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"Due to"


Jehenna

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Hello eveybody! This phrase "due to" keeps bugging me as what it means doesn't seem entirely clear. I have noticed it in two types of places.

 

The first is in Obey for Perdita, Zoriada etc. "A model which performed an Attack due to Obey may not be targeted by Obey again during the same Activation." So a model which simply does an attack can't be targeted again the same activation. But what if the model charged instead, a tactical action that in itself causes two attack actions? Remember that som models can make (1) charges, Rooster riders and War pigs for example.

 

The second is in Mithridization and Embalmed, Rafkin and Flesh Constructs/Guild Autopsies respectively. "When this model would suffer damage due to the Poison Condition, instead, it heals 1 damage." So it heals 1 instead of taking 1 damage from the poison condition. But there are stranger situations that can arise. Expunge from McMourning that causes a model to suffer damage "equal to it's its current Poison condition value". The A Sip of Wine trigger from Performers have the same phrase.

 

In both cases there are odd situations where it isn't obvious if the ability/action works. Had it said "from" instead of "due to" the effect had been clear and neither situation had been affected. But "due to" is a vaguer phrase than "from" and in both cases only one step has been added.

 

Obey -> charge -> attack actions from the charge

Expunge -> check poison damage -> do ordinary damage from Expunge

 

I interpret this as both effects come into play in these situations. No charging twice with a War Rooster with Zoraida and no easy killing of Guild Autopsies with Performers.

 

However, during previous rules questions for Embalmed/Mithridization I have seen, a majority of players have been adamant that "due to" means the same as "from" and the Autopsy would indeed take it's poison value in damage. Wouldn't this mean that the War Rooser can indeed charge several times with Zoraida? That most people have been so certain is what causes me the most confusion so I would love to hear other opinions.

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Obey can only force a select few models to charge. Charge is a (2) action in most cases. If you can obey a model to charge, it performs an attack action during the charge and thus cannot be obeyed again.

 

Expunge doesn't do poison damage. It does damage equal to poison. Mithridization doesn't interact with Expunge at all.

 

Both cases a re pretty clear cut to my eyes.

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"Due to" - because of something

 

Expunge damage is not because of Poison damage, it's just Expunge damage (which is as high as the Poison condition, but is not caused by said condition).

 

Charge produces an attack action (two, in fact), thus the model performs attack actions because of Obey.

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Embalmed doesn't react to it. It's not poison condition giving the damage. It is Expunge.

 

This. Expunge deals the damage. Nothing in that damage is "due to" poison. The amount of damage may be defined by the poison condition, but you could Expunge models without the poison condition all day long. It just wouldn't do anything.

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Yes we all agree that the damage comes from expunged. That was not the question however.

 

Well, okay. What is the question then? There is no poison damage, there is an attack action, due to means because of. I think all should be clear, so if you have any more questions or want us to elaborate on something, please ask.

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As you yourself said, due to means because of. In neither of the cases in the first post is there a direct relation between the effects. Obey doesn't cause an attack, it causes a tactical action that causes an attack. Expunge doesn't cause poison damage, it causes damage in relation to the poison condition on the target model.

Both cases have an effect that kicks in, you cannot target a model again that performed an attack action due to obey, and the model heals 1 instead of taking damage when it is due to the poison condition. Or if you will, cannot be targetted again by obey if it performed an attack action because of obey. Or the model heals 1 wound instead of taking damage because of the poison condition.

 

In both cases there is a direct cause between obey -> attack action and exhume -> embalmed. Just one small step between. Isn't the vague formulation of "due to" enough to cover this gap? And if not why? And why should they be handled differently?

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Man this reminds me of a guy who argued with me that protection from creatures protected a creature from a spell that did x damage where x is my biggest creature. Just because the spell said creature. Thankfully I pawned that argument off on a tier 2 judge walking by after running through the guys logic loop twice.

Anyway I'm not really seeing the language issue here. "Due to" seems to cover both the obey and embalmed rules intents perfectly fine.

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Hello eveybody! This phrase "due to" keeps bugging me as what it means doesn't seem entirely clear. I have noticed it in two types of places.

 

The first is in Obey for Perdita, Zoriada etc. "A model which performed an Attack due to Obey may not be targeted by Obey again during the same Activation." So a model which simply does an attack can't be targeted again the same activation. But what if the model charged instead, a tactical action that in itself causes two attack actions? Remember that som models can make (1) charges, Rooster riders and War pigs for example.

