Sorry, I was unclear that I meant not on Mavaro's turn. Clearly, he's allowed to do it on his own turn. The cheese potential comes from using his power on someone else's turn when that someone else is using a skill on a check. "Characters may not do things that modify a skill unless you (the active player) are using that skill." So:

1. Channa Ti faces Dry Quicksand and chooses Survival for her check.
2. Mavaro now has the option to use powers that modify the Survival skill. He chooses to use his power on the Mummified Cat, increasing his Survival to his Intelligence. In the process, he also gains the Divine and Wisdom skills equal to his Intelligence.
3. Mavaro casts Find Traps.
4. Profit!

EDIT: I think it depends on whether relevance from p 9 is wholly subsumed into p 12 or whether it has a separate life. Switching the order of 2 & 3 might make the skill swap relevant to Find Traps and allowed by Survival, but that's getting out onto some really thin ice.

Okay. So the Finish One Thing is just to say there's no "between steps use all the powers you want" space between the attempt to overcome the barrier and the recharge?

So, if you want to use Find Traps without banishing it, there's the "new wine old wine skins" argument, which is sensible but we need official clarification before it's just us deciding a powerful character should be even more powerful at the end of a thread where we're wondering if he's too powerful when used as written.

There's also the "characters may not do things that modify a skill unless you're using that skill" stipulation that gives Mavaro a narrower but still legal window to grab Divine before needing to recharge Find Traps. Many traps (Camouflaged Pit Trap, Dry Quicksand) allow a character to use Wisdom / Perception to defeat it, so if the active character uses Wisdom (but not Perception even if Wisdom based, I believe) then Mavaro should be able to also modify his Wisdom skill using his power on any Divine spell, which also gives him Divine until EOT. Items allow widely variable access to different skills - Mummified Cat would allow him to get Divine off Survival, a Ghost Battling Ring off Knowledge, the Key of the Second Vault off Disable or Perception, Wing of Horus off Dexterity, etc. Most Curses have Divine as an option to defeat, so if that option is exercised by the active player you're easily in. Blessing of Abadar or Bastet gives him Divine off Disable, with Bastet also hitting Stealth and Craft. Total cheese or just more encouraging Mavaro to have a radically diversified toolbox of cards?

Also Drelm. He definitely doesn't add the Divine trait to his checks to overcome a Obstacle (or Trap), but is he "using" that skill?

EDIT: I, too, am ninjaed, and probably wrong due to not considering p 12.

Well, the whole relevancy issue, as far as I understand it, is on p 9.

"Characters may only play cards or use powers that relate to each step (or relate to cards played or powers used during that step)."

At base, if someone else encounters a trap Mavaro can't do anything unless he has a card that says he can. Find Traps says he can. So far, so good - he's got a card into play. How does that influence the relevance of his power?

It seems to me there's a narrow rules-lawyer-y definition where you can argue that Divine skill relates to Find Traps because there's a Divine 8 check on the card and he's using a power related to a card played in that step. Then there's another narrow rules-lawyer band where it is not related because the Divine 8 check on the card isn't used on that step. Then there's an entirely non-technical generic English meaning of "relates" that says "this has a direct, germane relationship to how the use of this card plays out in that it says whether it's banished or not, so it's related." Not sure whether this is a "think bigger, cheater" situation or a "think smaller, rules lawyer" situation.

So, wait, when during the normal course of events Mavaro reveals a weapon and then wants to display it to get the "skills to acquire it = Int", why doesn't the "Finish One Thing Before You Start Something Else" rule prevent him from doing this? It doesn't say "during a check" on Mavaro's skill acquisition power.

Alternatively, what's keeping him from using his power once during the Attempt the Check step to acquire the Divine skill he will need to not banish Find Traps? It is a power that relates to a card played in that step, unless "relates" has a specific technical meaning.

It's these sort of nitty-gritty discussions that always lead me to realize that I'm probably doing things right 80% of the time by understanding 20% of the rules.

