Are encountered cards still on top of their decks?


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion


Looking at this mostly because of Zibini's ability to look at the top card of a location deck when damage is taken. Examined cards are explicitly not part of their decks, but the same does not appear to be true of explored cards, which seem to remain on top of their decks. Unfortunately, this means that Zibini's ability is often pointless, and leads to some other weirdness like shrieking plant triggering itself. Can someone point me to a rules citation regarding this?


The short answer is "Yes". When you examine a card, it is still considered a part of the location deck, you just get to look at it. Sometimes this causes a "Trigger" effect to go off.

Citation: Mummy's Mask Rulebook, page 14, "Examining and Searching".

I assume you mis-wrote your second sentence, which suggested that examined cards are removed and explored cards stay in. It's the other way around. Just to clarify: when you explore, you encounter the top card of your location deck (whether it was previously examined or not), and usually you remove a card from the deck after you encounter it (unless it was a bane you failed to defeat, or you evaded the encounter).

Regarding Shrieking Plant; whilst I think there are misprinted copies out there, the intent is that it can cause you to examine the next 3 cards of the location deck. It's not supposed to re-examine itself. Someone else may correct me on that.

EDIT: The more I look into it, I'm very slightly confused by Shrieking Plant, but I think I've come to the conclusion that it's intended to banish itself before you do the "examine 3 cards" part of the effect, otherwise it would just keep looping. Or, as the text says in Play-by-Posts (which is from a database that's supposed to reflect the cards) "examine the NEXT 3 cards", as I pointed out earlier.

Regarding how helpful examining is:

Zibini being able to examine cards is a mechanic shared with many characters (in the Mummy's Mask base set; look at Zadim, Estra or Alahazra for characters who can examine location decks), and being able to know what's coming up can be very useful. Triggering a card (causing you to encounter it, usually) can sometimes be bad and sometimes be good (encountering it usually lets you defeat and clear it from the deck, for example), and Triggers only do things if examined.

Aside from Triggers, examine just gives you important information to help your party perform well. See an Arcane spell on top? Leave it for the wizard to pick up, since you'd probably fail and have to banish it if you explored. See a villain? Leave it there until you're ready to corner him. See a monster with the incorporeal trait while you have no magic weapon? Ask the wizard to come over or leave it be.

Examining cards was considered by many people to make the game much, much easier - especially characters like Alahazra in Skull and Shackles, and Adowyn in Wrath of the Righteous. This was a primary reason why Mummy's Mask introduced the "Trigger" trait and mechanic.


Sithobi1 wrote:
Looking at this mostly because of Zibini's ability to look at the top card of a location deck when damage is taken. Examined cards are explicitly not part of their decks, but the same does not appear to be true of explored cards, which seem to remain on top of their decks. Unfortunately, this means that Zibini's ability is often pointless, and leads to some other weirdness like shrieking plant triggering itself. Can someone point me to a rules citation regarding this?

MM Rulebook, p.14:

"If there are any faceup cards on the deck, ignore them
when determining which cards you are examining."

This means "encountered cards".


I recognize that cards that are being encountered are not facedown cards in the deck, and therefore should be ignored... but to be fair, Shrieking Plant doesn't ever say that you encounter it if you examine it (at least, my copy doesn't say that). Hence why I didn't bring up that specific rule.


Being lazy, I won't dredge up the reference, but Vic clarified on the forum that when you encounter a card from a location deck, while you are encountering the card, that card is on top of the location deck.

Here is relevant Shrieking Plant text:

Shrieking Plant wrote:

When you examine this card, succeed at a Stealth or Survival 9 check; otherwise, the Shrieking Plant is undefeated.

If undefeated, examine the next 3 cards of your location deck and encounter the first monster examined. Then banish the Shrieking Plant.

A few notes:

1. Yewstance is right that you don't encounter the Shrieking Plant when you examine it.
2. Longshot is right that if you do encounter the Shrieking Plant and fail to defeat it, the Shrieking Plant is a faceup card on the location and so is ignored by the examination.
3. I'm pretty sure when you examine the top card of a location, the card is still the top card while you are doing the examination.
4. The reason this is not a loop is: The Shrieking Plant is a barrier. Its undefeated power has you encounter a Monster.


+1 to Longshot's answer to the OP question.

Zibini is not nerfed, because examining ignores faceup cards.


Sorry to be technical, but...

elcoderdude wrote:

[...]

4. The reason this is not a loop is: The Shrieking Plant is a barrier. Its undefeated power has you encounter a Monster.

The loop was never thought to be because it would make you encounter it... the issue is that if it examined itself then it would cause the Trigger ability to go off from examining it (which, on any printing I've seen, is not explicitly an Encounter).

