'm not sure why you're questioning my understanding of that: maybe you don't understand what I've discovered about step 5 of the attack rules?

Step 6 of the attack rules starts with "If, after step 5 is resolved, the attack hits,": step 5 never mentions anything about hitting or succeeding. Feel free to go back and read it, but the rules show that hits can only happen during step 4 or after step 5 is resolved. So, to repeat myself, if an attack misses during step 4, it is not a hit until after step 5, at the beginning of step 6 . As for my assertion d), the important part of that assertion is not the timing of affecting attacks versus affecting spaces. The important part is that Fear triggers using the word "affects".

Now, I may have misrepresented your position because I said earlier that I believed that attacks affect spaces and figures as soon as they are targeted and you said that was not how you saw Ironskin functioning. We've gone back and forth on what "affects" means, and I thought you had decided that attacks affect spaces and figures as long as the attack is a success: this was the main argument for your assertion that there would be an infinite loop with Ironskin if you allowed it to affect "Sorcerous Range", and I believed it was your position when I assumed it to be true for the purposes of disproving it.

So.

Are you saying that attacks:
1) affect spaces as soon as they are targeted and
2) affect figures only during step 6, when dealing damage?

Also, what does "affects" mean under your view of the attack rules and specifically your position on Ironskin vs Sorcery?