The Temptation of Lucre have you decide whether or not you take an item. If you take one, it says "every other player discards a card from her deck". I dont have the card in front of me, but I'm 100% sure about "a card from her deck" and I just don't get it... Is it a typo where "her" stands for "their", and even if so, shouldn't it be "discards a card from the top of their deck"?
At some point, the use of pronouns that denote the 'default' subject as male came to be regarded as sexist or some such. Therefore, a lot of publications started using female pronouns - I guess in an effort to restore a form of 'balance'- but since this approach still may appear sexist, just with the opposite sign, yet others began using plural pronouns for undetermined singular subjects. I don't know if any of this figures in Paizo's choice of wording, and if indeed the use of mixed pronouns is intentional, this would be the first publication I've noticed to do it.
(PS: I'm not an US American, so any of the above may be mis-perception on my part and only indicates my current understanding.)
From what I've seen, Pathfinder tends to use the pronouns that refer to the character featured on whatever it happens to be. For the card game, Temptation of Lucre features a female in the art (iirc, don't have the cards on me at the moment but I'm pretty sure it has either Seoni or Kyra on it), so it uses "her." A card that features a male in the art would similarly use "him." In the RPG line, I've found the ability wording for things like class features generally refer to the gender of that class's Iconic character.
I cannot comment as to whether or not that's actually the criteria Paizo uses to determine pronouns, but it seems likely given the evidence that the above at least partially plays into it.
I think the replies so far have missed MuffinB's actual point. It wasn't a question about gender pronouns, nor about deck versus hand. I think his/her point was that beginning of the sentence specifies "your" (a singular subject) while the middle of the sentence specifies "every other character" (plural) and the end states "discards from her deck" (back to singular). So the question is should everyone discard from their own deck or from "her" = singular => you/active player. I think that it's fairly obvious (as does MuffinB) that it should be each character discards from their own deck. But this is based on global knowledge of how these things work in PACG and not the actual wording of this sentence. (If they meant to discard from the active players deck it would probably have said something like "discard one card from your deck for each other non-dead player").
"discards from your deck" is obvious what should happen
"discards from their deck" is also obvious
but
"discards from her deck" can be confusing due to the singular/plural issue in the sentence.
Thus the question is whether "her" an editing/typo since "their" works much better in this sentence.
The sentence is grammatically correct as-is. The use of a singular pronoun matches the fact that the object being referred to by it ("other character") is also singular. The "each" in front of it does not make it plural, rather it addresses a group of things on an individual basis. In the sentence "Treat each die that rolled a 4 as if it rolled a 5 instead." it is obvious that the word "die" is singular, and referred to by the pronoun "it" (inserting the plural pronoun "they" does not make grammatical sense).
The pronoun also implies ownership. Each other character discards a card from her deck, not yours. It is unambiguous as to what deck(s) are being discarded from. This is arrived at by parsing the grammar of the sentence and not any specific PACG rules. What is a PACG rule is the part where "other character" only refers to alive characters, but that should be obvious anyway as dead characters do not have any cards in their deck.
As for "discard from her deck" not explicitly stating the top card -- it does not need to. Whenever you're told to do an action on a pile that you cannot see the individual cards of, you can assume that the action acts on the top card of that pile unless it states otherwise. While there is no explicit rule for this that I can find (the only specific rule relates to drawing cards), it is sensible that other actions besides drawing work the same way when operating on a pile of cards you cannot see.
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From what I've seen, Pathfinder tends to use the pronouns that refer to the character featured on whatever it happens to be. For the card game, Temptation of Lucre features a female in the art (iirc, don't have the cards on me at the moment but I'm pretty sure it has either Seoni or Kyra on it), so it uses "her." A card that features a male in the art would similarly use "him." In the RPG line, I've found the ability wording for things like class features generally refer to the gender of that class's Iconic character.
Close. In the RPG, when we're talking about a person of a particular class, we do match the pronoun to the gender of that class's iconic. For example, the iconic wizard Ezren is male, so we say "A wizard must study his spellbook each day to prepare his spells." The iconic paladin Seelah is female, so we say "Beginning at 2nd level, a paladin can heal wounds (her own or those of others) by touch."
That also defines certain things the opposite way. For example, in the card game, Kyra the female cleric says "Instead of your first exploration on a turn, you may reveal a card with the Divine trait to choose a character at your location. Shuffle 1d4+1 (□+2) random cards from his discard pile into his deck, then discard the card you revealed." We chose "his" because if we'd used "her" somebody might think we were referring to Kyra's deck. As a side effect of that, when we use the "healing template" on other cards, the healing target is usually given the male pronoun.
When we're not talking about a specific class, we just alternate (more or less—nobody's counting). And once we pick a gender for a particular template, we tend to stick with it (unless doing so could be more confusing than not doing so) regardless of the art on any given card.
Cool.
However back to the second part of the initial post:
Each character discards a card from her deck
The way it is written, even if I can't look at my deck, it seems I can select "face down" the card to be discarded... which is not pure random because I may know cards I recently recharged or put back on top of my deck. I like that because it adds a bit of control.
The way it is written, some coud even argue I can select it face up... and not obvious whether I have to reshuffle after or not... Which means I could examine my all deck an know excatly the order or future cards.
So IMHO the card should be FAQ in one way or another. Examples :
"Each character discards the top card from her deck"
"Each character discards the bottom card from her deck"
"Each character discards a random card from her deck"
"Each character selets a card from her deck without looking at it and discards it"
"Each character examine her deck and discard one card from it; then reshuffle her deck"
Mike?
You can look through your displayed, discarded, and buried cards at any time. You may not look through your character deck unless a card specifically allows it. Don’t shuffle any stack of cards unless you’re instructed to.
The card doesn't tell you to look through or shuffle your deck, so you don't get to look through or shuffle your deck. You can argue that the wording allows you to discard a card from the bottom or middle of the deck, but we all know it doesn't.
This also lends credence to it being the top card:
RULES: DRAWING CARDS
When you draw a card from a facedown deck, such as a character deck, a location deck, the blessings deck, or any other deck the game tells you to create, draw from the top of the deck. When you draw a card from a faceup pile, such as your discard pile, the blessings discard pile, or any other pile the game tells you to create, draw a card of your choice. When you draw a card from the box, unless you are told to draw a specific card, draw a random card of the appropriate type.
Though, it is a bit odd that it doesn't simply say "top card" to avoid this confusion.
Yes I fully agree "top card" is implicit, I was just being nasty and over rigourous :-)
For example, if I wanted to push it for the sake of being a pain-in-the-lower-rear-part-of-the-plate-armor only, I would note that power doesn't say "draw and discard" but just "discard" ... so why should the drawing rule apply? Hehe.
Forget it, just a normal wednesday in France... we are just getting over stressed - although I wonder if it's because of AP6 or because we will face the NZ All Blacks at rugby saturday (yes I do realize that "rugby" may sounds like abyssal-elvish in a country that names location cards out of college basketball). :-)
Already confirmed to be from the top of the deck. The drawing rule applies because Vic said it applies in the aforementioned thread about burying cards (again unrelated to drawing!). It therefore would also apply to discarding cards, and banishing them, and any other manipulation of a facedown pile of cards you can think of that acts on a specific number of cards in the pile.
It also makes sense that it applies from a consistency standpoint -- there is nothing about drawing cards that makes it any more special than other means of removing/manipulating cards in a pile.