Council of Elrond

Clarification 7 wrote:A detainment attack is considered successful if its prowess is higher than the defending character's final prowess whether he tapped or not

which is a little off, but with this fix we can continue ...

minor, underline mine wrote:A strike from a detainment attack is considered successful if its prowess is higher than the defending character's final prowess whether he tapped or not.

What does "whether he tapped or not." mean here?

To me this means...

If I have a character with 6 prowess facing a 9 prowess strike, from a detainment attack. If I choose to let him tap, and I roll a 3, then the final prowesses are 9 v 9, or 9 not greater than 9. My guy is tapped, but that doesn't matter, the final prowess is 9 v 9.

Correct?

changed, "choose to tap him" to "choose to let him tap"

What is the source?

Common misconception:
"a character taps to/against strike"

Correctly:
an untapped character may decide to not to automatically tap after unsuccessful strike for a cost of taking -3 penalty to his prowess against given strike.

This means that a character that was untapped at beginning of strike sequence always remains untapped for duration of the strike sequence, unless tapped or wounded in result (or as a condition) of action declared in the strike sequence.

If a character is tapped or wounded (for any reason) before roll is made, he suffers -1 (if tapped) or -2 (if wounded) penalty to his prowess.

Man, I am having a hard time with this one:

What does "whether he tapped or not." mean here?

Does that snippet mean?

A. Wether he tapped as a result of the roll?
or
B. Wether he declined to take a -3?

Thanks

Taken out context the phrase "whether he tapped or not." is meaningless.

Because wording of:
"A strike from a detainment attack is considered successful if its prowess is higher than the defending character's final prowess whether he tapped or not."
is imprecise (i have explained why) i can only try to guess what author was trying to express.

Strike from detainment attack is considered successful regardless the fact whether the strike caused tapping of character.
If character was already tapped (or wounded) a successful strike from detainment attack obviously will not tap him.
Only criterion that decides whether a strike was successful/failed/ineffectual is result of roll (eventually other effect that makes the strike automatically successful/failed/ineffectual).

Many times, people confuse a strike succeeding with the result of a successful strike. Something that prevents the result does not also prevent the strike from succeeding.

Thus, Sable Shield prevents the result of a successful strike (wounding), but effects which rely on the strike succeeding will still apply.

A card such as Blow Turned will prevent a character from being tapped as a result of a detainment strike, but the strike will still be considered successful. I think that's all the clarification is saying.