I had a question regarding this encounter in Skulls and Shackles -Raiders of the Fever Sea- The Secret of Mancatcher Cove.
The Krelloort card says " Before you act, if there are other cards in the location deck, put Krelloort on the bottom of the location deck, then summon and encounter the villain Sea Devil Prince"
I'm not totally sure if the summoning of the Sea Devil Prince only happens when Krelloort is not the bottom card of the location deck. I played it as though I met the summoned monster in either case, but I could see a case for playing it the other way.
I would say that, since it is all part of the same sentence separated by commas, then all of it is conditional on the "other cards in the location deck" stipulation.
Because it's all one sentence, if there are no other cards in the location deck, you do not put Krelloort on the bottom of the deck and you do not summon and encounter the Sea Devil Prince.
I see this, and I also see elsewhere that Whalebone Pilk makes you encounter Deathknell whether or not you succeed at the Con/Fort check, because it is a separate sentence, so that's consistent.
I am unable to find any formal explication in the rulebook/FAQ/forum of the same-sentence vs. separate-sentence conditionals. It seems odd that such would be the case with an audience so precise and detail-oriented, so am I missing something? #pedanticPondering
Because there was no need to? Either the clauses are related or they aren't, and which it is can usually be figured out pretty easily. You can have multiple instructions in the same sentence (usually separated by a semicolon), or you can have a single instruction split across multiple sentences. Looking for periods is not sufficient in determining what is and is not part of the same instruction; that's the job of context.
To be fair, it's not quite either of those choices, it's:
"When A happens, if B is true, do X, then do Y."
(an extra comma)
I think the sentence is technically ambiguous in general English, but it's what I'd call kind of half ambiguous - you can interpret it two ways without breaking the rules of grammar, but one way is a clearly better choice than the other.
All that said I agree it shouldn't be in the rulebook, if the rulebook specified every language convention the authors have tried to stick to it would be unreadable, all the important information would be lost.