*Spoilers* for Mummy's Mask


Pathfinder Adventure Card Game General Discussion

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:

Warehouse: Yes, "summon and acquire" is the correct wording, because it's not a gimme, and because if it just said "summon and encounter" you'd have to return it to the box afterward.

The three Laws: You don't get to banish the Law until the bad thing happens.

If you have a free exploration coming, and an examination makes you encounter a card, that has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that you've got a free exploration coming. Examining, exploring, and encountering are all different things.

Regarding examining multiple cards, there's a subtle but important change in the MM examine rules. "Put the cards you examined back in the same order you found them, unless instructed otherwise" has been replaced with "Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise." So whether you are told to examine the top 3 cards of a deck, or to examine a deck until you find an item, you go through the cards you're examining one by one, and because Trigger cards tell you what to do "when you examine" them, that means the triggers go off one by one as they are examined as well.

Let's go in a little deeper on that one. Say you're told to examine the top 3 cards of your location deck, and the first card has the Trigger trait and says "When you examine this card, shuffle your location deck." (Let's call this card "Blackjack Dealer.") It should be obvious that the shuffle is going to change the next card you examine, but what may be less obvious is what happens to the Blackjack Dealer. Remember, at the end of all the examining, you have to "put them back in the same order." So that means you examine the Blackjack Dealer, hold onto it while you shuffle the rest of the deck, examine the next card (which may or may not do things), and examine the third card (which may or may not do things), and then you put back the examined cards with the Blackjack Dealer on top.

Thanks for the clarification, including the detailed example. May I suggest for future rulebooks to move that sentence "Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise." elsewhere in the paragraph? Right now, it's in the middle of 2 other sentences that talk about the specific case of examining until you find a card of a particular type, even though per your clarification this sentence applies to all examinations in general. With the context of those two other sentences, it is unclear whether or not that sentence should apply in general or not just by reading the rulebook. If I may, I'd suggest moving it to be the last sentence in the paragraph (before the parenthetical), and changing it to something like "When you examine cards, examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise." to make it more clear that it applies to all examinations in general. Just my two cents :)

Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:


Let's go in a little deeper on that one. Say you're told to examine the top 3 cards of your location deck, and the first card has the Trigger trait and says "When you examine this card, shuffle your location deck." (Let's call this card "Blackjack Dealer.") It should be obvious that the shuffle is going to change the next card you examine, but what may be less obvious is what happens to the Blackjack Dealer. Remember, at the end of all the examining, you have to "put them back in the same order." So that means you examine the Blackjack Dealer, hold onto it while you shuffle the rest of the deck, examine the next card (which may or may not do things), and examine the third card (which may or may not do things), and then you put back the examined cards with the Blackjack Dealer on top.

Blackjack dealer sounds like an awesome card.


So excited. I'm really hoping this is in my local game store tomorrow.


Vic Wertz wrote:


Regarding examining multiple cards, there's a subtle but important change in the MM examine rules. "Put the cards you examined back in the same order you found them, unless instructed otherwise" has been replaced with "Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise." So whether you are told to examine the top 3 cards of a deck, or to examine a deck until you find an item, you go through the cards you're examining one by one, and because Trigger cards tell you what to do "when you examine" them, that means the triggers go off one by one as they are examined as well.

To get slightly more complicated (since this is basically what happened to us at our second session)... what would happen if the first of your examined cards is a monster whose trigger forces you to encounter it? If you defeat it, I assume it goes to the box and you examine the subsequent cards. However, if you fail to defeat it, does it:

1) Immediately shuffle it into the deck (meaning you could examine the same monster again)
2) Hold onto it and leave it on top after examining the rest of the cards
3) Hold onto it, examine the rest of the cards, then shuffle *all* the examined cards in the deck (including the other non-trigger examined cards)
4) Hold onto it, examine the next cards, shuffle only the undefeated monster into the rest of the deck, then put the rest of the examined cards on top in the order you examined them?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Rulebook wrote:
Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise.

In this case, the rules for failing to defeat a monster are instructing you otherwise, so the answer is 1. Let me extend your example to a slightly more complicated case, though:

Let's say you get to examine 3 cards. The top card isn't anything special. The second card is your monster, which you fail to defeat. Failing to defeat the bane makes you shuffle *it* into the deck, but it isn't making you shuffle the first card into the deck—you still need to hang on to that one so you can put it back on top after all the examining is done. After you've shuffled, examine the card that's now next (which could indeed be that same monster again). Then (assuming it isn't a Trigger card that further messes with the deck), put it back on the deck with the first card on top.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Rulebook wrote:
Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise.

In this case, the rules for failing to defeat a monster are instructing you otherwise, so the answer is 1.

Vic, I'm sorry, but I'm getting kind of lost here with all the edge cases and different card treatments.

How is this scenario (failing to defeat a triggered bane) any different than your proposed Blackjack Dealer ("When you examine this card, shuffle your location deck"). Now, the Dealer is part of its location deck, for all intents and purposes, so I would normally assume it gets shuffled too. However, you tell us it is not *only* based on the "...and put them back in the same order" rule (and yes, this rule continues with "unless instructed otherwise", which I would think the Blackjack Dealer itself *is* instructing us! But let's ignore this for a moment.)

*Then*, however, you tell us that the same "put back in same order" doesn't apply for undefeated banes, for some reason?

