In WotR scenario 5-1, the henchman barrier Rite of Heraldry states the following:
"if you have a card in hand that has the Corrupted trait, this barrier is undefeated."
I take it that this means that if I start the encounter with a corrupted blessing in hand, the barrier has already been decided as undefeated before anything happens, but I still go through the encounter otherwise, right?
So I can't, for example, play the blessing during the encounter to avoid the condition applying at the end of the encounter, because it's applied beforehand?
Kind of irritating, but I can guess the thematic reason is to enter these 'divine rites' without carrying any signs of corruption, or something like that.
Or does the 'corrupted = undefeated' condition kick in right away, immediately followed by the 'if undefeated, take 1d10 Force damage' on the same card?
Basically, if something is declared undefeated before anything else happens, does the encounter still continue normally otherwise? And does 'if undefeated' condition only activate at the end of the encounter, or any time it is applicable?
Somehow this is confusing me greatly.
In WotR scenario 5-1, the henchman barrier Rite of Heraldry states the following:
"if you have a card in hand that has the Corrupted trait, this barrier is undefeated."
I take it that this means that if I start the encounter with a corrupted blessing in hand, the barrier has already been decided as undefeated before anything happens, but I still go through the encounter otherwise, right?
No, that sentence short-circuits the encounter. You do not make any checks or roll any dice, you just take the 1d10 force damage that happens as a result of it being undefeated and then shuffle it back into its location deck.
The power kicks in during the "Apply Any Evasion Effects" step of the encounter, which is well before you'd normally be playing cards or rolling dice. This is because that is part of the same sentence as the "may not be evaded" power (they are separated by a semicolon, so that entire sentence kicks in at the same time).
Note: the rules are actually very unclear as to whether a flat "this is undefeated" power that kicks in immediately short circuits the encounter or not. However, in the case of Rites of Heraldry that distinction doesn't make a whole lot of difference as there is no additional penalty for failing the check to defeat against a barrier. Given the lack of an additional failure penalty, I'd say Rites bypasses the check because there's really no reason to play it out -- you'd just be wasting time.
I left out the evasion part because there was no evading happening in this example, so it made no relevance in this situation, but true, they would indeed both happen at the same time based on the phrasing.
The rules being unclear is exactly why I figured to ask. I'd definitely be interested in an official ruling of how the state of 'undefeated' affects the steps after that, when it is declared at times other than when failing the check-to-defeat. In this case the 'check-to-defeat' would be ignored? But would other things too, like 'before you act' and 'after you act' things, etc, if there were any? Does the 'undefeated' state immediately cause you to jump to the 'resolve encounter' step, or how does it function exactly?
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Unless something on the card tells you otherwise, that fact that a card is "undefeated" in an encounter doesn't normally have any meaning until you get to the "Resolve the Encounter" step, which is when you have to shuffle the undefeated card back into the location deck it came from. (When the card becomes undefeated isn't particularly meaningful.) Technically, you still have to do all of the other steps, but if neither harm nor good can come from doing them, you needn't bother.
I've always read it as "BEFORE THE ENCOUNTER: if you have a card in hand that has the Corrupted trait, this barrier is undefeated."
Meaning you cannot even evade if you are a naughty corrupted character (makes a lot of thematic sense facing Iomedae).
Unless something on the card tells you otherwise, that fact that a card is "undefeated" in an encounter doesn't normally have any meaning until you get to the "Resolve the Encounter" step, which is when you have to shuffle the undefeated card back into the location deck it came from. (When the card becomes undefeated isn't particularly meaningful.) Technically, you still have to do all of the other steps, but if neither harm nor good can come from doing them, you needn't bother.
Thanks for the clarification!
So does this mean that unless a card allows otherwise, a bane that has been declared undefeated at any point during an encounter can no longer be made defeated by anything for the rest of the encounter? You can't negate the original condition afterwards (like getting rid of Corrupted cards in this case) or cause it to become defeated by succeeding in checks-to-defeat, etc.
Unless something on the card tells you otherwise, that fact that a card is "undefeated" in an encounter doesn't normally have any meaning until you get to the "Resolve the Encounter" step, which is when you have to shuffle the undefeated card back into the location deck it came from. (When the card becomes undefeated isn't particularly meaningful.) Technically, you still have to do all of the other steps, but if neither harm nor good can come from doing them, you needn't bother.Thanks for the clarification!
So does this mean that unless a card allows otherwise, a bane that has been declared undefeated at any point during an encounter can no longer be made defeated by anything for the rest of the encounter? You can't negate the original condition afterwards (like getting rid of Corrupted cards in this case) or cause it to become defeated by succeeding in checks-to-defeat, etc.
You would either need something higher up in the hierarchy of the golden rule to declare it defeated or, hypothetically, something with wording like "even if it would otherwised be undefeated" or "if it would be undefeated..."
The Golden Rule If cards conflict with one another, then Adventure Path cards overrule adventures, adventures overrule scenarios, scenarios overrule locations, locations overrule support cards, support cards overrule characters, and characters overrule other card types.[/q]
Sorry for the thread necro, but does this mean that if you have some means of 'ignoring' the corrupted trait (such as a Blessing of Pulura to 'ignore' the corrupted trait on another card in hand) you can, or cannot, use it?
I'm more or less unsure of the timing here. Do you have a chance, at flipping the card over, that gives the opening for you to try to 'negate' the corrupted trait, or are those situations considered "not relevant to the situation" until the card 'checks' you?
(EDIT: Gah, and I realized that it makes little difference to my situation at the moment, since Balazar doesn't have any iomedae cards to recharge and isn't trained in Melee, Diplomacy, Fortitude or Divine, leaving me with just a d4 for a 20 check. As a result, 2 characters just got their hands wiped at the start of a scenario.
I really try not to call for a restart in the first couple of turns, because I'd rather try despite the difficulty rather than just give up until we get lucky, but turn 1 having two hands of quality cards emptied cuts a bit too deep. This may have caused me to re-think the "try not to read henchmen/villains before the scenario" light rule that I implemented to try to add a bit more challenge. So much for trying to have multiple characters on few locations to maximize our chances of closing them for the scenario rewards early...
Eh. We'll try and see. Might get some good boons, throw all of our healing and see if we can salvage the 14 card loss on turn 1)
