Taking an Action without legal target

[Csonti]

Situation: Death Marshal has somebody in his coffin. The other player uses Obey on him to take the Pine Box Action but there is nobody within 1" of him. Based on the Declare Action and Spend AP part of the rulebook I guess this is ok since it seems you declare the Action before cheking for possible legal targets. The Action itself will of course crumble when you check for target.

 

Question: Is this considered as the DM have taken the Pine Box Action so that he must "release" the buried model? 

[Dirial]

Page 38, big rulebook: Attack actions require LoS and a target.

 

Thus, if there is none, there is no attack action. You cannot Obey a Marshal to take a Pine Box action without target, but your Obey isn't wasted. You may still declare another action with him.

[Ausplosions]

Dirial has the right of it. Without a target you can't use the Action.

[Csonti]

So the checking for legal target comes before declaring the Action and spending AP? Could be but the way the section is written doesn't unequivocal on this for me. 

 

 

 

P35 small rulebook:
1. Declare Action and Spend AP
The player begins an Action by announcing to her opponent what Action the model
is taking. This is done for clarity, and because some models might react to certain
Actions. The most common reaction is a disengaging strike, which will prevent a
model from moving out of engagement range.
The model also spends the AP required to perform the declared Action. If the
model does not have enough AP required for the Action, no AP are spent and the
Action is ended without any further effect.
The model also declares any variable in the Action. This depends on the Action, as
some Actions have different variables, or affect multiple targets.
It is during this step that the model declares a target. Unless specified by the Action,
the target must be in range, and the model must have Line of Sight to the target.
Line of Sight (LoS) and Range are discussed further on page 40.

[Hateful Darkblack]

If you try to take an invalid action, it gets cancelled and you don't spend the AP.

[Ausplosions]

It says it right there. Must be in range. There is no ambiguity here. You can't declare an action that needs a target with an invalid target or no target at all.

[The Godlyness]

That step is not written in a chronological order. Its saying during this step this is what your are doing. Its quite fluid. There is no timing here. If all parts are not complete though no action can take place so stop here reevaluate what you are doing and choose a different course of action.