On the "can't use it unless its applies to your current situation" front, when scouting has identified the need I've played cards of the Incendiary Cloud model before encountering villains with a "roll something or you can't cast Attack spells." It "applies" because I fit the requirements of having a deck to display it next to, but not because I've encountered a monster. Certainly legal in the app.

Or running Raheli (sadly, not yet in the app) - you can recharge items well beyond what might be needed to reasonably overcome the check result if you want to cycle your hand. Does that seem against RAI to anyone?

I vote Nyctessa as my favorite, no question. I would LOVE to see a good necomancer character, as I was a bit disappointed with the necromancer in the Wizard deck.

+1

But then again, Dodge Durango had the added burden of establishing the whole toolbox of -Mancerdom that led to the Summoners and Flesh Poppet-carrying Gravewalkers we have today. Now that the concept is well established, really looking forward to seeing all the -Mancer tech that's been spun off of the original Necromancer return to its origins with loads of added flavor and crunchy bits (e.g CD Balthazar / Mother Myrtle's "we don't even have to do the killing" trick) as well as a whatever new spins on Necromancy a half-vampire brings to the table.

Personally, I'd love for her or one of her role cards to let her convert a defeated Henchman or Villain into something like a Cohort to carry with her into the next Adventure Path, but I suspect that's beyond the ability to fit on a character or role card. Hmmm... maybe a Cohort card which describes the "Undead Thrall" Template and which has some variable powers based on the bane you attach to it?

Interesting.

It looks like using Death Touch, you can fail the check, take damage, and still defeat the monster.

That argues against failing the check being the point where "fail to defeat" is evaluated.

I'd argue it's a Golden Rule situation rather than a case that teaches us something about the basic rule.

Looking back over this debate -- it seems Ghostlee agrees the bane is not regarded as defeated or undefeated until the Resolve the Encounter step, but is arguing the point at which you fail to defeat a monster is when you fail the first check against a monster.

His(?) main support for this is the line "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage", which Ghostlee sees as reinforced by "If you fail a check to defeat a monster, it deals an amount of damage to you...."

"His" is correct, but thank you for not assuming.

And since the full line is "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage (see Take Damage, if Necessary on page 12)," I don't know how to NOT see them reinforcing each other - "failing to defeat a monster" and "failing the check to defeat a monster" point you to the exact same substep for consequences (the one by a page reference, the other by being the next step in the progression). The text treats them as identical, while never using the term "fail to defeat a monster" (or, for that matter, "defeat" at all) under Resolve the Encounter. You can readily infer it as a counterpart to "undefeated", but it's bad rule comprehension policy to ignore an explicit reference of the issue you're attempting to understand while inferring it where it is not.

As it happens, Vic has confirmed above that you don't fail to defeat the monster till you get to the Resolve the Encounter step. In this case, it is simply not true that you take damage when you fail to defeat the monster.

Oh, definitely. My first (I think?) response to Vic included the phrase "You're Vic, so you win." I'm not arguing that this is how the game is intended to be played by its designer, I'm arguing that it's the best way to make sense of the rules as written, and that therefore the written rules should change to better reflect designer intent, to the benefit of players and additional designers.

I mean, if you haven't already failed to defeat the monster by the time you've taken damage, is anyone *really* interested in arguing that "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" is anything but misleading?

----

@Frencois - I have trouble parsing some of your meaning so I'm not sure if I'm missing your point, but "usually" is not used in the damage line itself, and given that "usually" does appear in the lines immediately before the damage line the omission acquires the appearance of intentionality.

I will say that I firmly but without hostility reject the (typically pejorative) label "rules lawyer" as overly relevant in a game whose tips specifically say "cards do what they say" and "cards don't do what they don't say." I know it doesn't actually say "the rules mean what they say," but if they don't then even the "Things to Keep in Mind" might all be lies! Even if the term could have meaning, reading "if you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage at this specific time" to mean that being dealt damage at that specific time by a monster is a consequence of your failure to defeat it wouldn't qualify at any table I've ever been at. YMMV.

