Defeat by X or more for multiple checks

[Doppelschwert]

Take the location Scorched Obelisk from MM:
'When you succeed at a check to defeat a bane by 4 or more, you are dealt 1d4 Electricity damage.'
How does this work if I encounter any bane that has two (or more) sequential checks to defeat?

Which of the following cases describes correctly when you are dealt Electricity damage:
- at least one check is succeeded by 4 or more
- all checks are succeeded by 4 or more
- the last check is succeeded by 4 or more

(I think the potential remaining cases can be safely ignored.)
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it with a quick forum search.

[Frencois]

The "when" clearly relates to "a check".

So each check is independent and you take damage each time you succeed at such a check by 4 or more.

Actually your 3 cases would be respectively written as :
"When encoutering a bane, if you succeed at least once at a check to defeat that bane by 4 or more"
"When you succeed at a check to defeat a bane by 4 or more"
"When you succeed at the last check to defeat a bane by 4 or more"

Note that no power should say
"When you defeat a bane by 4 or more".
because it doesn't mean anything.

[Doppelschwert]

Thanks, you're totally right about this; I also gave a wrong example.

The swarm cards from SnS (that's what I checked just now, but probably also in RotR and WotR) have a template that reads:

swarm wrote:

If you do not defeat this card by at least 4, shuffle it in the deck it came from; it still counts as defeated.

I was actually interested in what this would mean if such a card would have multiple checks. Then I searched MM for such a combination and found the Scorched Obelisk, and mistakenly thought I had an example.

Now I'm not sure if there is such an example at all if MM avoided the issue by updating the wording to be clearer. Is the wording consistent over all MM cards?

It probably means that the solution is more precise wording.

EDIT:
There are cards in MM with a single check to defeat that use the wording

Daughter of the Desert wrote:

If defeated by less than 5, ...

I'm not yet convinced that there isn't a combination of cards in MM that produces my scenario, but I can't check my box right now (just looking through the paizo blog cards for now).

[Hawkmoon269]

There have actually been a few FAQs that correct these kinds of things, because you can "defeat a bane by x or more" you can only succeed at a check, which is only a part of defeating a bane. Here is one example of a card being clarified around this issue.

[Doppelschwert]

Thanks Hawkmoon, that's the kind of official comment I was searching for.