When do you drop blast damage markers?

[Maniacal_cackle]

Came across this issue while looking at blast marker rules today: when do you drop the blast marker from a variable damage profile, and when does that damage happen? Take a variable damage profile with blast on severe (such as 2/4/6blast) as an example.

Up until now, I've been playing that you drop the blast marker from severe and resolve all damage simultaneously, but I've realised that's not quite possible.

You don't know you have severe damage until step two of damage timing on the original model (model A). From here, I assume that the blast marker is part of the damage itself (and therefore happens immediately/does not have to wait to be applied?)

So then you drop a blast marker, let's say it hits models B and C. But now the damage has occurred at two separate times. Does it just retroactively become simultaneous? 

The rules state "if multiple models suffer damage at the same time (such as from a shockwave or blast)", so there's two possible interpretations of this (that models A, B, and C are all suffering damage at the same time, or that models B and C are suffering damage at the same time but after model A).

What happens from here? I'm guessing most people would lean towards treating A as simultaneous to B and C? So you play a bit of catchup with B and C, ignoring steps one and two (irrelevant to them) and do step three  for all models (apply damage reduction)?

[LeperColony]

4 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

From here, I assume that the blast marker is part of the damage itself (and therefore happens immediately/does not have to wait to be applied?)

This is my understanding as well, which means that the damage is inflicted simultaneously to all models.  

[Rob Lo]

It's always been a thing where people think of damage as a number, oh and also an extra blast. I remember one of the devs back in 2e trying to get people to think of it as one thing, happening all at once. It doesn't do 6, and a blast, it does 6 blast. Blast happens at the same time as the 6 because they're one thing. The amount of actual damage any particular model involved takes does depend on if they're the target or standing nearby, but they're both damaged by the same thing at the same time. This is all more theoretical and any particular fiddly rule in the 3e book might tell you something different, so if someone shows up quoting rules, I'd listen to them.

 

[solkan]

57 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Came across this issue while looking at blast marker rules today: when do you drop the blast marker from a variable damage profile, and when does that damage happen? Take a variable damage profile with blast on severe (such as 2/4/6blast) as an example.

Up until now, I've been playing that you drop the blast marker from severe and resolve all damage simultaneously, but I've realised that's not quite possible.

You don't know you have severe damage until step two of damage timing on the original model (model A). From here, I assume that the blast marker is part of the damage itself (and therefore happens immediately/does not have to wait to be applied?)

You follow the Damage Timing steps.

When you do the damage flip in Step 2, and the Damage result becomes a Blast, the other models become involved and it becomes simultaneous damage from the point on.