Immolate and Reflect magic

[Echo3178]

hey guys, had a game of malifaux the other day and came across a situation id like clarified.

i was playing sonnia, a friend kaeris, kaeris cast immolate on sonnia, which i beat and managed to get the required tomes for reflect magic.

my friend thinks that kaerris should not be affected by reflect magic because she wasnt carrying any burning tokens,

i think she should because the trigger doesnt state that you are targeting, only that the caster suffers the spells affects.

any input would be welcome, im fairly sure one of you has come across this before! lol

thanks,

Echo

[marshimartian]

I would say you are correct.

Immolate says that it may only be cast on a model with burning tokens. Kaeris met that retirement when she made her casting duel. Sonnia's trigger only redirects the effects of the spell.

This is in the same way that a Kirai with burning tokens can redirect the effects of Immolate to a Seishin without burning tokens. Same with Pandora's Martyr.

Hope that helps!

[Echo3178]

thank you very much for agreeing with me haha!

[CRC]

I would say not. Reflect Magic changes a spells target. Kaeris is not a valid target for Immolate. The spell fizzles.

[psychocamel]

If I remember rightly the spell doesn't check itself to see if it's a legal target like it would in MtG, therefore it wouldn't fizzle.

The spell has already been cast, already targeted the model, and now you get the results based on the difference.

[dgraz]

Reflect does say that if the target couldn't be affected by the spell then it doesn't work.....so I would have to say no.....Kaeris is immune to burning tokens, therefore she couldn't be targeted by Immolate.

[psychocamel]

But it says affected by, not targeted by

[dgraz]

I don't have it in front of me, but doesn't it also say something like.....as if the caster is the target?

[Ozz]

Reflect Magic:

After this model resists a spell targeting it, the caster replaces this model as a target and suffers the spell's effects. Use the difference in casting and resist totals if a difference is required. The reflected spell has no effect if the target could not be affected by it.

Immolate:

(Casting stats) Dg 3/5/6 This spell may only be cast on a model with a burning token. If target model is killed, replace it with one 50mm marker. the marker is obscuring, Ht 5, and hazardous (dg 3)

From the wording of immolate there, i would have to say that i think that reflect magic would work. As to cast a spell on a model it needs a burning token. That requirement is met when you make the casting duel. Then after that has been met the target changes, so as far as i can see it all still goes through as normal.

[dgraz]

idk....I think the wording backs me up. 'May only be cast on a model' seems synonymous with 'may only target a model'.....if you can't cast it, you can't target it / if you can't target it, you can't cast it.

If Kaeris can't have burning tokens then she can't be affected by a spell that only affects models with burning tokens.

Reflect replaces the caster as a target.....Kaeris can't ever be targeted by Immolate because she can never have burning tokens.

I honestly can see the argument for it to go the other way.....I just can't believe that that is the intent....but hey I've been wrong before. It's another one of those little grey areas which pop up all the time with so many different abilities and interactions. RM will be needed I guess.

[psychocamel]

To me it's not a question of can it target her, it's a question of "if she is somehow targeted, can this affect her"

For instance, you say she can never have burning tokens, but what if her immunity is removed with Zoraida's Hex or Carrion Effigy's Diminished Resistance. That would mean she could get fire tokens, and could be targeted by the spell.

The question basically comes down to, does the spell care if the target would've been legal, or does it only care if the effect happens now that the target has already been made.

EDIT: and I do know that the last part is mostly rephrasing your part, I can see how it can be read both ways too

Edited August 22, 2012 by psychocamel

[DeusInnomen]

First thing's first, where are you folks getting the impression that Kaeris is immune to Burning Tokens? It doesn't say that anywhere on her card. It's actually irrelevant to the rest of the explanation, because the outcome will be the same, but I wanted to clear that confusion.

Here's how you explain the interaction between Immolate and Reflect Magic. Pop open your PDF or physical copy of the Rules Manual and go to page 51 where it has the Casting Sequence. At step 3e, the Reflect Magic trigger is declared and 3f is when the resisting is successful. At that immediate moment is when Reflect Magic goes off and it does the following things: Sonnia is now considered the Caster of Immolate and Kaeris is now considered the Resisting Model, and Sonnia's Resist Total is now the Casting Total while Kaeris's Casting Total is now the Resist Total. This changes the result to the Resisting Model losing the Duel and the effects are applied.