And the rules as forum consensus (RAFC), while indeed being the collective experience of people who've seen many official rulings (which are themselves typically places where RAI diverge from RAW, and thus much more likely than not to understand edge cases), didn't make it into my brand-new Mummy's Mask RAW. Or prevent a gap between RAI and RAFC for CD Oloch, without a couple episodes of threadomancy. And then how bummed would Reanimator Mother Myrtle and Polymancer Balthazar have been?

I will number these to help refer to them later.

1. With apologies, you have SPORTSPUNCHED me, and I kinda get it but mostly not. If I follow, it sounds like what you're talking about in B-ball would be more analogous to "I've looked at the check to defeat and added up all the possible bonuses I could throw together, and no matter how well I roll the number will never beat the check." That's not what I'm talking about - until you attempt the check (unless Golden Rule... in fact, please just read "unless Golden Rule" whenever I say anything) you can't already have failed it, even if success is impossible by the arithmetic.

2. I do acknowledge the lack of a "defeated" state explicitly defined in Resolve, and I do believe that would make it clearer, but I'm willing to stipulate that the opposite of "undefeated" is "defeated." I do not deny that you total up success and failures from the "Attempt the Check" and "Attempt the Next Check, If Needed" steps to determine how the encounter resolves in the Resolve the Encounter step. If you have succeeded in all of them, you have defeated the monster for the purposes of Resolve step, an outcome that until now has had no consequences. If you fail any of them, it's undefeated for the purpose of the Resolve step, and you suffer its Resolve step consequences - however, these are not the first consequences you've suffered for failing to defeat it.

3. p 10, MM located under Attempting A Check: "If you succeed in defeating the bane, it is usually banished. If you fail to defeat a bane, it is usually considered undefeated, and it is shuffled back into the location deck. If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage (see Take Damage, If Necessary on page 12)."

The steps discussed here that wait until Resolve (banish or reshuffle) to... well... resolve... are qualified with "usually" (in spite of and redundant with the Golden rule, likely to account for the ubiquity of THEN effects) and are not discussed later in the step by step break down of Attempting a Check. However, the "Take Damage, If Necessary" step (which is referenced immediately following the unqualified statement "if you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" in the summary) is included in the Attempting a Check progression, right after the "Attempt the Roll" substep. The damage that you take upon "failing a check to defeat a monster" referenced in the substep and the damage you take for "failing to defeat a monster" in the summary introduction are explicitly the same thing. If the damage you took for failing to defeat a monster was separate, you'd take damage again in the Resolve step, and there are no rules for how to do that. But you don't, and so the game damages you one time, in a way that is defined as being both for "failing the check to defeat the monster" and for "failing to defeat a monster", right here, in this step. You could not possibly have succeeded yet, at this step, but you have tasted a consequence of failure already.

The fact that common sense (and my aforementioned AND gate, which may have been as helpful to you as a basketball analogy was to me) also tells us that, since later we can't have been found to defeat the monster for the purposes of its Resolve step consequences (meaning stipulated under #2 above) if any of our checks failed, we have failed to defeat the monster at a failed check is corroborative evidence.

If you have a "would fail to defeat a monster" trigger, there are certainly consequences for failing to do so assessed in the Resolve step. However, the damage you took under Attempting a Check is defined in the summary as a consequence of "if you fail to defeat a monster." For "would" to work its magic, you have to go backwards in time until just before any of the consequences of failing to defeat the monster have happened. That's right before "Take Damage, if Necessary."

This is why I think looking at "success or failure to defeat the monster" as only occuring at Resolve is misguided. The first consequences of success are only felt in Resolve, and thus you only check (colloquially) for success then. The first consequences of failure happen in Attempt, and to un-fail you have to look there for the intervention point.

If this doesn't adequately portray my position, I don't think I'm capable of doing so.

EDITED; For clarity, like, a bunch of times

And I feel my arguments are (better) backed up by the words in the rulebook, and further that my interpretation is consonant with (albeit not proven identical to) CD Oloch's designer.

