Red Box Monsters: Hints of Changes to Come?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree. I think that's the difference between interrupting a hit (like with shield or second chance) and interrupting damage.

Totally agree. This is obviously the RAI and is also the straightforward interpretation of the way it works. Why would you want to do it any other way? The damage has been applied already, it is just the event of going to 0 hit points that is interrupted. Should work perfectly, the action the orc takes CAN be reacted to or interrupted. Presumably any damage will instantly kill it. This is a perfect power, you think you've killed the enemy, but he grins, pulls your weapon from his body and rushes in for a final attack. Which if the fighter is good he will stop by poleaxing the orc! lol.

 

[Anathos]

Totally agree. This is obviously the RAI and is also the straightforward interpretation of the way it works. Why would you want to do it any other way? The damage has been applied already, it is just the event of going to 0 hit points that is interrupted. Should work perfectly, the action the orc takes CAN be reacted to or interrupted. Presumably any damage will instantly kill it. This is a perfect power, you think you've killed the enemy, but he grins, pulls your weapon from his body and rushes in for a final attack. Which if the fighter is good he will stop by poleaxing the orc! lol.

The only uncertainty here is exactly when the interruption happens. If it happens in the middle of taking damage (is it possible to have an action occur while some but not all damage from an attack has been dealt?), right before being reduced to 0 hp, then even healing might not save it if the remaining undealt damage is at least equal to the value of the healing. If it occurs after all damage is dealt but before the effects of being reduced to 0 hp or less are resolved(more reasonable, I think), then even 1 hp of healing will save the orc.

 

[keterys]

If it's an immediate interrupt, and you the orc's action invalidates whatever killed him (by dropping his attacker, moving out of range of a melee attack, what have you), then RAW he does not drop. Interrupts invalidate their triggers all the time - don't think of it as time travel, and you're all good.

If it's a no action, then he takes his attack (even if stunned, unconscious, or dead) and drops regardless of what his attack does.

P.S. See the following discussion from a few months back all about interrupts.

 

[Anathos]

If it's an immediate interrupt, and you the orc's action invalidates whatever killed him (by dropping his attacker, moving out of range of a melee attack, what have you), then RAW he does not drop. Interrupts invalidate their triggers all the time - don't think of it as time travel, and you're all good.

If it's a no action, then he takes his attack (even if stunned, unconscious, or dead) and drops regardless of what his attack does.

P.S. See the following discussion from a few months back all about interrupts.

You aren't paying attention. The trigger is "drops to 0 hp". At this point the attack has hit and the damage has been dealt. The only thing that can be invalidated is the state of the orc's hp, which can only be accomplished by healing. Killing the PC that hit him won't do a thing: the attack has already landed and can't be prevented, and the damage has been dealt and can't be reduced.

 

[eamon]

You aren't paying attention. The trigger is "drops to 0 hp". At this point the attack has hit and the damage has been dealt. The only thing that can be invalidated is the state of the orc's hp, which can only be accomplished by healing. Killing the PC that hit him won't do a thing: the attack has already landed and can't be prevented, and the damage has been dealt and can't be reduced.

Actually, you're not paying attention and obviously didn't bother to click on the thread he linked - that discusses an almost exactly identical scenario, except rather than triggering on dropping to 0 or below, the interrupt in that thread triggers on becoming bloodied.

Basically, there is no such moment between a hit and damage - the two are interlinked; just as there's no such moment between leaving a square and entering another (similar discussions have been had on that topic too). You can interrupt seperate squares of movement (explicitly stated), separate attacks (fairly clearly, but no explicit) and seperate actions (almost by definition, though even here, for No Actions and some Free Actions, it's arguable). As far as I can tell, that's it; there's no rules basis for interrupting half-way.

If you rule that interrupts can split events half-way you're opening a huge can of worms. What actions and events can you interrupt half-way? Must you do so, or can you choose to interrupt the "entire" event? Is any of this defined or even ever mentioned in the rules? At which points half-way can you interrupt?

For example, Shield triggers when you are hit by an attack - why isn't that after the attack roll is resolved? Polearm Gamble triggers when you you enter a square - why isn't that after you leave the previous square?

