Action as Passive Condition

[Konrad Klar]

The passive condition must exist when this resulting action is resolved in its own chain of effects, or the action is canceled.

Corruption. A non-Wizard, non-Hobbit character receives 2 corruption points. Target character makes a corruption check each time a character in his company becomes wounded. Cannot be duplicated on a given character. During the organization phase, a character with this card may tap to attempt to remove it. Make a roll (or draw a #): if this result is greater than 4, discard this card.

"character in his company becomes wounded" is passive condition here.

However when resulting action is resolved in its own chain of effects, this condition does not exist. At this time character is wounded (or discarded, eliminated, or even untapped) but not becomes wounded.

Reading quoted rule strictly, action: "Target character makes a corruption check" is canceled.

Situation is quite similar to discarding card as active condition. It may not be (and is not) checked two times (at declaration and when to comes to resolution).

Proposed modification is:

Unless passive condition is action, the passive condition must exist when this resulting action is resolved in
its own chain of effects, or the action is canceled.

[zarathustra]

Hmmm.... I'm not sure Despair of the Heart works exactly as you suppose. What reason is there to say that the character has not become wounded when DotH checks for its passive condition at resolution? The wounding occurred in the previous chain of effects, right? So when DotH is triggered and the cc-effect attempts to resolve, it will still be the case that the wounding was in the previous chain of effects. I don't know how it could be any more immediate than that.

[Konrad Klar]

What reason is there to say that the character has not become wounded when DotH checks for its passive condition at resolution?

"the character has become wounded" is not the same as "character becomes wounded".
Similarly "company was moving through [w][w]" is not the same as "company is moving through [w][w]".

Action from Long Winter is activated by "company is moving through [w][w]".
In next chain of effects it is declared and Deeper Shadow or Master of Wood, Water, or Hill is played in response.
At resolution no [w][w] in company's site path. Company is not moving through [w][w] at this point. Company merely was moving through [w][w] and action is canceled.

Is it better visible now?

[tharasix]

Konrad, is there anyway that the corruption check from DotH ever get triggered under your interpretation? I think the issue here is not an incorrect definition of passive conditions in the CRF, but an overly literal reading of DotH. I would rather issue a ruling on DotH to clarify how that one card is supposed to work than change a ruling which applies to a whole class of cards.

[Konrad Klar]

I don't think that definition of passive condition is incorrect. Only one rule is not perfect.
Something Has Slipped is other card when "becomes wounded" is passive condition too.
CC from Pale Dream-maker is activated by action: discarding card from hand.

However most actions, for which passive condition is other action (exhausting deck, discarding other card) falls into category "discard" and no problem here, because :

Annotation 9a: If a card is required to be discarded by some passive condition, the card is discarded immediately when the condition resolves, not in the following chain of effects.

[tharasix]

That really doesn't change the fact that I would much rather see card rulings than a rule modification. It's a safer path, as it's easier to guarantee the scope of the ruling.

[miguel]

I agree with Chad, no need to make an actual rule modification over this. The wording on some cards needs a bit or "interpreting" (like Morgul-horse) as far as the rules go, but I'd say most people play them in the way they were intented anyway so it's not a big problem. A card ruling would be fine by me.

[miguel]

So do we need to a ruling here? I'd be fine just locking this one, as it doesn't really change how anyone plays Despair of the Heart. Mark?

[zarathustra]

Sounds good. Unless there's more to this, I guess we can put it on ice.