demonling evade

[Pirate Rob]

The check to not evade is before you act, which is after you evade.

[First World Bard]

Mike answers this question here.

[Michael Klaus]

Which is still a stupid and counter intuitive rule. The Demonling could easily read Before the encounter...

[Sandslice]

Actually, "before the encounter" is obsolete language for "before you act"; it was changed for a clearer relationship between things like before-you-act saving throws and evasion.

"When you encounter" would be appropriate for cases where only evade permission is being checked; but the other part, the +3 difficulty bump, isn't something that's checked when you encounter, as a rule. (Otherwise, "ooo, I failed, it has a +3 now, guess I'll evade," which is cheesy.)

The card language is "before you act" because the check for difficulty is something normally called in the before-you-act step.

[Andrew L Klein]

Also, the second you flip a card, you're encountering it. "Before you encounter" is before you flip the card, so that wording wouldn't even make sense.