However, the trigger also says that the caster must be able to be affected by the spell. Immolate's requirement, which is the first line of the spell, states that the target can only be cast on a model with Burning Tokens. You make this check as soon as you swap the Caster and Resisting Model designations. If Kaeris does not have any Burning Tokens, she cannot be affected by the spell and it has no effect. (This is also true if she is somehow immune, because that has the same end result: she does not have any Burning Tokens. The outcome is unchanged.)

I hope that clears this up a bit.

[psychocamel]

Going by the information DeusInnomen has presented, that does indeed seem to be the answer.

I see that it really does recheck to see if the target is legal when determining if it can effected.

Therefore, I concede defeat and agree that the spell wouldn't work

[dgraz]

I thought that I had the procedure right, but without the book and cards in front of me I couldn't be sure, and the arguments provided made me doubt myself...........the fact that I got the Kaeris immune to burning tokens thing wrong proves my fallible memory.

Thanks for clearing it up Deus.

I could have sworn that she had an ability that said she was immune......oh well.

[marshimartian]

Checking for a legal target is different than checking if a model could be affected.

"This spell may only target a model with burning tokens" is very different from "this spell has no effect on models without burning tokens"

It could be poor wording but

Targeting Restriction =/= Unaffected

Consider shooting into melee and randomly hitting a model that's out of line of sight. For consistency sake, let's say it's Rasputina casting December's Curse. The spell didn't check for target legality after it's been randomized.

So if targeting restrictions were checked before aplying the spell's effects, ranged spells would never be randomized to models out of LoS.

Just my take on it

[Headcase2]

Consider shooting into melee and randomly hitting a model that's out of line of sight. For consistency sake, let's say it's Rasputina casting December's Curse. The spell didn't check for target legality after it's been randomized.

So if targeting restrictions were checked before aplying the spell's effects, ranged spells would never be randomized to models out of LoS.

But if a Ht 1 model casts a spell into melee and randomly hits Hamelin (Bully: can't be targeted by Ht 1) the shot would simply fail, if it happens to hit Pandora there would be a Wp duel, and so on. The reason you can hit something that's out of LoS is because the rules specifically allow it, there's nothing about ignoring targeting restrictions there.

Similarly, if you reflect Obey back to a Master model the spell fails because it can't affect masters.

I think DeusInNomen got this one.

[Ozz]

I think Deus may have this one as well, i was just referring to the wording on the cards, rather than the spell sequence in the rules manual

[Ausplosions]

I think DeusInNomen got this one.

Yeah, I'd say so too.

[DeusInnomen]

:1_Happy_Puppet2:

[dgraz]

I had a broken watch once.......even it was right twice a day..............

(Of course that damn watch is still right more than I am.)

[Echo3178]

well, after a long hard debate, (which im glad i wasnt a part of! ) thanks again for clearing it up! deus, you are my hero. everyone else, well yeah...

[Therril_83]

This may almost be considered threadomancy, but I don't feel this is cleared up. It came up in my game last night, and although I chose not to cheat in the suit to reflect it simply to avoid the argument, it would be nice to continue the discussion.

So, my thoughts on the matter is basically what marshimartian wrote:

Checking for a legal target is different than checking if a model could be affected.

"This spell may only target a model with burning tokens" is very different from "this spell has no effect on models without burning tokens"

It could be poor wording but

Targeting Restriction =/= Unaffected

Immolate does state that it can only be cast at models with burning counters, ie targeted at.

It does not state that it would not affect them.

There are a few examples of spells saying "does only affect models with .." and those would ofcoure not be able to be reflected unless the caster fills that requirement, but a spell saying "target enemy model" would be, since it is targeted against an enemy in the first place.

[Twisted Metal]

Wow some how I missed this thread when it first came out. Good debate on both sides and worthy of an official ruling. Perhaps this one will get answered along side the immolate marker question.

Edited November 12, 2012 by Twisted Metal
Impatience W/ RM's dominated post and thought better of it.