The text for Shrieking Plant you quoted did say the "Next 3 cards", but some printings do not have the word 'next'.

So if you're entirely correct in this:

elcoderdude wrote:

[...]

3. I'm pretty sure when you examine the top card of a location, the card is still the top card while you are doing the examination.[...]

Then such a printing (as linked above) would be an infinite loop. Not because it makes you encounter itself, but because it makes you examine itself, therefore triggering its ability to make a check against it or leave it undefeated ad nauseum (assuming you can't pass the check).

Easily fixed, just imagine it say "Next 3 cards" on it. Though I'd personally say you can't examine a card that's currently having an effect being triggered in addition to being unable to examine a card that you're encountering (again, we can't hide behind the wording of 'encounter' here, because you don't encounter the Plant by examining it). If such a situation turns up, just examine the next card, just like the rules saying to skip past examining faceup cards.


elcoderdude wrote:
Being lazy, I won't dredge up the reference, but Vic clarified on the forum that when you encounter a card from a location deck, while you are encountering the card, that card is on top of the location deck.

The Birdcruncher Crown Conundrum. I think that is what you might be thinking of. It is also pretty relevant for Zibini.


Yewstance wrote:
Sorry to be technical, but...

We're all about being technical on this forum. We're practically theologians. (Moreover, it's entirely appropriate to be technical after I've told you you are missing the point when actually I am missing the point.)

So:
+1 to the published Shrieking Plant possibly having a looping issue because failing the check forced by examining a Shrieking Plant may cause you to re-examine the Shrieking Plant and repeat the check.

I did in fact use the playtest DB text. I hastily checked it against the card from my box but missed the omitted "next" in the published version. (I'm rather confident this is the only published version.)

I searched Vic's posts, but can't find him clarifying exactly where a card is while you examine it if it doesn't force you to encounter it.

IMHO we need a FAQ: either one that specifies a card like the Shrieking Plant is not on top of the location deck when it is rendered undefeated by failing the check forced by examining it, or else changing the powers text of the Shrieking Plant.

Nice catch.


By the way, this is for cards in a location.

But not sure if rules are 100% clear on how it works for the blessing discard pile if you discard a non-blessing that you encounter. During the encounter, what card is the top of the blessing deck and what card is the top of the discard?


Frencois wrote:
During the encounter, what card is the top of the blessing deck and what card is the top of the discard?

The top card of the Blessings DECK is unknown, just like it always is. (Even if you have examined it - it's still, for all intents and purposes, "unknown". I can't think of powers that care what the top of the B-DECK is that don't *also* make you examine/discard that same top card).

The top card of the Blessings DISCARD should be the card you just discarded and are now encountering (so there is no "top Blessing in the discard" - just as if you played Holy Candle on Turn 1 in response to a Lycantrope).

There ARE some powers that let you rearrange the Blessing Discard - if they DON'T use the "examine" language (which they probably wouldn't - the B-Discard is a face-up pile, after all) they *should* be able to change the order of the encountered card in the B-Discard. Most of times, this would be 'irrelevant" to the encounter and thus - unplayable, but it *can* come into play for purposes of playing blessings with "If the top card of the blessings discard pile..." instructions. IMHO.


Ok. Finally had time to catch up on reading this. I don't see a problem here, so let me know if I'm missing something.

Shrieking Plant says that if it is undefeated you examine the top 3 cards of your location deck. I can be undefeated as a consequence from examining it and failing the trigger check or from encountering it and failing the check to defeat. In either case, the Shrieking Plant is faceup while this is happening (and more importantly, it is not facedown). This FAQ says you only consider facedown cards when examining. So you clearly can't consider Shrieking Plant as one of the 3 cards to examine. It doesn't matter where it is (though I believe it is still on top of the location deck), all that matters is that it is not facedown.

Is there something I'm missing?


In my case, the only thing that I didn't believe had been hard-clarified somewhere in a FAQ or rule was that cards that are having an effect going off from being examined are faceup. Intuitively, of course they are (you're reading their text, after all), but I distinctly recall a clarification in another forum that encountered cards are faceup, and therefore are exempt from being examined, but I don't recall a clarification that non-encountered (but still Triggered) cards hold to the exact same rule. That is, that a card is faceup for the purposes of rules that refer to faceup cards when they're being examined. Part of my confusion is that I thought the rules for faceup cards were meant for things like barriers that stay on the top of a location deck.