If, rather than simply agreeing to disagree, we could agree that there is a sentence in the rule book that clearly locates "fail to defeat a monster" in the Attempt the Check step, and further agree that Vic's RAI is otherwise, then we could imagine one or more interventions that would prevent further rules misunderstandings among both players and designers. If there's no willingness to admit there's a problem, nothing will change.

@ my debate partners in general
I think you're making a mistake in treating the question of whether you defeat or fail to defeat a monster as if they are determined at the same time. They are not. You have to get to Resolve the Encounter to determine success, because the rules require all checks to be passed. That is not when the rules say failure is determined. Simplest case - THEN monsters.

THEN monsters are like an AND gate - Only if A is 1 and B is 1 is C 1, if either A or B are 0 then C is 0. Or, in common sense language - if you know everything has to go right in order for you to succeed, you can know you've failed before you know you've succeeded.

The first opportunity to set the success state is at Resolve. The first moment to set the failure state is at Attempt. In order to go back and change "would fail" into anything else, you have to go back to the first time that state was set (which could be the any of the checks required, or as determined by the Golden Rule).

@ Hawkmoon, skizzerz has quoted it in full where it says "Fail to defeat a monster" in "attempting a check," so it's confirmed by non-me people that I didn't simply omit words. I think your other objection is fully addressed by the Golden Rule - whatever a card says takes priority over the rulebook, but doesn't change the normal order of things.

@ Skizzerz - Again, your interpretation requires inserting words into "Resolve the Encounter" that aren't there, and ignoring a sentence under Attempting a Check. The full mechanics of a summary introduction can be fleshed out in the subsequent steps, but in no normal reading of a text would you assume that the clarification reverses anything from the summary. It says one thing in one place, and it says the other thing in another place, referring to the same sub-step and treating them as (nearly) identical statements (Nearly in that if you failed your check to defeat a monster, you can activate any "would" powers that trigger off failing your check, such as a luckstone, at which point your check would be changed from "fail" to "succeed." If none of the cards in play "would" to undo that, you've failed to defeat the monster, and then and only then would Oloch be able to help). Either you are wrong or the sentence "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" is wrong. Maybe, as Oloch's power did, that sentence also needs "a check" added to it after fail, but that's not the RAW. Otherwise, nothing you say explains away why, according to your ruling and the "if you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" and you only know whether you've failed to defeat a monster in Resolve, you don't wait to take damage during Resolve the Encounter.

Vic has full authority to issue a ruling at any time that will change the way the game is played. If his intent was to have rulebook describing the situation he has been arguing for here, I would argue the RAW diverges from RAI.

That directly contradicts "if you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" from the rulebook (MM p 10, last line before Faceup Cards Green box).

You can't (normally) have failed to defeat a monster before you roll. We know when you're dealt damage, in the Take Damage, If Necessary step, which according to the first line of this post happens after failure to defeat a monster is established. Therefore, the only step where "fail to defeat a monster" can be established is during Attempt the roll - anything else is too early or too late.

We also know, with as much or more colloquial justification as deciding that a monster resolves as undefeated = "failed to defeat", that for a bane to be banished it requires success on all the checks to defeat it. The first failed check means that, during resolve the encounter, it will not be banished. So the first failed check is the moment you know.

I see no necessary rationale for saying "Resolve the Encounter is when failure to defeat the monster is decided" over saying "Resolve the Encounter is when the final consequences of failure to defeat are resolved, the encounter ends, and the monster loses its memory."

"Two posts above mine" isn't specific. If you mean Vic's quote starting with "If you fail to defeat a bane" it contains the word "usually" which means "more clarification will be provided elsewhere." More importantly, there's no rule of common sense that says a consequence of a state determined in an earlier step cannot be assessed in a later step. There IS a rule of common sense that says a consequence of a state cannot be assessed before that state is determined, and, again, "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage." For you to be correct, damage would be assigned in the Resolve the Encounter step.

Though if we take the "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" line seriously you would want to edit the FAQ entry, as it says "Oloch's first power says it can be used 'when another character at your location would fail to defeat a monster,' which is after damage has been dealt..." If that's incorrect you don't want to establish FAQ precedent that would confuse players about the timing of other steps or triggers.

