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Oct 4, 2011 -- 4:12AM, Metafictional wrote:

Let's assume that I'm being attacked by a power that dazes if I hit, and I have Instinctive Darkness.  The attack targets me, and I play my reaction, even though it has to wait for the action to resolve before it goes off.  Am I right in thinking that even if I become dazed by the attack, my Cloud of Darkness still appears, because I triggered the power before I was dazed? 

No.  The trigger occurred, but you can only USE the power after the trigger resolves, and once the attack is finished and it's time for you to take your triggered action, you're Dazed and you can't take Immediate Actions.  So, no frightened squid-monster action for you this round.

The good news is, you didn't start the action and then have it fizzle - you never started it at all, so you didn't use your encounter power and you didn't spend your Immediate for this round.

Yes, it waits for its trigger to finish but not necessarily the action that contains the trigger to finish.  What you have done, though, is claim that "targeting" is the event, but that's not a reactable event by any rule you've yet presented.  You jump on "targeting" as the only thing that matters, but for all cases it's "targeting with an attack."  The attack is the event that triggers the reaction.

As far as your sequence, yes, the Cleric can react to the first attack.  Furthermore, that reaction can interrupt the power, by for example teleporting the Cleric out of the Fighter's melee reach from the square the Cleric was in when the primary attack was made.  The Fighter had shifted into that square, but is now out of range, so can't make the secondary attack.  Or, if the 1d8 damage drops the fighter unconscious, the secondary attack would also not occur.

I'm not clear on line 2 where you get Push 3 squares.  The primary attack is a push 1, and is resolved completely.  The two more squares and prone are part of the secondary attack.  If the secondary attack misses or isn't a valid attack, that part doesn't happen.

Line 5 isn't right, as the shift is part of the Hit line in the primary attack.  The push and the shift resolve at the same time, then the reaction, and then the secondary attack.

Just because movement is involved does not mean that the movement is distinct from the attack.  An Effect line of shifting would be distinct, and a reaction that immobilized the Fighter would prevent it.  A reaction that immobilized the Fighter in this case would resolve after the Hit line of the triggering attack, which means the Fighter has already shifted.

You can only react to being targeted by an attack, or targeted by a power if it's not an attack.  Whether it's an attack or a utility, the targeting doesn't happen in a vacuum and it's not the important part in regards to timing.  A power that reacts to targeting doesn't say "Trigger: You are targeted."  It is always "You are targeted by (something)."  Usually it's an attack, but it doesn't have to be.  And a reaction would still resolve after whatever thing that's targeting you resolves.

Also, the entire hit line with all of its components is resolved at the  same time.  You can't split it.  There is no difference, for example,  between "Hit: 5 damage and you slide the target 1 square." "Hit: 5  damage.  Slide the target 1 square."  As long as it's in the Hit line, there is no time between the resolution of the individual parts.

Seriously, you've been given several examples that literally break down to meaningless contradictions under your interpretation as well as more complete and more robust competing interpretation that doesn't completely invalidate the concept of "reaction."  How much more will it take to convince you?  Do you acknowledge the possibility of being wrong?

So, you claim that both arguments have merits despite the fact that one of them has no rules basis that you can find?

How exactly are you determining merit, again?

Nothing in the making an attack sequence even hints at the possibility of reactions within an attack other than the fact that they laid out a step by step process to help newbies understand what's going on.  None of the immediate reaction rules reference it.  None of the immediate reaction rules even suggest it.  So how does an argument that a reaction timing appears out of nowhere that isn't mentioned in the reaction rules have merit?

Fluff-based rulings (drawing an arrow and pointing it at someone) fail because they don't cover all conditions.  How about Fireball?  To aim it, you actually pick an origin square.  That's not the same as targeting, because it doesn't care about anything not in the origin square.  Targeting a creature with fireball happens for the entire AoE, but there's no fluff-based action taken by the wizard to react to.  Fluff is not rules.

It gets even worse when you translate it to say, a close burst 1 weapon attack.  Sometimes the fluff is one great big sweep of your weapon, sometimes it is fluffed as individual hits.  Either way, a reaction by one of the creatures targeted will not interrupt the attack for any of the other creatures, yet by the "making an attack sequence is reactable" argument it would.  What about targeting a close burst?  They are all targeted at the same time?  But no, your weapon flurry is fluffed as sequential.  Even the sweep will hit them all in succession, by fluff.  After all, you can't really hit them all at once with your greatsword.  Except the rules say otherwise.  Fluff is not rules.