This is correct. (The Pathfinder Adventures wording on Farmhouse uses "when" instead of "if," but the distinction is grammatical, not mechanical.)Lini: When you play an ally with the Animal trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it.
So when Lini plays that ally, it's recharged not discarded.
Farmhouse: If you would discard an ally, bury it instead.
The ally is never actually discarded so the Farmhouse power never activates.
I'm having trouble following this ruling, for the reasoning I gave above. Lini says you recharge instead of discarding, Farmhouse says you bury instead of discarding. As I see nothing that would indicate that Lini's power happens before Farmhouse's power, at best the two powers happen at the same time (see below for a more detailed argument of why I believe this). From there, I see two possibilities:
1. The two powers are instructing you to do two different things with the same card. As such, the Golden Rules are invoked, and location beats character. This would mean the Farmhouse wins and the ally is buried.
2. You get too choose the order per "Finish One Thing Before You Start Something Else" and choose to perform Lini's power first. As such, the Farmhouse cannot bury instead of discard because there is nothing being discarded at the time the Farmhouse power is resolved.
Interpretation 2 runs contrary to your ruling for Damiel where you state "Of course, you still need to keep in mind the hierarchy from the Golden Rule—if an Adventure Path, adventure, scenario, location, or support card conflicts with Damiel, that card wins." in regards to Damiel's power "When you would banish a card that has the Alchemical trait or a spell for its power, you may recharge it instead." Damiel's power is remarkably similar to Lini's power in this thread being argued about. I view your response as contradictory to your previous one, in the sense that you opened up the possibility for something to conflict with Damiel's recharge power in the other post, but here you say Lini's wins out.
I realize there are differences in how the powers are worded: Lini states "When you play" compared to Damiel's "When you would banish." Furthermore, Farmhouse states "When you would discard." I argue that when an ally requires you to discard it to play it (such as "Discard this card to explore your location."), that playing the card and discarding the card are the same action, and cannot be separated into a sequence where one happens before the other. This is due to the rule "Playing a card means using a power on that card by performing an action with that card that is specified by the card itself." The action being performed is discarding in my example ally, and we see based on that sentence that the act of discarding is an intrinsic part of us playing it -- you do not discard the card first as a cost and then it is considered played, nor do you say that the card is played first and then discard it; the act of discarding is one and the same as the act of playing the card. As a result, I believe that the Farmhouse and Lini both activate at the same time, and then per the Golden Rules the Farmhouse would override Lini's power.
Can you please go over the reasoning/logic you used to arrive at your conclusion? I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong, but I'd like to know why I'm wrong.
Chief Technical Officer
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Remember:
When you play cards by performing [an action other than discard or display], set them aside while you process their effects. For example, a spell might tell you to discard it, then allow you to succeed at a check to recharge it instead; set it aside until you resolve the check that determines whether or not you recharge it.
So when Lini plays that ally, it's set aside. While it's set aside, other stuff gets to act to change its disposition. Farmhouse is waiting to act the moment a card hits the discard pile, but because Lini's power changes that potential discard to a recharge, it never touches the discard pile, so the Farmhouse never acts.
Let's try changing the circumstances slightly. Let's say Farmhouse instead says "If you would discard a spell, bury it instead." And you're playing Augury:
Discard this card to choose a type of card and examine the top 3 cards of your location deck. If there are any cards of the chosen type, set them aside. Return the remaining cards to the deck, shuffle it, then put the cards you set aside together in any order on the top or bottom of the deck.
After playing this card, if you do not have either the Arcane or Divine skill, banish it; otherwise, you may succeed at an Arcane or Divine 8 check to recharge this card instead of discarding it.
Would you think that if you didn't have the Arcane or Divine skill, that revised Farmhouse would let you bury the spell instead of banishing it? I'm guessing you wouldn't.
This still makes no logical sense to me. I'm sure you've said elsewhere (though I've failed to find it) that the test for whether a card is being discarded for its power is that you're playing it for it's power, and it's being discarded. That implies that you don't decide to recharge a card until you're actually in the process of discarding it.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the following made-up card called "Slicer Dog" (with the animal trait, since it's a dog and all):
"Reveal this card to add 1d4 to your combat check. If any d4 rolled on this check is a 1, count it as 3, then discard this card"
Lini's power should normally still work on this card, the same way Valeros' power works with Dogslicer. But imagine now she's at the farmhouse. Where's the timing difference? No-one knew the card was being discarded until there's a 1 rolled. Once a 1 is rolled, the card is being discarded, there's just two effects trying to replace the same discard, in what sense could one of those effects possibly be happening "first"? Would this card therefore be handled differently?
