Brewmaster and his FAQs

[Icemyn]

1) Q: If the Brewmaster has used the Drinking Contest Action and a model declares a Charge against him from outside of the three inch aura, will it have to take a Wp duel to Attack the Brewmaster with the Attacks generated by the Charge Action if it ends the Charge inside the aura?
A: Yes.

2) Q: If the Brewmaster has used the Drinking Contest Action and is targeted by a Charge, what happens if the charging model fails one (or more) of the duels caused by Drinking Contest?
A: If the model fails the Drinking Contest duel, it must take the (1) On the House Action instead of making an Attack. The model would test separately for each Attack. So, if a model charged the Brewmaster and failed the Drinking Contest duel on its first Attack, it would need to take the On the House Action instead of making the first Attack, but it would then test again for its second Attack.

5) Q: If a model declares a (0) Action within the Brewmaster’s Drinking Contest aura and fails the test, does it have to spend 1 AP for the On The House Action? What if it does not have enough AP? Can the model take another (0) Action?
A: On The House costs 1 AP, regardless of the AP cost of the originally declared Action. If the model does not have enough AP, the Action fails. The model would not be able to declare another (0) Action that Activation.

So if I'm reading this right charging the Brewmaster from outside his aura is basically risk free correct?
By Risk free I mean you will not have to take any On The House (OTH) actions regardless of failing the duel.

FAQ number 5 makes it clear that you are replacing whatever action you took with a (1) action OTH instead, should you fail.
If you don't have any ap the OTH action fails.  
So if I charge and spend both of my ap to do so, now if I fail either of the duels when attacking I no longer have the ap to take the OTH action, so it fails.

Up until that FAQ, it was simply a case of actions creating actions, which worked because you didn't "spend" ap on the created OTH it just replaced whatever you spent your ap on. 

Unless I am missing something this seems like a pretty significant cuddle to a master that was solidly bottom tier to begin with. 

[Myyrä]

That answer about On the House always costing 1 ap independent of how many ap the original action costed is just plain stupid in my opinion. It also implies that Komainu's Guard the Soul does nothing useful because the model doesn't have ap to spend outside it's activation. (Not that it really does anything too useful even if works as intended.) Same thing would apply to Changeling's Surprise!, Smell Fear, and quite possibly to some other abilities I can't think of right now.

Howbout we get that purged from the FAQ and have everything working nicely again? Maybe add an answer that abilities can cause free actions just like other actions.

[Adran]

Until this FAQ I was of the opinion that

You declared you action and paid its cost.

Then you would take the "On the house" duel, and if you lost, in changed your declared action to on the house, but you had already gone through the pay the cost step so you wouldn't need to pay for the on the house.

 

This would work for the charge example, and would work to prevent you attempting to take multiple (0) actions to get the healing. 

Now, I'm not quite sure how it works

[Icemyn]

6 minutes ago, solkan said:

So you're honestly claiming that you read FAQ #2 as expecting the model to pay the additional AP to perform the On The House action?

I simply don't believe you.

 

What does believing me have to do with anything? Faq #2 states that instead you take the OTH action faq #5 says if you don't have ap the OTH action fails, it looks very straightforward  

I think faq#5 is nonsensical and creates problems. But it is the rule atm. 

[Myyrä]

5 minutes ago, solkan said:

As far as I can tell, what your result requires is:

1.  Ignore the "Actions caused by other actions do not require spending AP" clause.

2.  Use a second FAQ entry to attempt to deliberately misconstrue another FAQ entry

So, yes, I do question how you honestly arrived at the result you're presenting. 

Don't blame Icemyn, blame the FAQ entry. All of us here seem to agree how Drinking Contest should work, but the FAQ seems to contradict that.

[Icemyn]

29 minutes ago, solkan said:

As far as I can tell, what your result requires is:

1.  Ignore the "Actions caused by other actions do not require spending AP" clause.

2.  Use a second FAQ entry to attempt to deliberately misconstrue another FAQ entry

So, yes, I do question how you honestly arrived at the result you're presenting. 

I believe I have demonstrated very clearly how I arrived at the result I am presenting. 

