Council of Elrond

Some cards cause "tap" action on their targets but only require that the target was present in play as their active condition.
Example is All Thought Bent upon It.

All Thought Bent upon It wrote:Sage only. Playable during the site phase on an untapped sage at a site where Information is playable. Tap the sage and the site. Search your play deck and choose an item you must reveal to your opponent. Place this item in your hand and reshuffle your play deck. The sage makes a corruption check.

Both sage and site are tapped in result of the card but text of the card requires an untapped state only for sage, but not for site.

There are so many of such cards that it more makes a sense to make one general regulation than to make a multiple erratas for a particular cards.

Proposed regulation:

"Unless a text of card states otherwise, if a card causes "tap" action on its target, the target must be in play and be untapped both at declaration and at resolution of the card."

Example of text of card that states otherwise is text of The Hunt: "[...] If untapped, tap Alatar afterwards." .

Are you remembering that sites are already covered by base rules:

MELE wrote:Certain resource cards other than items, allies, and factions are playable during the site phase and state the conditions under which they may be played. Such a card only requires an untapped site if it states that the site taps when played.

No. I did not remember it. Thanks.
Anyway:

Ringlore, The Wizards Unlimited Edition" wrote:Sage only, only playable at a site where Information is playable, and only if a character in his company has a Gold Ring. Playable only during the site phase. Tap the sage and the site. Play to test a Gold Ring. No roll (or draw) is used. The player may replace the Gold Ring with any ring from his hand (except for The One Ring).

I guess this rule mostly applies to permanent events. Such as "When I/you know anything/more" and other "information-site" MP cards.

UPDATE: I have had many opportunities to consider active conditions since this post.

Konrad Klar wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 8:03 pm Some cards cause "tap" action on their targets but only require that the target was present in play as their active condition.
Example is All Thought Bent upon It.

All Thought Bent upon It wrote:Sage only. Playable during the site phase on an untapped sage at a site where Information is playable. Tap the sage and the site. Search your play deck and choose an item you must reveal to your opponent. Place this item in your hand and reshuffle your play deck. The sage makes a corruption check.

Both sage and site are tapped in result of the card but text of the card requires an untapped state only for sage, but not for site.

To resolve this discrepancy we will need to review the rules for Active Conditions.

• Condition, Active: A prerequisite for an action actively made by a player. Typically this involves tapping a character. discarding an item. or having a character of a particular skill in play. Active conditions are declared and resolved with no time for response by an opponent or yourself. (MELE, Glossary)
• An active condition must be in play or established when the action requiring it is declared. Active conditions serve as the price of an action. They are restrictions on the player invoking the action. (CRF, Terms, Active Conditions)

"Playable during the site phase on an untapped sage at a site where Information is playable" is the active condition for playing the All Thought Bent Upon It card. As the active condition for playing the card, it is immediately checked when the card is played. No discrepancy in the rules arises from the All Thought Bent Upon It having actions that tap the sage because the active condition for playing the card itself has already resolved outside of the chain of effects.

Since 2nd post of the thread it was known and there was no disagreement that All Thought Bent upon It is not problematic card.

The 2nd post was merely tangential to the actual issue.

What is the issue with Ring Lore?

What about Annotation 5 on active conditions?

And wouldn't the proposed regulation ("... the target must be ... untapped ... at resolution.") break cards requiring tapping an entity as an active condition since the entity is tapped at resolution?

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:38 am What is the issue with Ring Lore?

MELE wrote:Certain resource cards other than items, allies, and factions are playable during the site phase and state the conditions under which they may be played. Such a card only requires an untapped site if it states that the site taps when played.

Neither above rule nor text of Ring Lore require untapped sage.
Although action (main effect) of Ring Lore taps the sage.
According to proposed regulation both sage and site must be untapped to play Ring Lore.

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:38 am What about Annotation 5 on active conditions?

Is not applicable both for Ring Lore and my proposal.
It is applicable for actions where tapping an entity is condition, not result of the action (main effect).

CDavis7M wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:38 am And wouldn't the proposed regulation ("... the target must be ... untapped ... at resolution.") break cards requiring tapping an entity as an active condition since the entity is tapped at resolution?

As above.
An action cannot both require untapped x and tapping x at the same time.
Condition is either "untapped X" or it is "tap X".

Still doesn't solve the problem of Far-sight.

Bandobras Took wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:12 pm Still doesn't solve the problem of Far-sight.

It is not intended to solve the problem.
BTW. Recreated problem, because someone decided to beautify the text of Token of Goodwill and now it is " discard an item from his company (as listed below) to make a roll" instead " discard an item from his company (as listed below) and make a roll".

OK, I see the ringlore issue and I agree. Ringlore with errata is especially weird.

What is the issue with far-sight? If the sage was tapped, the searching and choosing could not happen, but the corruption check could happen. Is this the point? It's silly but... is that it?

The Token errata achieves its desired effect. Does the "to" not making the discarding action an active condition for the roll? The use of "to" is prevalent in the game.


Anyway, back to the proposal. I think it makes more sense to correct these cards one by one. If anything, because that is how a player will be able to find the rule. But also because the proposal could break other things. Especially because many cards do use "tap to" as an active condition for some other action, and then the character would be tapped at declaration, and so not untapped at resolution.

Not to derail further but:

Tap the sage and the site to search through your play deck and choose an item that you must reveal to your opponent.

Tapping the sage/site are clearly active conditions of declaring the search the deck action. That means they have to tap before resolution, but Far-sight needs an untapped sage/site at resolution for card play.

Solution is "nested chain of effect". You probably know.

Yes, but I don't like nested solutions.

The active conditions for playing the card are checked (declared and resolved out side of the chain for playing the card) before any of the actions written on the card are even declared.

Therefore, before you even declare the "search" action and then tap the sage and the site as the active conditions of that action, you have already resolved the active condition of the untapped sage outside of the chain of effects.

The card is already played. You don't check the various playability conditions again when the actions listed on the card are declared or resolved. Of course, the entity that the card was played on must be in play at resolution, as it is the target, the active condition.