For the record, I believe the undefeated bane should be shuffled back (the opposite would be absurd), but I think there is some very arbitrary distinction being made here. The Golden Rule is "cards overrule Rulebook" and I just don't see how your proposed Blackjack Dealer (which explicitly states to the effect of "shuffle all location deck cards *of which I am part of!*) doesn't get shuffled back in?!? What am I missing?

EDIT: To elaborate, this was prompted by your extended example above...

Vic Wertz wrote:


Let's say you get to examine 3 cards. The top card isn't anything special. The second card is your monster, which you fail to defeat. Failing to defeat the bane makes you shuffle *it* into the deck, but it isn't making you shuffle the first card into the deck—you still need to hang on to that one so you can put it back on top after all the examining is done. After you've shuffled, examine the card that's now next (which could indeed be that same monster again). Then (assuming it isn't a Trigger card that further messes with the deck), put it back on the deck with the first card on top.

... which for a second time implies that examined cards are not treated as part of the location deck for shuffling purposes, which, again, seems to me to clash with the 'undefeated bane' resolution.

BTW, I'm still waiting on my MM, I haven't read the Rulebook, and I apologize in advance if there's some stipulation in it to the effect of "Unless they require you to encounter them, examined cards are not affected by effects that cause you to shuffle the location deck, until they are put back in the location deck, in the manner specified by the power that caused you to examine them".

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Stay tuned. We may need to simplify.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Rulebook wrote:
Examine the cards in the order you find them, and put them back in the same order unless instructed otherwise.

In this case, the rules for failing to defeat a monster are instructing you otherwise, so the answer is 1. Let me extend your example to a slightly more complicated case, though:

Let's say you get to examine 3 cards. The top card isn't anything special. The second card is your monster, which you fail to defeat. Failing to defeat the bane makes you shuffle *it* into the deck, but it isn't making you shuffle the first card into the deck—you still need to hang on to that one so you can put it back on top after all the examining is done. After you've shuffled, examine the card that's now next (which could indeed be that same monster again). Then (assuming it isn't a Trigger card that further messes with the deck), put it back on the deck with the first card on top.

Indeed any simplification will be great. The whole examination/trigger is a great indea but is a potential can'o'worms. Another example to help your thinking: in your example above, one could wonder if when you get to examine the third card (after shuffling) you should ideed look at the new third one in the deck (counting or not the first one set aside) or the new top one (not counting the one set aside). That (plus the case of face up cards) makes for a lots of combined cases. You have our full support to fing an easy an fun general rule.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Let's go in a little deeper on that one. Say you're told to examine the top 3 cards of your location deck, and the first card has the Trigger trait and says "When you examine this card, shuffle your location deck." (Let's call this card "Blackjack Dealer.") It should be obvious that the shuffle is going to change the next card you examine, but what may be less obvious is what happens to the Blackjack Dealer. Remember, at the end of all the examining, you have to "put them back in the same order." So that means you examine the Blackjack Dealer, hold onto it while you shuffle the rest of the deck, examine the next card (which may or may not do things), and examine the third card (which may or may not do things), and then you put back the examined cards with the Blackjack Dealer on top.

ОК, so I know that we're supposed to 'stay tuned' while Vic & co find a simpler solution to the whole Examine VS Shuffle matter, but going over my PDF Rulebook, I just came upon a rule that I don't remember from my physical Rulebook (but maybe I skimmed over it):

Quote:

If anything would cause you to shuffle the deck while you

are examining cards, shuffle the deck only after you put the cards
back.

The thing about this rule - it both seems to contradict Vic's Blackjack example, AND it seems to already be the most simple solution possible: *no matter* what you examine and Trigger - if only ONE effect would cause you to shuffle during the examination, for whatever reason - then you always end-up shuffling all the examined cards remaining anyway.

So, in a 3 cards examine with Augury (target: monsters) we could have:
1) Examine a random monster - put it aside, pending resolving the Augury power
2) Examine a Ghost Scorpion - he Triggers, and you fail to defeat it; put it aside (it's waiting that you return all examined cards to the deck)
3) Examine the Blackjack Dealer - put it aside (it's waiting that you return all examined cards to the deck)
4) You now chose to put Random Monster 1 (and Blackjack Dealer, if it's a monster) to either the top or bottom of the location deck - resolving the Augury card effect
5) You now return Blackjack Dealer as the third card from the top (if it's NOT a monster), Ghost Scorpion as the second (third, if BJD is monster and Auguried on top) card (unless you Aguried the random monster and/or BJD to the bottom; then the Scorpion would be the top card), and random monster/BJD will be the top one/two cards, in order of your choice (if you decided to Augury them on top)
6) You, being a savvy player, realize that all that stuff in steps 4) and 5) is completely inconsequential and you skip it entirely, as now...
7) ... you have returned all cards to the location deck; since TWO effect now require you to shuffle (BJD and the undefeated Scorpion) - you now shuffle the entire location deck

Literally, with this new rule, that I somehow only now discover - I think any possible conflicts between Examine ("put the cards back in the same order") and the Shuffle action would be completely resolved. Can anyone come up with a situation where it wouldn't be so?


That is indeed not in the physical rulebook.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

This new rule does indeed break my Blackjack Dealer. (Which fortunately is not a real card.)

As for why it's in the PDF but not the FAQ, I had updated the rulebook file and was about a create a FAQ entry when I realized that another rules discussion we're having is likely to modify the same paragraph, so I haven't issued the FAQ yet.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

The other discussion didn't actually hit on this one. I have now issued the FAQ..

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