Have we in fact established that "failing a check to defeat a monster" refers to the exact same thing as "failing to defeat a monster"? (I obviously mean, besides the Golden Rule exception of "when a card in play says otherwise.")

I do now see that under Attempting a Check (MM right column, p 10 - in MM it's not in Attempt the Check above Resolve the Encounter, both of which are the left column for those following along at home, but I don't know if this layout has changed from version to version).

My reading of Attempting a Check's intro is that the designer's RAI is in the original RAW, as it implies that the "fail to defeat" flag is set during the Attempt the check step (rather than during Resolve the Encounter). It also says "If you fail to defeat a monster, you are dealt damage" and therefore Oloch says "they would have failed to defeat the monster, and they would have taken damage. However, they didn't fail (instead they evaded and I encountered it), so they didn't suffer any of the effects that come after failing (including damage)."

Regardless of how the original RAW was parsed, happy to have the RAI clarified and FAQed.

The word "fail" does not appear in the description of the "Resolve the Encounter" step. You have to infer a colloquial use to mean "not succeeding at all checks" or "monster remains undefeated." The check is the thing that you succeed or fail, according to the text.

I mean, you're Vic, so you win, but that example doesn't help me. You know that you will not defeat a THEN monster the moment you fail the first check to defeat. This does not mean you skip the "Attempt the next check, if needed" step, because THEN = needed, it just means you're checking if you take an additional beating with no possible check result that would result in a monster defeat at that point. To my mind, "would fail" identifies the trigger as a moment where failure would otherwise be indicated, but in this case you do something else instead of fail. I believe you could delete "would" from the card (and change "fail" to "fails" 'cuz grammar) in your interpretation and the consequences for the character would remain the same, which doesn't sit right with me.

Alternatively, something about "monster would be undefeated" would precisely identify both the step the effect happens at and what happens in edge cases (Ghost, Mammy Graul).

I'm still curious about this, if it hasn't been cleared up elsewhere. I read skizzerz's explanation on p 1, but it seems to me that Oloch's power is not used in Resolve the Encounter, it's used in "Attempt the Check." Mummy's Mask Rulebook is the one I have at hand, and it says under "Attempting a check" on p 12:

"Attempt the roll: *snip irrelevant parts* If the result is greater than or equal to the difficulty of the check, you succeed. If the result is lower than the difficulty, you fail." So before you leave the Attempt the Check phase of encountering a card you've determined success or failure, long before Resolve the Encounter. Therefore, your trigger window for "would fail" is here, because if you move past this you HAVE failed.

The action item in "Attempting a Check" after "Attempt the Roll" is "Take Damage, If Necessary." Which begins with "If you fail a check to defeat a monster, it deals an amount of damage...". But since you fail to defeat a monster the moment you fail a check to defeat a monster, "would fail" is determined before this step, you never get here, and Oloch's first power rescues you from damage.

If Oloch said "would fail to banish a monster" I'd agree that would occur in Resolve the Encounter. If Oloch said "another character at your location fails to defeat a monster" I could see agreeing that you'd take damage, although I'd say it would in that case bypass After You Act. But success or defeat is determined at a different step than the consequences of that defeat, and the word "would" means to me you never complete the step that would otherwise definitively assign failure.

If, however, you defeat the henchman and fail to close the location, you have to go through the the whole deck, and when you run out of cards you can try to close every round someone is present there until you manage to do so.

The each/all distinction does exist in English, though. If you say "all members of the Enterprise sang a song" you expect a giant ensemble number to follow, while if you say "each member of the Enterprise sang a song" you expect one song per member. And "each" is also used in Treasure Hunt, which happens to all characters without qualification, but individually rather than cooperatively. So the question on Oloch is still unresolved for the Brinebrood Queen, I think.

I PMed Vic about it, he said he would weigh in when he had the chance but that he was very busy. With the app being out, I imagine it may be a little while before he has time.

By that interpretation, would Oloch ever be able to multi-protect against mass damage if it was not split up by separate checks?