I'm not saying that when the author of the monster brainstormed about what an orc reaver should do that avoiding the attack was the aim of the power. However, using an interrupt is an easy way of writing the power; and they may have been fully aware of the fact that this power does a little more than merely grant an extra attack - and chosen this (simple) wording rather than a more complex approach. Or maybe it was just an oversight, or intended all along - I can only speculate.

But I do know that splitting "getting damage" from "losing hitpoints" leads to all kinds of weird situations; and if you can split that, what can't you split? This is clearly not a reasonable reading of the rules.

So, particularly since this is a monster power, a DM should do whatever works for the versions of the monster that occur in his game; and RAI may even be that the orc drops despite interrupting the killing blow. However, a DM shouldn't delude himself into thinking that because this monster with this specific power works best and most naturally when the power is resolved in a kind of limbo right before death that interrupts should generally work this way.

In this specific case, both interpretations will be eminently playable. A DM should fit monsters' rules to his desires, particularly in cases where it seems the power is simply poorly worded. But do not extrapolate how interrupts work from one possibly wonky power.

 

[Oldtimer]

If you rule that interrupts can split events half-way you're opening a huge can of worms. What actions and events can you interrupt half-way? Must you do so, or can you choose to interrupt the "entire" event? Is any of this defined or even ever mentioned in the rules? At which points half-way can you interrupt?

I don't see the can of worms here. The interruptable event is clearly described in the trigger. It is not something each player can decide. There is nothing half-way about it. The event is "being reduced to 0 hit points" and the interrupt occurs right before that event, nothing else.

What is so confusing about that?

 

[avin]

Actually, now that I've had a chace to open up monster builder, one CAN'T do this - one can restrict one's seach to a specific source (say, MM2, or a particular issue of Dungeon), but one can't exclude a specific source.

So, either I search all of the recent sources individually (and they are organised alphabetically, not by date), or I do a "search all" and have to manually weed out the crap.

Now, I love monster builder, but with the change in monster philosophy I really wish it had more functionality.

MB has been dead for a while. They didn't added Templates after all this time...

 

[eamon]

I don't see the can of worms here. The interruptable event is clearly described in the trigger. It is not something each player can decide. There is nothing half-way about it. The event is "being reduced to 0 hit points" and the interrupt occurs right before that event, nothing else.

What is so confusing about that?

Well, what is "right before that event"? How far before? How do you determine this?

My interpretation is that the "event" is whatever causes him to drop to 0 hitpoints. That might be ongoing damage, or perhaps a hit. Such events are well-defined; they don't exist as part of some vague whole, nor are they explicitly separate (as, for instance, are multiple melee attacks).

For example, which square is your opponent in if he triggers your OA by virtue of Polearm gamble - and why? Can the wizard's Shield prevent a hit?

 

[Pickles JG]

MB has been dead for a while. They didn't added Templates after all this time...

And yet I can still use it to make up modify & add templates to monsters.

I think the analysis that is being done does not take account of how bad WOTC are at using their actions. For example in Friday's Dragon there was a monster with an immediate reaction that triggered on opportunity attacks made against them....

The fluff of this power is that it is a final attack from a dying orc & so it should not be restoring it to health or letting it dodge the killing blow.

I am disappointed in the RC in that it did not sort out a couple of rules one being the ambiguous use of "attack", which they recognise as ambiguous but don't tell us how to disambiguate....

Another & not my personal obsession is that they needed to split out action timing from action types. The interrupt/reaction "speed" of powers needs to be applied to other sorts of actions (well free actions & no action actions (!)) as well as to immediate ones.

And drifting more of topic. My imaginary character has an interrupt power that triggers on me being reduced to 0 HP that heals me for 10 HP. If I use this power then I heal the HP before I take the damage thus is may be no use (if 10 more HP still leaves me getting KO). In practice people seem to play it at reaction speed ie I would be at 10 HP, which I expect is the intention (at the risk of opening an intentions can o'worms). Of course a reaction would not work as you could not take it while KO.

 

[keterys]

But a 'No Action' heal 10 would work for what you want just fine.

Of course, if you have 30 hp max and this theoretical heal 10 ability, and you get hit for 20 while at 5 hp...

If it's an interrupt, you survive (but are unconscious) at -10 hp. If it's anything else, you die since you hit negative bloodied.