As I stated in my above post, I had assumed that was the case, but I couldn't find a hard statement to prove it. I get a bit confused by exactly how long a card is considered 'faceup' when there's multiple nested effects (some examination effect like Augury, combined with a triggered card, especially one that isn't being encountered) going on.

As a question, to make sure I'm doing this right.

If I cast Augury (for the sake of argument, naming 'Item'), and I see the following:
Card 1: Spyglass
Card 2: Shrieking Plant
-Break-

I should pause on Augury for the time being, and deal with Shrieking Plant being triggered, I believe. I fail the check against Shrieking Plant, so it's undefeated. Spyglass is still considered 'faceup', I suppose, so I examine cards 3-5 with Shrieking Plant. Nothing is triggered and no monsters are found, and then Shrieking Plant banishes itself. Back to Augury.

...Are cards 3-5 still 'faceup', or are they face down because Shrieking Plant has resolved? I believe they're flipped back facedown, so I re-examine Card 3, then can use the rest of the Augury effect.

EDIT: Actually, I found an interesting FAQ entry...

FAQ, Emphasis added wrote:
"If anything would cause you to shuffle the deck while you are examining cards, shuffle the deck only after you put the cards back."

Is that implying that cards that are being examined literally aren't in the location deck? Just interesting to note (unless I'm taking that too literally), because among other things, that is in opposition to elcordude's analysis above, suggesting "when you examine the top card of a location, the card is still the top card while you are doing the examination".

...Not actually sure if that's relevant, though, though it does solve the Shrieking Plant issue even without mentioning the 'skip faceup cards' FAQ.

DOUBLE EDIT: Just to clarify, I don't think there's an issue with Shrieking Plant. In my case, there's just this pervading issue I'm trying to stamp out with the minutia of nested triggers and examines and what you skip and what you don't and when you do shuffles (if necessary) and blah. But no actual issues besides rules sorcery I'm still figuring out, and fighting my instinct to treat it like MTG every step of the way.


I think there is some distinction between the cards physical location and where it counts as being. If you pick a card up to read it, it is no longer physically on top of the location deck. But it still counts as being on top of the location deck.

So, when that FAQ talks about putting them back, it is acknowledging that if you are examining more than 1 card from a location deck you are going to be physically setting them aside and you are going to be physically putting them back. That doesn't mean they don't count as part of the location deck. (After all if they didn't count as part of a location deck then examining all the cards in a location would cause the location to close in a siege scenario that instructs you to close a location that has an empty deck.)

I'm not sure what post from Vic you guys are thinking of. Maybe this one?

I think your Augury with a Shrieking Plant example is correct. When Shrieking Plant has you examine cards in the middle of you already examining cards, you resolve the Shrieking Plant fully. That includes putting the cards you examined back in exactly the same order. Then you conclude the examine effects of Augury.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hawkmoon's resolution hinges on the Shrieking Plant being faceup on top of the location deck after it is examined.
That makes some sense. But the rules explicitly state that to explore you flip over a card and put it on top of the location deck, thereby making it a faceup card. The rules don't state examining the top card of the location deck changes it from a facedown card to a faceup card.
It's kind of intuitive that it does, but that's not the only intuitive way to look at it -- since flipping over the card is what encountering the card does, you might think examining is just looking at it, and, insofar as the card is still on top of the deck, the card is considered to be face down.


Well said; much better said than I did.


Nothing in the rulebook says that cards being examined are face up. I can examine a card without changing its orientation at all (though it's a little awkward). I'm fine with cards being physically in one place but technically in another in principle, but the idea that I should just assume that a card I'm holding vertically in my hand and will put back face down is considered "left faceup on the top of the location deck" seems absurd.

Honestly, even the ruling that the card you're encountering is "left faceup on the top of the location deck" seems dubious to me. I haven't "left" it there until I'm finished with it. If I'm at home packing a bag, I haven't "left my bag at home". I've only left it at home after I put it down and leave the house without it. Similarly I haven't "left" a card faceup on top of the location deck until I've finished encountering it. It was clearly written with cards like Collapsed Ceiling in mind.

But in the encountering case, there is at least text in the rulebook telling you to flip over the card you're encountering. If saying cards count as "left face up on top of the location deck" while they're being examined is the easiest solution to these problems then that's fine, but it's not the RAW until something actually says so, because it's far from self-apparent.

Personally though I've always assumed that cards which you're busy doing something with (encountering or examining) aren't in the location deck while you do so. They're "from" that location deck, and still associated with it, but they're not "in" it until and unless you finish with them and put them back. The effect of that interpretation seems to be the same as applying the "Faceup Cards" rule box, without having to stretch its scope. I assume that must break some other situation though?