 

The second is in Mithridization and Embalmed, Rafkin and Flesh Constructs/Guild Autopsies respectively. "When this model would suffer damage due to the Poison Condition, instead, it heals 1 damage." So it heals 1 instead of taking 1 damage from the poison condition. But there are stranger situations that can arise. Expunge from McMourning that causes a model to suffer damage "equal to it's its current Poison condition value". The A Sip of Wine trigger from Performers have the same phrase.

 

In both cases there are odd situations where it isn't obvious if the ability/action works. Had it said "from" instead of "due to" the effect had been clear and neither situation had been affected. But "due to" is a vaguer phrase than "from" and in both cases only one step has been added.

 

Obey -> charge -> attack actions from the charge

Expunge -> check poison damage -> do ordinary damage from Expunge

 

I interpret this as both effects come into play in these situations. No charging twice with a War Rooster with Zoraida and no easy killing of Guild Autopsies with Performers.

 

However, during previous rules questions for Embalmed/Mithridization I have seen, a majority of players have been adamant that "due to" means the same as "from" and the Autopsy would indeed take it's poison value in damage. Wouldn't this mean that the War Rooser can indeed charge several times with Zoraida? That most people have been so certain is what causes me the most confusion so I would love to hear other opinions.

This is obvious a lost in translation problem.

First off "due to" it can also mean "from" or "because of". In the case of Obey as you stated if you can't make someone take a 2nd Obey action if you've already had them take an Obey action which resulted in an Attack action that activation. They could, however, have already done an attack action on their own turn, then get obeyed to do another attack action, as it's the Obeying model's Activation, not the target's activation. 

Example:

Models: Zoraida and Rooster Rider (can make a 2AP charge for 1AP)

Rooster Rider Activates. Rooster Rider attacks a target he's engaged with already and kills him. End of Activation

Opponent's Turn. He activates a model, moves/attacks/etc. End Activation.

Zoraida Activates. She casts Obey on the Rooster Rider and has it charge an opponent model. Charge = Move + 2 Attack Actions. Zoraida cannot Obey it again this activation (her own activation) again, so must spend her remaining 2AP doing something else (Obeying different models, or summoning a Voodoo Doll, or whatever she likes, just not Obeying that same Rooster Rider again).

Second Part: Sip of Wine, Expunge, etc of any ability that uses condition values. These type of abilities are just taking the condition number on the target and using that number as the amount of damage they do to the model. They are not using the actual condition itself as the damage.

Example:

Flesh Construct (with Poison +5 on it) vs an opponent using a Performer.

End of Turn - Upkeep: All models with Poison reduce the number by 1 and take 1pt of damage.

So, Flesh Construct goes from Poison +5 down to Poison +4, BUT, due to his special rule, instead of taking 1pt of damage he instead heals 1 pt. 

New Turn. Flesh Construct is now at Poison +4.

Opponent Activates their Performer. Performer uses Siren Call with Sip of Wine trigger on the Flesh Construct. Sip of Wine says: "After succeeding, the target suffers damage equal to its Poison Condition value. Remove the Poison Condition from the target." The Flesh Construct, as a result, would take 4 damage and remove all it's Poison.

The trigger, just like Expunge, is not actually "poisoning" the target for that much damage, it's a completely different attack from poison that is simply using the poison number on the target to convert that number into X amount of damage.  The key words to note in the Sip of Wine description are "suffers damage equal to its Poison". It's not poison in itself, it's just substituting that value to determine it's own damage. Unless the ability, trigger, etc specifically states that something is poison, burning, etc damage (such as Sebastian's Catalyst), then it's considered a completely different source of damage.

I hope that clears it up for you some.

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Yeah but his line of thought is that the damage is still due to the model having poison in the first place. Because it wouldn't be able to have been damaged from a sip of wine if it didn't have poison. Thus it's due to having the poison condition. I think that's the way of thinking at least.

 

But it'd still be Expunge damage, just 0 of it.

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The question is asked in all seriousness, and making parallells to someone you considered cheated is very rude, Hoyled.

 

And all the answers I get seem to be that expunge doesn't do poison damage. Which I have myself stated over and over again. Or that it is obvious how it should work. Neither are satisfactory answers to what I have asked. I appreciate your longer answer though Asrian.