The two FAQ entries do not seem to disagree with each other or really overlap in any way. One tells you how OTH is created, the other says how you handle OTH.
You are more than welcome to disagree with that, as it seems is your intention. 
Rather than argue with me personally, could you tell me how you believe OTH works that doesn't blatantly disagree with the FAQs?

Edit: To your first point can you tell me how actions caused by other actions do not require spending AP interacts with FAQ#5? It seems to disagree with you. Which sets the precedent for OTH(explicity, other actions implicitly) not being a situation to apply "actions caused by actions". 

[Astrella]

I think the idea might be that you haven't spent the AP yet by the time the action is replaced by On the House? honestly both declarations of actions need to be cleaned up and Brewie just needs a re-write to his abilities. (Honestly Im' hoping with the rules now being available online for free they'll be spruced up a bit.)

[Bazlord_Prime]

On 16/07/2016 at 9:59 AM, Astrella said:

I think the idea might be that you haven't spent the AP yet by the time the action is replaced by On the House? honestly both declarations of actions need to be cleaned up and Brewie just needs a re-write to his abilities. (Honestly Im' hoping with the rules now being available online for free they'll be spruced up a bit.)

I agree with you Astrella that this all needs cleaning up.

The idea about not spending any AP before OTH resolved though, I think can be busted two ways:

A Charge that ends up Attacking Brewy for instance, may be declared outside of the Drinking Contest aura. If those 2 AP haven't yet been spent, and both Attack Actions fail and become instead OTH Actions that THEN cost (1) AP, then the Charge never happened - technically no AP was spent on the Charge, so the Charge never happened, so the model could not have moved within range of the Drinking Contest, and it becomes a paradox. 

Then again, there's the text on Brewy's card, where it says that OTH is taken instead of the intended Action, which you could read either way. Ie, you start a whole new Action, declaring it and paying for it anew; or as a replacement for the declared action, using its AP already paid. Confusing.

This whole thing is messy.  Personally, I only agree with portions of what everybody here is saying as these are all relevant but contradictory points.  Which indicates that the FAQ and/or Brewy needs a re-write.  For the record, I think:

- the text in each FAQ point is meant to address that one particular problem, but also be used in consideration with all the other FAQs and existing rules. So, I don't think that point #5 is meant to override point #2.  I can't back that up with anything other than the text on Brewy's card ("which declare an Action...take the (1) On the House Action instead"), and in FAQ point #2 which states that the OTH Action "replaces" the Attack Action.  This would also apply to any (2) AP actions affected - the AP have already been spent, the active model fails their Wp duel and has to take OTH instead of the (2) AP Action, so no - it wouldn't get any AP back;

- the thing about the "Actions Causing Actions" box on pg 36 is that it says any "additional Action or Actions do not cost any AP".  I don't think this applies here, as OTH replaces the declared Action. This seems to support FAQ #5.

 

So, that's how I can see both sides of this being valid.  For now, I'm going to play it that Brewy's "Drinking Contest" Ability fires after the AP for a Charge has been spent, and it replaces any failed Attacks resulting from that Charge with "On the House" Actions, at no extra cost.  And, if someone uses a (0) Action within the aura and fails, then they have to pay 1 AP to do OTH. If they can't, then nothing happens and they've lost their (0) Action for that Activation.  This to me seems to be the best way to synthesise all of the info hand, within the spirit of the rules.

[Bazlord_Prime]

Let's hear it for Clarification YAAAAAYYYY  (Kermit the Frog-style arm waving and delight):

126) If a model declares a (0) Action within the Brewmaster’s Drinking Contest aura and fails the test, does it have to spend 1 AP for the On The House Action? What if it does not have enough AP? Can the model take another (0) Action?
On The House does not cost any AP, as it’s an Action generated by an Ability (see the errata section). The original Action still used the AP, it was cancelled to take On The House instead. This means that the (0) Action was taken, so the model cannot declare a second (0) Action.

<Get your fresh, new, moist Errata right here:  http://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux-faq-errata>  Thanks, Wyrd!!

And as a bonus, this also means that if a (2) AP action fails within the Drinking Contest, then it's used that (2) AP already, and doesn't get a (1) AP refund (which is kinda what I thought was only fair, if we were making models pay (1) AP for failed (0) Actions).  

[lusciousmccabe]

Is it not the case that your on the house action replaces the attack, then fails so you do nothing?

[santaclaws01]

I think it's still protected by the actions causing actions callout. The attacks from a charge still have an AP cost, that cost is just being waived. Either way though you're still losing the attack your charge generated. Though it does make me wonder what happens in the case of models that can make a single (2) AP attack as part of a charge. If they fail the duel is the charge over or do they now have the ability to declare a (1) AP attack as well?

[Icemyn]

8 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

Is it not the case that your on the house action replaces the attack, then fails so you do nothing?

Correct the OTH action fails, so you don't get poison. Making the charge risk free. 

 

4 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

I think it's still protected by the actions causing actions callout. The attacks from a charge still have an AP cost, that cost is just being waived. Either way though you're still losing the attack your charge generated. Though it does make me wonder what happens in the case of models that can make a single (2) AP attack as part of a charge. If they fail the duel is the charge over or do they now have the ability to declare a (1) AP attack as well?

I would normally agree, except that FAQ #5 makes it clear that if you don't have the AP to spend you don't take the OTH action. Which is very different than actions causing "free" actions. 

To your second point, I don't actually know. Given that you count as taking a (0) action even if you never took one according to the FAQ it's really muddy.
I would say you lose an ap with the (2)ap actions as part of the charge.
"Pneumatic Arm: When this model Charges it may choose to take a single (2)Attack Action instead of two (1) Attack Actions."
So you chose to take a single (2) instead of 2 1's. That choice is precluding you from using the ap not the Brewmaster. 

But if you took a (2) action like say Ice Golem's smash and failed the OTH duel and thus took the (1)ap OTH action, I would say you only spent 1 ap and would still have 1 remaining. If it wasn't in the FAQ I would say that declaring a (0) and then taking a (1) wouldn't use up your (0).
 

[Bengt]

Smash is a (3) action and the Ice Golem has Melee Expert. Which gets me thinking about Expert AP in general. If you only have an expert AP left and fail your drinking duel you can't take On the House since it's not an expert action, right? And do you still have your expert AP left? So you could try again ad infinitum?

[Icemyn]

12 minutes ago, solkan said:

For generated actions, the model declares Action A, fails the duel, then performs On The House instead.  There's no AP spent because it was a generated action.

The simplest way of explaining the FAQ entries is that the Brewmaster's duel is considered to happen during the action declaration phase before action points are spent.  The ruling concerning (0) AP actions seems a bit expansive, but presumably that bit of restructuring was considered nicer than "Thank you for paying 2 AP for this action, now drink."

Note the FAQ:

specifically contradicts the "Risk Free Charge" hypothesis.

 

I mean if you intentionally ignore FAQ number 5, sure. The one that literally states if you don't have ap the action fails. 

[Icemyn]

31 minutes ago, Bengt said:

Smash is a (3) action and the Ice Golem has Melee Expert. Which gets me thinking about Expert AP in general. If you only have an expert AP left and fail your drinking duel you can't take On the House since it's not an expert action, right? And do you still have your expert AP left? So you could try again ad infinitum?

Seemingly yes.

[CougDyver]

24 minutes ago, Icemyn said:

I mean if you intentionally ignore FAQ number 5, sure. The one that literally states if you don't have ap the action fails. 

But aren't you then ignoring FAQ #2?  To me it seems the wording between the two is somewhat contradictory, because #2 is saying each attack off a charge can become an On The House action, even though you spent your 2AP to charge, unless you think that FAQ #2 was only written with respect to models that charge with AP remaining.  I think the intent of #5 is just to say you can't continually try and take (0) actions, and perhaps needs a little rewording so it doesn't conflict with the charge ruling.  As I read it now, if you take your (0) first and fail, it actually costs you your (0) and 1AP, whereas if you do your (0) with no AP remaining, it costs you only the (0) and you don't have to take the OTH action because you have no AP left.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong, that's just how I interpret it.

[lusciousmccabe]

33 minutes ago, CougDyver said:

Except for the overlap relating to OTH...

 

So to fix it, would it be that if you fail with a (0), you still take the OTH action and can't take another (0)?  Or was #5 set up maybe to prevent having to take OTH 3 times if you use 2AP then a (0), failing on all 3 of them?

I believe it was to stop you declaring (0) actions ad infinitum and having them turn into On the House until one of them gets through. 

[SunTsu]

On 15/7/2016 at 4:40 PM, Icemyn said:

1) Q: If the Brewmaster has used the Drinking Contest Action and a model declares a Charge against him from outside of the three inch aura, will it have to take a Wp duel to Attack the Brewmaster with the Attacks generated by the Charge Action if it ends the Charge inside the aura?
A: Yes.

2) Q: If the Brewmaster has used the Drinking Contest Action and is targeted by a Charge, what happens if the charging model fails one (or more) of the duels caused by Drinking Contest?
A: If the model fails the Drinking Contest duel, it must take the (1) On the House Action instead of making an Attack. The model would test separately for each Attack. So, if a model charged the Brewmaster and failed the Drinking Contest duel on its first Attack, it would need to take the On the House Action instead of making the first Attack, but it would then test again for its second Attack.

5) Q: If a model declares a (0) Action within the Brewmaster’s Drinking Contest aura and fails the test, does it have to spend 1 AP for the On The House Action? What if it does not have enough AP? Can the model take another (0) Action?
A: On The House costs 1 AP, regardless of the AP cost of the originally declared Action. If the model does not have enough AP, the Action fails. The model would not be able to declare another (0) Action that Activation.

I really think these are rules very poorly worded and that needs an urgent and careful rewriting...

The problem here is that the faq number 2 directly conflict with the number 5, to a certain degree.

First of all is cery clear that who wrote the faqs made a distinction from declaring an action and effectively committing it by spending AP and resolve it. Is not at all about free actions generated by another action, how faq n.5 explicitly tell.

The faq n.5 is a general statement that explain how Drinking Contest works and how works the On The House actions resolution. It explicitly declares that " If the model does not have enough AP, the Action fails."

The Faq n.2 instead seems to be a sort of "special rule" about charging, but maybe not... you can read it both ways, and now I explain why.

By RAW, if I have a model that declares a charge while inside the aura, if it fail the test it will INSTEAD use 1ap to take OTH action and it can use the remaining 1ap as it whishes.

If you have a model outside the aura that declares a charge, it will do the carge movement, but for faq n.2 have to test to make charging attacks. If it fails, having no remaing ap, BY RAW per faq n.5 it will don't take OTH actions at all. Here is where the faqs seems to contraddict each other. But... let's make another exemplum...

If I have a master with the fast condition that charge from outside the aura and then fail the two tests to make attacks, it will get OTH 2 times remaining with 0ap to spend.

It was this the meaning of the faqs??? Maybe... maybe not.... I really dunno. Personally I'd say that I don't think so, but nevertless is what they wrote. And I really sincerely didn't understand this faqs very well.

Also, if we would agree on this getting what I said as the right point of view, it leaves some gray areas around. In actions like flurry or defensive stance, you have to discard a card if you fail the test? I'd say no, but I can't tell for sure in absolute... About flurry-like ability, you have to test 3 times or just 2??? By raw it's three... If you have specialized AP you can take the OTH action? I would say yes, both because the OTH is mandotory ("must") and it don't specify "general ap", and finally just to avoid an infinite meaningless loop. But here is a matter of point of views... If you have a model that MUST make a certain action (such as killjoy that have to charge a target) in the aura? How you handle this? I would say it will no charge on a failing test, but who wins between the two specific rules? Which is the "more specific" one???

Here, I can't recognize the real intention between the lines. I can guess that it was something like this: "ok, let's do the OTH action costs 1ap instead of what the model would normally have paid for the original action it wanted to make, but with the exception of the charge (or all the actions that generate attacks/actions? Who can say...) that will trigger the test and will burn any remaing ap the model get (or it will not burn remaing ap? Who knows...)".

In the end, I think the faqs made it very much unclear of before, and very difficult to rule it, because it will force to make house rules and personal interpretations to handle it. A very bad job. And don't help at all the missing of a formal autority (the old rules marshal?) that in a situation like that at least could gives a maybe just temporary but official and equal for all way to handle it. My two cents.

[Ludvig]

To me the logical way to resolve it has always been that you pay the AP for the original action but you take a (free) OTH in the sense that you pay the AP you originally intended to pay. A charge resulting in OTH = 2AP for the charge, a (0) would have used your (0) but leave two AP etc. These FaQs only mess the whole thing up.