Also, what ever happened to finish one thing before you start another? Trigger seems to work entirely contrary to that principle.


Examining says to pick up a card, look at it, and put it back when you're done, which means that the card isn't actually part of the deck at that point, right?
I guess it wasn't clear to me that "flip over the top card" meant that it was then a "faceup card on top of the deck", as opposed to certain barriers that explicitly remain face up on top of the deck.


Irgy wrote:

[...]

Also, what ever happened to finish one thing before you start another? Trigger seems to work entirely contrary to that principle.

Indeed, it's something I've had to unwrap (thinking in terms of a Magic-the-Gathering like nested stack of effects hurt my early understanding of PACG) then re-wrap my head around. But it's been made clear, repeatedly, that if you are told to examine 4 cards, and the second card is a trigger, you finish off that trigger before you examine the third and fourth cards.

As an aside (but a relevant one), I never understood Vic when he said "It should be obvious that the shuffle is going to change the next card you examine", but that's largely because in pre-MM sets I'd pick up X cards when I was told to examine X cards (and because of the 'finish one thing before you start another' rule which would've been my assumption until Mummy's Mask changed that). If I used Spyglass, I'd physically pick up the top 2 cards of the location deck, look at them, then choose how to put them back (in practice, I'd leave them on top faceup just to remind the party what they are). I wouldn't pick one into my hand, and then another, and at the time we didn't really have the table space to comfortably flip them up onto the table one-by-one either.

As to the greater point you're making; I'm in 100% agreement. The only time 'faceup' was ever used in rules-relevant text (either on a card or in the rulebook) was to indicate a pile of cards (like the discard pile) or to leave specific barriers on top of a deck. Expanding that to be "examines-in-progress" and "encounters-in-progress" makes me question, at times, how effects can interact and how long we consider them faceup for, and what the exceptions are. But maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill - I'm familiar with the intent of Triggers, and that's sufficient for gameplay, I just think it's less than consistent with historical use of PACG terminology and rules.


FYI because we've referred to this in this thread:

Mummy's Mask rulebook p.9 wrote:
Encountering A Card.... After you flip over the top card of the location deck, put it on top of the deck and read it.


elcoderdude wrote:

FYI because we've referred to this in this thread:

Mummy's Mask rulebook p.9 wrote:
Encountering A Card.... After you flip over the top card of the location deck, put it on top of the deck and read it.

Strange. I was looking at p.7, where it does not say to put it on top of the deck (since not all encounters are explorations). Does this mean that all encounters should be put on top of the deck before resolving the encounter, even summoned cards? Also, nothing ever tells you to flip the card back over. Should it? Also, when is a character token face-up?

My guess, though it's been proven wrong already, is that encounters do end up as the top card, albeit temporarily, you should flip cards back over, and tokens are never face up.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Sithobi1 wrote:
Does this mean that all encounters should be put on top of the deck before resolving the encounter, even summoned cards?

No. The text above says to flip over the top card of the location deck. You don't do that for summoned card. They aren't considered part of the location deck. Practically speaking, put them wherever it is convenient for you to deal with them.

Sithobi1 wrote:
Also, nothing ever tells you to flip the card back over. Should it?

I don't think that's necessary. The default "state" of cards in the location deck is facedown. Unless something says otherwise, they have to be facedown.

Sithobi1 wrote:
Also, when is a character token face-up?

Tokens have two faces. They are constantly both facedown and faceup. That is why you ignore any cards that are not facedown. If the rule said to ignore faceup cards, you'd ignore tokens. But tokens are both facedown and not facedown at the same time.


Completely missed that Longshot et al came to the same conclusion about the Shrieking Plant awhile back, namely that examining it & failing its Triggered check causes you to re-examine it.

The resolution I think we need is a rule stating that when you examine a card from a location deck, the card is considered to be faceup while you examine it (and so exempt from further examining). (But hopefully with more felicitous wording.)


elcoderdude wrote:
Completely missed that Longshot et al came to the same conclusion about the Shrieking Plant awhile back, namely that examining it & failing its Triggered check causes you to re-examine it.

When I did a search on "Shrieking Plant" I did indeed come across that forum... but it was an issue that was never resolved, so it didn't seem a helpful resource. As pointed out in both that thread and here; I don't think RAW explicitly state, ever, that a card that is being examined can't be examined again; nor has a FAQ covered that. We have got a resolution on Trigger cards being unable to be re-encountered if they're being encountered, but the Plant isn't covered by that fix.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Card Game / Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion / Are encountered cards still on top of their decks? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion