Clarifications after first time playing against a Pandora crew

[Sneaki]

Just had my first experience playing against Pandora and it opened up some rule questions I am unclear about.
- Using Pandora's 'compounding emotions' to end the Focus condition-> Do I go from 2 focus to 1, or 2 focus to 0?
- Using Candy's Self Loathing -> does this trigger another duel based on the attack action, or is it an automatic succeed and go straight to a damage flip?
- Does Focus apply to Terrifying flips for the action?
- Does Pandora's Luck Thief make Focus a negative flip?
- Combining the previous 2 questions, does Luck Thief + Terrifying mean I should not use my focus against Pandora?

I was playing as Perdita and it was a rough time.

[Adran]

If you end a condition you remove it entirely. Ending focus+2 means you have no focus. 

I find the easiest way to think about self loathing is to think you just borrow the damage track from an action for that self loathing attack. So if self loathing hits, you suffer a damage flip with accuracy modifier based on the self loathing attack. 

Luck thief will turn focus into negative flips, so I would never use focus against a luck thief model.

The terrifying duel is resolved before you get to spend focus on the action so they don't have any interactions.  ( terrifying happens during step3 targeting and focus is spent in step 4 ( 4.1 modify the duel). 

[solkan]

56 minutes ago, Sneaki said:

Do I read this as the action automatically succeeds, just use the damage track?

No.  You resolve the action as normal, but pretend that the text for the other action’s parts follow immediately after those italics.

[Adran]

Let's say you self loathing a model with a custom peacekeeper, which reads "target suffers 2/4/5 damage. "

In effect you pretend that self loathing now reads as" target suffers 2/4/5 damage."

 If you copied Seamus .50 cal which is "once per turnturn target suffers 4/6/8. " 

Self loathing would read as " once per turnturn target suffers 4/6/8".

[Sneaki]

8 hours ago, Adran said:

I find the easiest way to think about self loathing is to think you just borrow the damage track from an action for that self loathing attack. So if self loathing hits, you suffer a damage flip with accuracy modifier based on the self loathing attack. 

"This action games the effect, cost and any special restrictions of the chosen action"

Do I read this as the action automatically succeeds, just use the damage track?

Said another way: Target an enemy and chose one of those model's skill. Then use that skills damage track to have the target model apply damage to itself. Apply any effects, but ignore any triggers. 

I have taken the assumption that it is just the damage track, so engagement rules for Ranged or Melee are not applied.

 

Thanks for the excellent clarifications thus far!

[Sneaki]

This make sense!

Thanks for taking the time to help clear this up for me.

[solkan]

The key, in case you're accepting how it is and need to explain it to someone else, is that all of the text in Self Loathing is in italics, so it resolves when the action is declared.  That ends up with the sequence:

1. Declare Self Loathing
2. Resolve the italics text, choosing one of the target's actions and the action in progress (temporarily) gains the effect, cost and restrictions of that action.  The instructions don't say anything about the stat line (where the range, stat value, resist value, etc) are located, so none that changes.  And that's also why the triggers aren't copied.
3. Proceed with the action sequence, going through the duel, effect resolution, etc.

Now, most attack actions are boring things where it's just "Target suffers 2/3/4 damage", but you're missing out on a lot if you just think of an attack action as a damage track.  There are plenty of attacks like Seduction or Straight Jacket that don't say the words "Target suffers damage" and do other things.  (Watch out, though, because you have to satisfy any of the italic text for the action that's being duplicated, and you're going to see cases where you can't satisfy that text.  If you can't satisfy the text, the action fails and you won't accomplish anything.)

Sure, thematically, Self Loathing is based on the idea of Candy's opponent using its own attacks against itself.  But that's not how it's implemented (making the target use its own attack against itself), because that would be a big mess and would violate a few different core rules (such as the prohibition against a model targeting itself with an attack).

Note:  In the previous edition, Self Loathing just copied the damage track of the action.  This may cause some confusion if you run across a discussion of the action from the previous edition.

[Sneaki]

To verify I am understanding:

If I am Candy and I do self-loathing against Dorian Crowe and choose Cigarette Holder, Dorian Crowe would gain Burning +1 and Distracted +1. No triggers are applied.

If I am Candy and I do self-loathing against Dr. McMourning and choose Skull Saw, Dr. McMourning would take 2/3/5 damage and my opponent would have to chose to discard a card or gain Injured +2.

[voranth]

On 6/14/2022 at 10:06 PM, Sneaki said:

To verify I am understanding:

If I am Candy and I do self-loathing against Dorian Crowe and choose Cigarette Holder, Dorian Crowe would gain Burning +1 and Distracted +1. No triggers are applied.

If I am Candy and I do self-loathing against Dr. McMourning and choose Skull Saw, Dr. McMourning would take 2/3/5 damage and my opponent would have to chose to discard a card or gain Injured +2.

Assuming Candy won the opposed willpower duels for self loathing, yes.