Call for Judgment: Sprinkler System
Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 1-3 by Kevan.
Adminned at 14 Nov 2019 14:55:02 UTC
The Retreat action says that its performer “may not be the target of Battle Actions” until their next Battle Action.
What makes someone a “target” is undefined: all we have in the ruleset is that taking a Battle Action requires players to “Choose a Human Battle Action and its target, if applicable”, before “stating the action you took and its target, if applicable”.
The Fire Actions taken by Card and the Duke both identified me as their primary victim, with their required blog comments namechecking only me: “Die to monk’s fire, Kevan!” and “Roast in hell, Kevan!” respectively. The plain English interpretation of this is that I am the action’s “target” - “a person, object, or place selected as the aim of an attack” - and that they are stating it as required. Although no other person could have been selected, the decision to make the attack at all is itself a selection.
If this CfJ passes, any Fire actions taken which damaged the Monster while it was Retreating shall be regarded as invalid.
We should clear this up quickly, given Card’s concern that “target” is insufficiently defined.
btw because of the above. But I’m open to being convinced of otherwise.
Madrid:
I disagree, because Fire affects the Monster by definition of what Fire is. There is no targeting - and I believe you can’t apply “targeting” at all to it in the first place because of what targeting requires in the Atomic Action of using Fire.
Also, roleplay flavor is very difficult for me to take as an argument because I consider it just decoration, so I’m just going about what I believe about its mechanical viability.
“Fire: Reduce the Monster’s HP and the Vanguard’s HP by X, where X is a random value between 1 and 50 inclusive. Reduce every other Adventurer’s HP by half the value of X (rounded down); reduce the Cathedral’s HP by double the value of X.”
Choose a Human Battle Action and its target, if applicable, and apply its effect.
If there is no choice (or you could attempt the action and skip targetting anything whatsoever), there is no target. You don’t choose anything within already choosing the Fire Action itself to have it affect the Monster, because it already affects it by definition.
If we define Fire as “targetting” whoever it hits, it would mean that the Fire Action also “targets” the Cathedral, and every other Adventurer and the Adventurer themselves? But there is only a target in singular in “Choose a Human Battle Action and its target, if applicable, and apply its effect.”. So I don’t find that interpretation viable.
Aside from going after you in roleplay, I don’t see them actually able to formally target you for the Fire action.
So, it affects everyone, with no target, in different ways depending on their Vanguard/Human/Monster/Cathedral status.
And they can roleplay that however they want.