While you are all lost in Gencon, I had a hard discussion with my group yesterday concerning the Silver Raven Figurine that resurrected an issue raised during the "Tips on using Balazar please" thread but actually very remotely (IMHO) linked to it
Concerning what cards can be played by other characters while you encounter a card, Vic said:
We're considering this new rules sidebar (so it also applies to other cases where restrictions apply, such as damage prevention):Rules: Affecting the Situation
In some situations, the rules limit you to playing cards or using powers that affect or otherwise relate to the current situation. In these cases, the things you do cannot require anyone to do something else for your action to be meaningful—the things you do must directly affect the check. For example, let's say that a character is attempting a check using a power that adds 1 to her check for each blessing in her hand, and a second character has a power allowing him to give the first character a card. He could give her a blessing, because that doesn't require any other action to affect the check. But he could not give her a card that allows her to draw a blessing from the box, because she would have to do something else—in this case, play that card—to affect the check.
At this time, the only card we're looking at adjusting due to this ruling is Rage.
Questions are:
- 1) Now that MM is printing, can Vic confirm that the sidebar is official ruling.- 2) Shouldn't the Silver Raven Figurine also be adjusted to allow giving/taking a weapon/armor/item and immediately play that card during the encounter (else what benefit would remain of the specific "you are allowed to play this card when a character encounters a card" power vs a standard Merchant for example)?
My friends argue that the whole purpose of the Raven is for example to be able to give a weapon to an arcane caster when she encounters a Golem. And I tend to agree because, if not, I pretty much see no case of when the "you are allowed to play this card when a character encounters a card" power would actually be used (because of the sidebar restriction).
Vic? Mike?
It is perhaps telling of the ambiguity of rules that I didn't initially understand where your confusion comes from. Now that I do, here's my take on it:
- as you mention, the whole "you are allowed to play this card when a character encounters a card" phrasing is there to establish an exception to the general rules
- the *only* general rule that forbids you to play SRR during an encounter is the "things you do cannot require anyone to do something else for your action to be meaningful"
- therefore, the "you're allowed..." power is specifically established to circumvent the "things you do cannot..." general limitation
- therefore, you playing SRR kinda puts the encounter on 'pause'; once you're done playing SRR, the encounter continues, and you caster couldn't care less where that weapon comes from, before playing it on the Golem
- furthermore, you're not even limited to 'useful' moves like giving a weapon that will be used immediately, as the SRR doesn't care about the current encounter at all; you can just pass away that Mass Cure to insure against hand-wipe from the Golem, or even do something completely unrelated just to optimize card distribution around the table (give Masterwork Tools to someone who's about to explore a Barrier-heavy location on their next turn, etc..)
Hope that helps.
See your point. Maybe I was seeing a problem where there isn't. Still need to work on my english.
Yeah, I think the Silver Raven Figurine is basically a rule breaker. You can use it "when a character encounters a card" (which means at that particular step) and the card you give (or receive) doesn't have to be useful.
Actually, one use for it is for the character encountering a card to get rid of card they don't want to have. For example, if they are pretty sure their hand is about to get wiped. Or if a bane would make you bury any weapons your had after you act, you could give one to someone else.
The sidebar is in (and will one day be added to the FAQ), and Longhost11 and Hawk are correct.
Thanks all! Problem is now my daughter will never give me the raven back :-)