[santaclaws01]

I stand by my statement of actions being caused by actions not being the same as a (0) action. We know that the FAQs shouldn't be broadly applied and even though a (0) action and an action generated by another action are functionally the same in terms of AP spent, that's the only similarity they share and we shouldn't be applying the restrictions of a (0) action onto generated actions.

[Ludvig]

52 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

I stand by my statement of actions being caused by actions not being the same as a (0) action. We know that the FAQs shouldn't be broadly applied and even though a (0) action and an action generated by another action are functionally the same in terms of AP spent, that's the only similarity they share and we shouldn't be applying the restrictions of a (0) action onto generated actions.

I hope this isn't related to my last post. I must have been unclear if it is so, because that wasn't what I was trying to say.

You're only allowed to try your (0) once each turn for obvious reasons. Failing to do you (0) because you took a drink is like failing it because you black jokered the duel, you've had your chance to try the once per turn. Otherwise you could try your (0) until it succeeded. I'm not saying drinking contest should count as your (0) just that you can't do the (0) again, you could still get drunk for your other two AP.

[santaclaws01]

1 minute ago, Ludvig said:

I hope this isn't related to my last post. I must have been unclear if it is so, because that wasn't what I was trying to say.

You're only allowed to try your (0) once each turn for obvious reasons. Failing to do you (0) because you took a drink is like failing it because you black jokered the duel, you've had your chance to try the once per turn. Otherwise you could try your (0) until it succeeded. I'm not saying drinking contest should count as your (0) just that you can't do the (0) again, you could still get drunk for your other two AP.

It's not. It was more towards the general application of FAQ#5, which is specifically about (0) actions, to things that aren't (0) actions. I just didn't want to quote every instance of people doing it.

[solkan]

3 hours ago, Icemyn said:

So if I'm reading this right charging the Brewmaster from outside his aura is basically risk free correct?

By Risk free I mean you will not have to take any On The House (OTH) actions regardless of failing the duel.

FAQ number 5 makes it clear that you are replacing whatever action you took with a (1) action OTH instead, should you fail.
If you don't have any ap the OTH action fails.  
So if I charge and spend both of my ap to do so, now if I fail either of the duels when attacking I no longer have the ap to take the OTH action, so it fails.

For generated actions, the model declares Action A, fails the duel, then performs On The House instead.  There's no AP spent because it was a generated action.

The simplest way of explaining the FAQ entries is that the Brewmaster's duel is considered to happen during the action declaration phase before action points are spent.  The ruling concerning (0) AP actions seems a bit expansive, but presumably that bit of restructuring was considered nicer than "Thank you for paying 2 AP for this action, now drink."

Note the FAQ:

Quote

2) Q: If the Brewmaster has used the Drinking Contest Action and is targeted by a Charge, what happens if the charging model fails one (or more) of the duels caused by Drinking Contest?

A: If the model fails the Drinking Contest duel, it must take the (1) On the House Action instead of making an Attack. The model would test separately for each Attack. So, if a model charged the Brewmaster and failed the Drinking Contest duel on its first Attack, it would need to take the On the House Action instead of making the first Attack, but it would then test again for its second Attack.

specifically contradicts the "Risk Free Charge" hypothesis.

 

[solkan]

As far as I can tell, what your result requires is:

1.  Ignore the "Actions caused by other actions do not require spending AP" clause.

2.  Use a second FAQ entry to attempt to deliberately misconstrue another FAQ entry

So, yes, I do question how you honestly arrived at the result you're presenting. 

[CougDyver]

29 minutes ago, Icemyn said:

The two FAQ entries do not seem to disagree with each other or really overlap in any way. One tells you how OTH is created, the other says how you handle OTH

Except for the overlap relating to OTH...

 

So to fix it, would it be that if you fail with a (0), you still take the OTH action and can't take another (0)?  Or was #5 set up maybe to prevent having to take OTH 3 times if you use 2AP then a (0), failing on all 3 of them?

[solkan]

25 minutes ago, Icemyn said:

I mean if you intentionally ignore FAQ number 5, sure. The one that literally states if you don't have ap the action fails. 

So you're honestly claiming that you read FAQ #2 as expecting the model to pay the additional AP to perform the On The House action?

I simply don't believe you.