 

At this point I'm kind of sorry that I asked.

 

Wyrd, if you read this I have a small request. In a future faq, could you please put in "When a model with embalmed/mithridization is targeted by exhumed or sip of wine, does it suffer the damage: Yes/No"

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Wyrd, if you read this I have a small request. In a future faq, could you please put in "When a model with embalmed/mithridization is targeted by exhumed or sip of wine, does it suffer the damage: Yes/No"

The answer, though, to your question is Yes because Exhume and Sip of Wine do not do Poison damage, they merely use the amount of Poison on the target to determine how much damage they do overall. Poison 3 = 3 Exhume/Sip damage. Poison 1 = 1 Exhume/Sip damage, etc. Then they remove the poison condition. The damage done to the target isn't poison, so the target never gets a chance it heal as normal from poison damage. All damage is converted into a new type of damage, essentially.

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And I agree with you. The question is not what the damage is, but how embalmed and mithridization behaves to that damage. What I wonder is (and it feels like i have written something like this several times before):

Typically they use "from the poison condition" in this situation. For example on That's the Stuff on the Plastic Surgery Upgrade. Why do they use different (vaguer) wording to mean the same thing, especially when there are situations here were the poison condition plays into the damage, not directly, but close to.

 

And if you think that I try to twist this to suit my own needs, this is how I read this from the beginning, not thinking there was any other way to interpret it. I only learned of other ways when it came up in a game.

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Malifaux uses normal English. Due to means because of, meaning from in the case of Expunge. It casts a vaguely wider net in the case of Obey. They use different wording because it sounded better or something. This is the way it works, and how everyone plays it:

 

Poison damage, or damage from the Poison condition, or damage due to the Poison condition mean the same thing: The Poison condition doing damage. That's why Embalmed doesn't interact in the slightest with Expunge.

 

Due to Obey means "The Obey action forcing the targeted model to take an Attack action, however indirect." That's why you cannot Obey a model that has been forced to Charge.

 

I don't see how it could be interpreted in any other way. If you don't find that helpful, I don't know what to tell you.

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Dirial, I really appreciate your last post here. It's the kind of answer I was looking for.

 

Languages are rarely precise though, demonstrated here in that we both used it to mean different things. How can we be sure that our own way is the right? Neither due to or because are established game terms. The intention of the rule is something we can only guess at.

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I do agree with Jehenna that if a Charging Rooster makes Attack actions due to Obey, then similarly the poor Poisoned model takes damage due to Poison when Expunged. If it didn't have Poison, it wouldn't take damage. They both have a similar one step leap. According to natural language, I think that the two cases are similar.

Now, that said, I do agree with Dirial's interpretation of how the rules are meant to work.

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They use that language because they have stated that this version if MALIFAUX explicitly uses common sense English as its rules formatting.

They certainly could pursue the route of explicit, rules formatted language, where every word had to pass a style guide and rules of formatting, but they didn't. There are various reasons but the biggest ones, in my opinion, is one of ease, and monetary cost.

In order to format the rules to such an extent that no wiggle room or odd interpretations requires alot of words. During the first beta Mac mentioned tht as a rules exercise in design he once was asked to write the rules for paper/rock/scissors. In order to explain the game, and do it in such a way to minimize te rules being bent or broken according to the written rules required pages and pages of text. Its more complicated than you would most likely imagine. And that would require

More text on the card, which would make getting new players more difficult.

The other is monetary. If such a course was explored it would take more resources than wyrd currently devotes to it. We can certainly discuss whether that is feasible, but there is a point in business that the costs will out weigh the benefit you get from it. I don't have the metrics or information, but I assume wyrd does. We can certainly discuss whether they are devoting enough resources to it, but the only thing that is certain is it would be more expensive and vastly more time consuming to write the rules in a completely iron clad manner that allowed no interpretation.

I must tend to be a strict RAW individual, a hold over from playing my first game of warhammer fantasy, throwing my plague censer bearers against a unit of skeletons, and even though there wasn't a rule about it, he tried to claim that because skeletons didn't breathe he didn't need to take any wounds. It soured me much on interpretive rules. That said, while I would love ironclad, non way to misinterpret rules, I think MALIFAUX, at this moment, is doing a pretty good job of walking the line of easy to use common sense rules language, and the language to carry it off.

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