I honestly do think Vic's answer makes the most sense intuitively. The farmhouse really wants to say "apply this power only after applying all other replacement effects". Lini's similar really wants to say "replace the word 'discard' on your animals with the word 'recharge'". Either of those wording changes would perfectly fit the way you naturally think about those cards. But as they currently stand, I just can't see any robust logical distinction between the concept of "applying first" and the concept of "getting priority", nor any concrete difference between the two wordings that explains why one is "earlier".
To be clear, I'm not trying to dispute or change the ruling I just want to understand it better.
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Chief Technical Officer
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This actually contradicts some earlier discussions, although they never made it into the FAQ :
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qau6?Farmhouse-At-this-location-effect
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/13344458#13344458
This does indeed contradict what Mike was saying there. Mike's quotes in those threads predate the understanding that when you do X "instead" of Y, Y doesn't happen, and before cards were set aside while you await their final disposition.
I want to respond to skizzerz's question.
The thread post linked by skizzerz refers to CD Damiel's power "When you would banish a spell for its power, you may recharge it instead":
This is a simple two-part test:
A) Are you playing a spell for its power?
B) Is it getting banished?If the answer is yes to both, you may recharge it. Otherwise, you may not.
(Of course, you still need to keep in mind the hierarchy from the Golden Rule—if an Adventure Path, adventure, scenario, location, or support card conflicts with Damiel, that card wins.)
skizzerz says, but it seems the Golden Rule will never apply, if it doesn't apply to Lini at the Farmhouse.
I think the Farmhouse At This Location power would apply to Lini if the power was "If you play an ally with the Animal trait, bury it". A similar power about spells would affect CD Damiel.
I want to respond to skizzerz's question.
The thread post linked by skizzerz refers to CD Damiel's power "When you would banish a spell for its power, you may recharge it instead":
This is a simple two-part test:
A) Are you playing a spell for its power?
B) Is it getting banished?If the answer is yes to both, you may recharge it. Otherwise, you may not.
(Of course, you still need to keep in mind the hierarchy from the Golden Rule—if an Adventure Path, adventure, scenario, location, or support card conflicts with Damiel, that card wins.)
skizzerz says, but it seems the Golden Rule will never apply, if it doesn't apply to Lini at the Farmhouse.
I think the Farmhouse At This Location power would apply to Lini if the power was "If you play an ally with the Animal trait, bury it". A similar power about spells would affect CD Damiel.
The Golden Rule doesn't apply here because my assumption of the timing of the two powers was wrong. I was assuming that either Farmhouse would fire first, or the two would be at the same time. However, Lini goes first in this case because of the "set aside while you process its effects" rule (which I wasn't thinking of). When you set it aside is when Lini's power goes off, whereas the Farmhouse power doesn't trigger until something hits the discard. The effects are processed while set aside and the card is recharged, meaning Farmhouse never happens, and there is no conflict for the Golden Rules to resolve. That is the bit I was missing when I made my earlier posts (because at the time I couldn't think of a way that Lini would go first, which is required for Lini to win out).
The Farmhouse would need to be re-worded to something similar to what you just stated for it to apply at the same time as Lini, given the rule to set the card aside while you process its effects (the updated wording would be "When you play an ally with the Animal trait, bury it.", but there is no meaningful difference rules-wise between "If" and "When").
I opted for favoriting Vic's post instead of making another reply when I finally understood what was happening here to reduce forum noise, so apologies if that makes it seem like I didn't see the reply or whatnot. :)
Ok rather than pointlessly arguing about whether this makes any sense or not, I'm going to try and construct what is actually happening.
The way I see it is there's two categories of power (actually many more than two, but two I'm interested in here):
A) Powers which change what you do with a card before you do it.
B) Powers which change what you do with a card when you do it.
The one and only difference between (A) and (B) is that (A) takes implicit priority over (B) when there's a conflict.
The means by which you identify whether a power is (A) or (B), is... not entirely clear to me actually. But I *think* the key difference is the phrase "when you would". Because (I think) "when you would" means you really were going to do something if it wasn't for this power, you're changing not just what does happen but what "would" happen.
So, if that's the case, I think it means if the wording was changed in the following way the resolution would completely switch:
"At this location, when you play an ally, bury that ally instead of discarding it" = A (and yes I realise this is bigger than just a "change of wording")
"When you play an ally with the Animal trait, if you would discard it, you may recharge it instead" = B
Ok rather than pointlessly arguing about whether this makes any sense or not, I'm going to try and construct what is actually happening.