I guess my concert with Vic's response is, if you're trying to differentiate cases from one another, you should limit the difference in cases to the minimum possible to establish the required difference. "Each" always takes the singular. "All" is plural whenever it's used meaningfully. That difference alone is enough to justify the change in whether Oloch can multi-tank, if "each" and "all" are being used formally. Which is a subtle distinction, but Vic does explicitly call out the subtlety of the distinction he is drawing attention to, so that's not necessarily a disqualifying objection.

However, when parsing dense rules differences there's always that question of "when is this colloquial use and when formal?"

I think Oloch is still probably strong enough to protect the Lem/Damiel/Feiya/Ranzak/Oloch Katamari I'm hoping to build, but more is always better.

Re: Vic's post - by his logic, doesn't this give Oloch mass protection against Brinebrood?

Vic uses "each character" damage (an event that does damage to a single character, repeated once per qualifying character) as an example of when Oloch can multi-protect vs. "all characters" damage (a single event with all damage happening at once) as an example of when he could not. Brinebrood is an "each character" event, and Oloch says "When another character at your location is dealt damage..." So doesn't his "when" trigger once for every "each" in sequence, thereby allowing him to block all the Brinebrood Queen's damage?

Gah. I wish there was a glossary at the end of the manual, and whenever a word was used in its technical, glossary approved sense in the text it had some sort of appropriate notation to reflect that (bold, italics, underlined...). The revelation that "step" has a formal as well as a colloquial use in the manual makes it hard to parse.

I was writing a post about how I simply could not make your explanations work by rulebook RAW (especially given the "spell example" at the bottom of p 13 S&S) and then it occurred to me to look at the errata. Which has this:

---

If I have a power that says it happens when I discard a card (or roll on the plunder table, or something else I might do a lot), can I really only do it once per check or step?
If a power begins with "when [something happens]", you can do it every time that thing happens, even if it happens multiple times during a check or step.

Resolution: On page 9 of the Skull & Shackles rulebook, under Playing Cards, change "A specific card’s power may only be used once per check or step" to "If a power says it may be used when something happens, you may use it every time that happens. Otherwise, a specific card’s power may only be used once per check or step."

---

Thanks, all. I'm glad it works how I wanted it to, and also that I wasn't simply missing something obvious in the rules.

Hey all,

Reposting here from BGG because a helpful birdie told me I'd get better answers here. I've been looking forwards to upgrading Oloch to the Shield of Gorum for the untyped damage prevention to other characters ability. It occurs to me, though, that sometimes my lack of perfect understanding of what exactly constitutes a step or a check might make that ability stronger/weaker than it ought to be.

I'm looking at Kelizar and the Brinebrood Queen as archetypes of mass damage. (I know they come earlier than Oloch will have Shield of Gorum, but their damage types work for the conversation.) For Kelizar, where a check separates each instance of damage to an ally, it seems clear that the "power once per step or check" rule would allow Oloch to reveal an armor to block damage each time Kelizar sprays acid, thus face tanking for the whole group. For the Brinebrood Queen, though, if you defeat the Whale she deals 1 Acid damage to each character at your location, and it seems to me that each instance of damage is happening on the same step so Oloch can only protect 1 of his pals.

Is that correct?

I'd expect to fail 1 in 3, without synergistic characters. With Lini and Val (the combo we've played the most of), we've played 10 games and timed out one, which we did due to a choice of going on and dying or waiting for Cures.

The way the game is, I never expect to see a character die. I've got 2 2-player games going, and I'm playing a 3-Cure Lini (with Val) and Kyra (with Seoni). Dying is pretty optional if you're packing enough healing, but if you go into an adventure without a healer you're going to run into a lot more trouble. Does somewhat limit party composition - the wife and myself might start playing 2 characters each at some point.

I'd like to say e on character death, but d is much more respectful of our limited gaming time. In reality, because of what a pain it would be and my rules stickler-ness, we simply don't allow it to happen based on party selection and being more willing to lose an adventure than to lose a character.