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May 2, 2012 -- 8:09PM, Plaguescarred wrote:

Taken literally, Incentive Darkness doesn't work RAW because it doesn't have a Trigger (RC 94) for the Immediate Reaction to wait for to finish. How's that ?

Except it does clearly have a trigger, even if it doesn't have a separate Trigger line.

In the same way that "attack" can mean "attack power" or just "attack", and "weapon attack" can mean "attack with the Weapon keyword" and "attack using a weapon", eventually you have to decide that WotC employs no technical writers outside the MtG division and thus that some things require interpretation.

Like, say, the "almost always" example process that is really "virtually never, but, hey, it's a good ideal case that you will ALWAYS, ALWAYS modify".

I'm just saying.

One reasons for having multiple Triggers is to establish parameters conditionally  to allow usage (Attack roll, Hit, Miss, deal damage etc..)

Really here what happens is that one group claim Immediate Reaction cannot interrupt any part of an attack (RC 214 Making Attacks Process) while another group says targeting isn't part of an Attack (RC 311, an attack roll and its effect) even if its part of the process for making one and thus can be reacted individually as a seperate distinct event, as confirmed by confirmed with  Instinctive Darkness + Shadowslip.

Immediate Reaction in fact always react to its trigger regardless if its an attack or not and people will use the exemple provided in the RC (triggerring off of an Hitting) to establish a precedent of how Reaction works. 

The Immediate Reaction in fact never make any allusion to attacks except in the exemple, always refering to its trigger instead:

  An immediate Reaction lets a creature act in response to a trigger.

  The triggering action or event occurs and is completely resolved before the Reaction takes place.

  An Immediate Reaction waits for its Trigger to Finish, not necessarly for the action that contains the Trigger to finish. 


There was a long debate here 8 months ago that never reached a concensus, and i don't think ever will.

#3: Because the trigger dictates when you have to declare you're using the reaction power. If the trigger is "you are targeted by an attack", you cannot wait to see if the triggering attack would actually hit you, or score a crit against you, or how much damage is rolled, etc. before deciding whether to use your reaction power. You have to make the decision as soon as you're targeted. If the trigger is "you take damage from an attack", you can wait until the damage is actually applied to you before deciding whether to use the power. None of that changes when the reaction power actually resolves, though.

It doesn't matter at what timing a table resolve Triggered Actions. What matters is that this timing is respected in-game.

It doesn't matter when using an Immediate Interrupt triggerring on being Hit and killing the triggerring enemy if the player had already stratch hit points  on his sheet when he realised and declared it, what matters is that in game he never takes those damage because he killed the enemy before he could finish his attack on him.   


Retroaction is commun in D&D.    

May 3, 2012 -- 4:21PM, LordOfWeasels wrote:

#1:  Because they don't function identically.  A power that reacts to being Hit can't trigger if you're missed, or if the power auto-damages by an Effect.  A power that reacts to being damaged can't trigger on a non-damaging power.  A power that reacts to being targeted can react hit hits, missed, and to "neither hit nor miss", but not to a power that doesn't target, like one that creates a zone.

They're all REACTIONS, so they all mean you have to wait for the trigger to finish to resolve - but the conditions to see if the trigger counts are different.

This is the key point, Plague, and where your faulty assumption lies.  You're making the assumption that the change in activation conditions, when viewed in combination with Making Attacks, means that there is a change in timing in addition to the change in activation conditions.  But that's a faulty assumption, because there is no rule that tells you do to that.  In fact, you're told not to do that:  if you react to any part of an attack, you have to wait for the attack to completely resolve before your reaction resolves.  There's an updated version of this in the RC somewhere I believe - perhaps LoW knows the page number, he should know the reference I'm making, as it came up in the other thread and is the one thing that nobody in the Reactions are Interrupts crowd has provided a good counterargument against - but the Compendium has this line in the ready an action rules:  "If you ready an action to be triggered by an enemy attack, your readied action will occur as a reaction to that attack, so you’ll attack after the enemy."  "By an enemy attack" is a remarkably broad wording, and supports the "reactions are reactions" interpretation.

There are numerous holes in the "reactions are interrupts" argument.  But the core of it hinges on that one faulty assumption, that differences in triggers directly cause and result in differences in timing.  Such a conclusion is highly intuitive, but completely unsupported by the rules.  Nothing in the immediate reaction rules tell you to treat them like that, only an assumption caused by an over-reading of the Making Attacks sequence.  Just because a thing is listed in steps in an order does not mean that there is a reaction timing window between the steps.  I argue that in order for a reaction timing window to exist, it must be specified in the rules for immediate reactions.  If you have any other reason to believe that other reaction timing windows exist, please point to the rules that say so.