I have a few rules questions from SoTT Adventure 4.
Scenario 5-4B:
Before you act, a random character summons and encounters the henchman Enemy Ship.[...]
Summon and encounter a random ship.[...]
Whenever it is your turn, if your ship is not anchored at a location, you are commanding your party’s ship.
[...]
While you are commanding a ship, you may encounter other ships. If you are not commanding a ship, banish any ship you would encounter.
Should the ship be encountered only if Parley randomly chooses the current player (ie the commander)?
Or should non-commanders be allowed to encounter a ship?Scenario 5-4C:
When you encounter a monster, roll 1d6 then:
1–2. Summon and encounter the henchman Animate Dream.[...]
When you would encounter a non-story bane barrier, banish it instead, then summon and encounter a Task barrier.
Could the scenario rule can be applied multiple times? That is, if an encounter d6 rolls 1-2, then the summoned Animate Dream would cause its own d6 to be rolled, and potentially so on. This would likely necessitate errata for the The Courtesan (excluding Task barriers and/or summoned barriers) in order to prevent an infinite loop there.
Or should a maximum of 1d6 get rolled?Scenario 5-4D:
After placing your party’s ship, display 9 random ships from the box in a 3x3 grid. Each of these ships is treated as a location; build it with 2 monsters, 2 barriers, 1 weapon, 1 spell, 1 armor, 1 item, 1 ally, and 1 blessing.
Your ship is anchored at the ship location at the upper right of the grid.
[...]
To close a ship location, summon and defeat the ship.
Whenever it is your turn, if your ship is anchored and you are at the ship’s location, you are commanding your party’s ship
[...]
While you are commanding a ship, you may encounter other ships. If you are not commanding a ship, banish any ship you would encounter.
As written, this scenario doesn't seem to work. It seems that either the ship should not be anchored? Or else a non-commander should be allowed to encounter a ship?
5-4B: RAI is obvious that the ship encounter should happen regardless, so that’s how I’d play it.
5-4C: Animate Dream is a story bane so Courtesan doesn’t apply to it. Otherwise yes you roll another d6 if you roll 1-2; the dreams can loop. It’s not infinite because you’ll eventually roll 3-6.
5-4D: same answer as 5-4B.
5-4C: My point was that if resummoning is repeatedly allowed, then the Courtesan by itself causes an infinite loop the first time a non-story barrier is encountered.
I figured I might as well bring it up here since I was already asking about 2 other 5-4 rules. But the problem may be with The Courtesan rather than with the 5-4C scenario rule. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
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Ah yeah. Courtesan RAW causes an infinite loop by itself and needs an FAQ.
I wouldn’t mind seeing an FAQ for 5-4C to prevent looping Animate Dream as well. In practice the scenario is still pretty doable even with the looping (as you’re aware from being at the same table as myself and Yewstance when we played it), but of a caster winds up with like 2-3 of them it’s basically just “well time to wipe my hand and not bother rolling for anything” due to lack of spells to take on that many fights.
Yeah I would like to see errata on 5-4C to prevent looping as well.
5-4C: Another possibly relevant example is the Core location Plaza, although with drawing instead of summoning.
When you would encounter a boon, draw a new one of the same type; encounter 1 and banish the other.
If the location power can take effect multiple times, then there seems to be an arbitrarily extendable loop.
Venture-Lieutenant, Online—VTT
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I can't say if I've ever been at a table where Core Plaza or Rooftops (similar) were used multiple times to pick whatever boon/barrier you wanted. I think the general understanding is that you would get to do that once. Similiarly with 5-4C and The Courtesan I think the same logic is reasonable: that this would only happen once per initial encounter and not loop.
How about this:
When you encounter a monster from a location deck, roll 1d6 then:
and
When you would encounter a non-story bane barrier from a location deck, banish it instead, then summon and encounter a Task barrier.
and
When you would encounter a boon from a location deck, draw a new one of the same type; encounter 1 and banish the other.
and
When you would encounter a barrier from a location deck, draw a new one; encounter 1 and banish the other.
Most of the locations for 5-4C do summon monsters. So that might imply that that scenario rule was intended to work on summoned monsters (be it at least once or only once)?
Another data point: scenario 2-1A has a similar mechanic, but there it explicitly limits repetition.
When you encounter a bane that has the Goblin trait, roll 1d6:
[...]
4. A random character at your location encounters the bane instead. That character does not roll on this table.
[...]
(Regardless, I don’t mean to argue that Plaza etc are or should be abusable. Rather, whether the rules disallow repetitive summoning, as evidenced by the wording on those cards. Or whether the rules allow repeated summoning, despite the clear intention of those cards not quite matching up with their wording.)
5-4C: Animate Dream is a story bane so Courtesan doesn’t apply to it. Otherwise yes you roll another d6 if you roll 1-2; the dreams can loop.
That's only if the rule "Summoned cards can't cause you to summon a copy of themselves" does *not* apply in Organized play (which could be a thing, I wouldn't know))
5-4C: Animate Dream is a story bane so Courtesan doesn’t apply to it. Otherwise yes you roll another d6 if you roll 1-2; the dreams can loop.That's only if the rule "Summoned cards can't cause you to summon a copy of themselves" does *not* apply in Organized play (which could be a thing, I wouldn't know))
A summoned card isn’t causing that summon, it’s a storybook power that is having you roll and potentially summon.