The way I see it is there's two categories of power (actually many more than two, but two I'm interested in here):
A) Powers which change what you do with a card before you do it.
B) Powers which change what you do with a card when you do it.The one and only difference between (A) and (B) is that (A) takes implicit priority over (B) when there's a conflict.
The means by which you identify whether a power is (A) or (B), is... not entirely clear to me actually. But I *think* the key difference is the phrase "when you would". Because (I think) "when you would" means you really were going to do something if it wasn't for this power, you're changing not just what does happen but what "would" happen.
So, if that's the case, I think it means if the wording was changed in the following way the resolution would completely switch:
"At this location, when you play an ally, bury that ally instead of discarding it" = A (and yes I realise this is bigger than just a "change of wording")
"When you play an ally with the Animal trait, if you would discard it, you may recharge it instead" = B
The difference is actually between "When you play," and the result of playing a card makes it leave your hand, and some other trigger that happens, like for example "When you would discard" or "When you would bury." Playing a card when the "cost" of playing it makes you leave your hand puts the card in limbo temporarily while you figure out where it actually needs to end up. However, the card is still played the moment it hits that limbo zone. This means powers that care about when you play cards happen while the card is in limbo, and powers that care about where cards end up don't happen until the card exits limbo and actually ends up there.
If the card doesn't leave your hand, it doesn't enter limbo, so a reveal effect would cause "When you play" and "When you reveal a card" to happen at the same time. The keyword "would" has nothing to do with the Lini + Farmhouse case, although it would matter for two powers that trigger on the same event (where the would power happens before the non-would power). For example: "When you would discard a card, bury it." and "When you discard a card, draw a card." -- the second power would never happen because you never discard a card. The "would" power says the discard never actually happened and it got buried instead; that is what "would" is for.
Does that explanation help clarify things?
The Golden Rule doesn't apply here because my assumption of the timing of the two powers was wrong. I was assuming that either Farmhouse would fire first, or the two would be at the same time. However, Lini goes first in this case because of the "set aside while you process its effects" rule (which I wasn't thinking of). When you set it aside is when Lini's power goes off, whereas the Farmhouse power doesn't trigger until something hits the discard. The effects are processed while set aside and the card is recharged, meaning Farmhouse never happens, and there is no conflict for the Golden Rules to resolve. That is the bit I was missing when I made my earlier posts (because at the time I couldn't think of a way that Lini would go first, which is required for Lini to win out).
It's odd that when there is official answer, there are *still* different understandings of what happens (which more than anything, speaks to the clarity of the 'rule', but I think we've hit a point where it can't really be explained more concisely in written form for the Rulebook's purposes). In this case, however, I'm not confident mine is the *right* reading, bu here it nonetheless:
- Lini plays a card which leaves her hand; for that - an 'action' (recharge, discard, display, bury, banish, RFG) price must be paid
- to *play* the card, Lini must perform a discard, but *instead* she recharges - the discard doesn't happen, and the card is *not played* until the Animal leaves her hand by *recharge*
- NOW the Animal hits the 'set aside' limbo, but as a RECHARGED card (not as a discard that waits for Lini to transform it into recharge!)
- Farmhouse can now apply its power, but since there's no 'discarded' card 'set aside' - there's no valid target for it (from what I glean from Vic's post - the Golden Rule's entire purpose is to resolve conflicts that occur exactly in the 'set aside' limbo stage
- the above means, for CD Damiel, that if he plays a combat potion by banish/recharge instead, he will not be subject to Location et al. powers that trigger on banished items (as Vic's post in the CD Damiel thread suggests)
- the above *also* means that CD Damiel playing a spell by "Discard this card to...", at a "When you discard a spell, bury it" Location WILL trigger the location, as now the Location's "bury it instead" competes with the Spell/Damiel's "Banish it/recharge it instead" - and by the Golden Rule, Location will kick in overriding Damiel's power (which seems to be what Vic's implying with his Golden Rule comment in the CD Damiel thread)
- (I'm trying my best to read through Vic's meaning here, who -in my eyes- was trying to answer several different questions with one short and over-simplified answer in the CD thread - including the apparent ruling that discarding a Blessing against the Erynies Devil constitutes "banishing it for its power", so he's free to sort out my conjecture here)
TLDR: Irgy's reasoning immediately above seems to be on point, with this clarification:
A) Powers which change what you do with a card before you PLAY THE CARD (i.e. the 'action cost' you pay for playing it).
B) Powers which change what you do with a card when you PLAY THE CARD (i.e. while it is in the 'set aside' limbo).