Abyssal River and "if you would take X damage, take Y damage instead"

[Faranim]

A question came up for us last night and I couldn't find an existing thread or FAQ that answers this.

Abyssal river has a Location ability that reads "if you would take Combat damage, take Poison damage instead."

Does this ability occur only when you are about to take the damage, or before you can even reduce the damage?

Example: A monster says "before you act, take 2 Ranged Combat damage." If I am at the Abyssal River, can I use armor or other abilities that reduce Combat Damage? Or is the damage automatically considered to be Poison damage before I can even use armor to reduce it?

[Hawkmoon269]

I'd say it is considered Poison damage before you can reduce it. Otherwise there is much point to changing the type after you've had a chance to reduce the more easily reducible Combat damage.

[Theryon Stormrune]

I'd have to agree with Hawkmoon.

If any location or bane says "If you would take Combat damage, take <Other> damage instead", any damage reduction that can be applied has to affect the <Other> type of damage and not (just) Combat damage.

[Hawkmoon269]

Plus, reducing damage is part of the "taking damage" rules. And the "would" in the power tells you it changes before it is actually combat damage.

[Frencois]

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

...Otherwise there is much point to changing ...

Rule #1 of the Hawkmooncultistadept : if the way you understand a rule doesn't make any sense or any result, you got it wrong.

This works very well with girlfriends too.

[Longshot11]

Faranim wrote:

Example: A monster says "before you act, take 2 Ranged Combat damage." If I am at the Abyssal River, can I use armor or other abilities that reduce Combat Damage? Or is the damage automatically considered to be Poison damage before I can even use armor to reduce it?

Now, what I'm interested in is : in the example above, do I not take RANGED Poison damage?

[Sandslice]

It's Ranged POISON damage; I don't recall any cards that reduce Ranged damage that isn't Ranged COMBAT, so the distinction might not matter.

[Andrew L Klein]

Actually I'd argue that it's Poison, not Ranged Poison. It is combat damage, so we know the power triggers. However, it says you take Poison damage instead, not that the combat part becomes poison, I read it as turning all types of the combat damage into Poison.

[Vic Wertz]

Can anybody think of a situation where the answer is important?

[Sandslice]

I don't know of any, since all the armour that interacts with Ranged interacts with Ranged Combat - and I'm unaware of any character powers. It can probably be shelved as "notes for things to future-proof" or somesuch.

[Andrew L Klein]

I'm with Sandslice. Right now I don't think it matters, but who knows about later.

[Longshot11]

Andrew L Klein wrote:

I'm with Sandslice. Right now I don't think it matters, but who knows about later.

That's what I meant. Right now, we all accept that a Poison Bolt spell is "magic", so regular armor offers no protection. However, I can easily imagine a race of spitting lizard-people that all have "All damage dealt by the Spitting Lizard-person is Ranged Poison damage", while at the same time a Projectile-Repellant Armor +1 is introduced, that states "Reduce Ranged damage by X".

So what I'm interested is, in the above example, are the Traits grouped together in a 'package', ie the Damage has a single combo-Trait "Ranged Combat" so when Combat must be replaced - the whole 'package' is replaced (this is what Andrew argues, and I can see it going this way);

or, when Combat is replaced, all other Traits (Ranged) remain untouched - which seems a bit more intuitive to me.

I'm asking out of curiosity (although it's useful to see the logic behind the game's design), I realize the answer doesn't have a bearing on any current cards.

[Frencois]

"if you would take Combat damage, take Poison damage instead."
You replace one word/trait by another.
I strongly vote that other traits remain untouched, cause if not we open yet another nice can'o'worms.

So yes a Fire Magic Ranged Combat Damage would become a Fire Magic Ranged Poison Damage.

Now an interestning twist is if you would have for example a location saying :
"At this location, all damage are Fire damage." it wouldn't be clear whether you add this trait or replace existing ones. So Vic would certainly make sure to write either :
"At this location, add the Fire trait to all damage."
or
"At this location, all types of damage are replaced by Fire damage."

[StrykerWolf]

Frencois wrote:

"if you would take Combat damage, take Poison damage instead."

You replace one word/trait by another.
I strongly vote that other traits remain untouched, cause if not we open yet another nice can'o'worms.

So yes a Fire Magic Ranged Combat Damage would become a Fire Magic Ranged Poison Damage.

Now an interestning twist is if you would have for example a location saying :
"At this location, all damage are Fire damage." it wouldn't be clear whether you add this trait or replace existing ones. So Vic would certainly make sure to write either :
"At this location, add the Fire trait to all damage."
or
"At this location, all types of damage are replaced by Fire damage."

It would have to be replaced, otherwise you are making the location easier. You only need to match one trait of the damage for protection to work. For example, if you have an armor that reduces combat damage, it works if at least one of the traits of the damage is combat (it works on both combat damage and ranged combat damage). Using your example, it follows that Fire Magic Ranged Combat damage could be reduced by that armor (or an armor that reduced fire damage or magic damage or poison damage).

[Sandslice]

"Combat" is an unusual case in PACG; it's not exactly a trait, and is mutually exclusive with the elemental traits (as it denotes physical damage.) Nothing stops the game from having a bane do Ranged Electricity (a lightning bolt) as opposed to Melee Electricity (a shocking grasp); it's just that this possibility has no impact on current game mechanics. But the nature of Combat damage prevents you from having Electricity Combat damage.

[Vic Wertz]

Frencois wrote:

"if you would take Combat damage, take Poison damage instead."

You replace one word/trait by another.

This would indeed be my ruling, unless somebody came up with a reason why we should consider going the other way.

[Longshot11]

Sandslice wrote:

But the nature of Combat damage prevents you from having Electricity Combat damage.

I wouldn't be so sure. While Combat does denote Physical Damage only, if we had a Monster that is using a Flaming Ranseur +3, I could very well see it "All damage is Combat Fire damage" . Granted, it doesn't make sense now - as noted above, accumulation of traits only makes damage easier to prevent - bu t who knows about the future...

OTOH, the flaming chick in RotR which I think was supposed to fight with the above-mentioned Ranseur (she was a General of Wrath or something?) was always doing Fire damage, so it's pretty clear for the time being the devs haven't adopted a 'natural' approach to damage type(i.e. what would seem logical if you try to visualize the way the damage is dealt), but they rather use it as 'difficulty setting' which so far goes like:

Ranged Combat, Combat, Elemental, Force, Mental (maybe I'm confused about the last two)

See also: that f@$! Poison Dart Trap that deals Combat and Poison separately, and you somehow get dealt the Poison, even if you manged to block the Combat ("the dart", which would be used to deliver the poison)

[Frencois]

Unless in some situation the designers WANT to make a damage easier to prevent by giving it more than one trait.

Why wouldn't they want that?

We know for sure that not-this-Mike would NEVER think of making that game harder on us.