Causality in PACG just cares where the power is printed, not the circumstance that is making you do some thing. This is why Blessing of Gozreh doesn’t bless twice on a check to defeat summoned monster, even if defeating it closes the location as part of the “to close or to guard” text.
A summoned card isn’t causing that summon, it’s a storybook power that is having you roll and potentially summon.5-4C: Animate Dream is a story bane so Courtesan doesn’t apply to it. Otherwise yes you roll another d6 if you roll 1-2; the dreams can loop.That's only if the rule "Summoned cards can't cause you to summon a copy of themselves" does *not* apply in Organized play (which could be a thing, I wouldn't know))
For a moment I considered that could've been your reasoning, but I'll guess we'll have to agree to respectfully disagree. I'm pretty confident there was a precedent with an official ruling specifically contradicting your reading, but I can't seem to locate it right now.
FWIW, the most recent example I can think of that seems to support my stance is the ruling for AD5 Curse that playing your Harrow is considered playing a card to "heal", even if that's not a printed effect on the card, but rather a side-effect deriving from the Adventure power (which would contradict your stance on "causality", if I'm understanding you correctly?)
On the other hand, if nobody official has contradicted this thread yet, I could be wrong - but then I'd like to know how is this different than the "harrow heal" ruling...
I found the thread you were thinking of, however I believe that only reinforces my position. That thread sparked an FAQ that changed the rulebook wording away from causality ("discarding a card to heal") and into something that doesn't require you know why a card was being discarded ("discard any cards while healing").
I didn't participate in the linked thread, but my position on the original wording is the same as your argument earlier on that thread. I wouldn't consider discarding a card to bless a check "discarding to heal" if the heal is a side effect of playing the card.
That being said, I'll be happy to be wrong in this particular situation -- if we should apply indirection to causality (e.g. "we're being forced to summon this card because of an effect somewhere that happened only because we encountered that same summoned card"), it would neatly stop what I view to be a problematic scenario from being problematic.
I'm not sure what knock-on effects it would have to rule it that way, but I'm guessing the answer is "not much" because causality really doesn't factor into the vast majority of game mechanics. For example, the ruling that "banished for its power" meaning that the card was being played for its power and banished for any reason (not necessarily its power) completely sidesteps causality.
When you would encounter a boon from a location deck, draw a new one of the same type; encounter 1 and banish the other.
Won't work because I could cheat and get the boon I want. Say I encounter a weapon A from the Plaza and don't like it (e. g. it's Range and I want Melee), I would draw a weapon B. Unlucky it's Ranged too.
What the heck, I select A, banish B.Plaza kicks off because A comes from Plaza.
I draw C, then D... banishing them until I find the Weapon of my dreams in the box.
Broken. Same for Rooftop (even worse: I could keep on banishing barriers until I find a chest and replace a bane by an actual boon).
When you would encounter a non-story bane barrier from a location deck, banish it instead, then summon and encounter a Task barrier.
Why not just :
When you would encounter a non-story non-Task bane barrier, banish it instead, then summon and encounter a Task barrier.
Simple...
That last post of mine however made me wonder about another fun issue.
The way the Vault is defined in the Adventure Path, it includes pretty much all cards except the one not available yet at your level or the ones removed from game.
But clearly, locations, proxies, scourges, and the like are part of the Vault (not only standard boons & banes).
If so, story banes also seem to be included in the Vault. Now:
When you would encounter a non-story bane barrier, banish it instead, then summon and encounter a Task barrier.
The way the Courtesan (and I guess other cards) is written I should "summon" a Task barrier drawing randomly in "both" non-story banes but also story banes.
1) I guess it's not the intention, but RAW....2) If it's the intention, how do I do that? Should I shuffle story bane barriers into standard non-story bane barriers, then search, then sort them all back, then reshuffle the on-story bane barriers... Just not efficient at all.
My guess is - unless I missed it - there is a sentence missing somewhere in the rules (P.14)/FAQ under "Summoned Cards and New Cards" saying something like:
If you are asked to summon or add/draw a new bane from the Vault, unless stated otherwise, it has to be a non-story bane.
Flagged the thread because I guess it will be better positionned under
https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventureCardGame/rules
IMHO
Chief Technical Officer
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The way the Courtesan (and I guess other cards) is written I should "summon" a Task barrier drawing randomly in "both" non-story banes but also story banes.
1) I guess it's not the intention, but RAW....
Adding rules to "fix" situations where you (and everyone else who has ever played the game) already know full well what to do does not make the game better—it just makes the rules more complicated and the game harder to learn. Knock it off.
I fully agree Vic. That's why I said "fun issue" (by opposition to real ones). It's not because something could have been written that you need to if it's not creating real issues.
Knocking it off respectfully :-)
Adding rules to "fix" situations where you (and everyone else who has ever played the game) already know full well what to do does not make the game better—it just makes the rules more complicated and the game harder to learn. Knock it off.
We'd like to foster a positive, friendly community here at paizo.com, so please be polite in your postings. By policing ourselves we can make sure the signal-to-noise ratio stays high, and we can prevent some sort of overly-moderated catastrophe community.