PHB3 minotaur death blow

[Incenjucar]

As a PC, how often do you expect to see your hp dip to zero anyways?

For minotaur npcs, they are virtually guaranteed of using said power once/encounter, since you typically have to kill them to advance. But this ability clearly does not translate well as a PC power.

Has anyone managed to use it successfully?

"Once per day, when you die"

The ability is possibly quite interesting at Epic.

 

[Smurtis]

Doesn't interrupt the dying. Due to the wording of the attack sequence, once a hit happens you take the damage no matter what. You have to interrupt the hit (as Fighters with say, Shield Push do) to negate it. You're Interrupting the damage, which is still going to apply, you just get a free attack off. The benefit of being an II is that it wouldn't do anything if it was an IR, because you can't take actions while unconscious.

Still one of the few cases where it is quite possible to see the movie classic "they kill each other at the same time."

I'm gonna go a little off topic from the minator specific example, to a more general circumstance.

When i first read this, i totally agreed in how the sequence works, and when you think about it, it is quite logical... It also made me think of how all things work... one example came to mind in my game with a friend who plays a druid. Allow me to explain:


Guarding Wind:
-trigger: you are Hit by an attack
-Immediate Interrupt: gain a +2 power bonus to all defenses...etc

Iron Mind:
-Trigger: you are hit by an attack
-Immediate Interrupt: gain +2 bonus to all defenses...etc

Claws of Retribution (lvl13)
- ... until the end of your next turn, if an enemy attack or misses you, you can make an MBA as an opportunity action to enemies adjacent to him... etc
- with the MBA, the druid has some feats that can slide the target 3 squares, now placing him out of reach to make the attack in the first place, thereby cancelling his attack action altogether, despite he "hit/missed"... meaning he takes no damage since he's now out of range to make a legal attack.

I mentioned this post to my players, and the player who plays the druid pointed out a quote from the compendium, among other things:

Interrupt: An immediate interrupt lets you jump in when a certain trigger condition arises, acting before the trigger resolves. If an interrupt invalidates a triggering action, that action is lost. For example, an enemy makes a melee attack against you, but you use a power that lets you shift away as an immediate interrupt. If your enemy can no longer reach you, the enemy’s attack action is lost"

Now, if the minatour still takes the damage, then none of the 3 abilities above would work to interrupt the hits... they may as well be IRs instead of IIs... well, according to RAW, no?

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Hmm, I'm really confused by this thread, when I never was before on this subject.

My Avenger uses Vengeful Parry. The trigger is an enemy hits or misses you. Lets assume a hit. Okay, he's hit - according to the arguments here, everything will happen because the hit has happened. Its an immediate interrupt as well. Allows you to do a 2w hit in return.

But...Vengeful Parry applies a -2 to the hit, so why would that even be in there if it wasn't possible to make the hit a miss? And if the hit becomes a miss.... then nothing happened not even the damage. On top of that, if the 2w hit kills the enemy, and since it is an immediate interrupt, the enemy is dead, his swing is interrupted, he has no strength left since he is dead, and I take zero damage.

That's the way I've always understood it.

Otherwise, IMHO, immediate interrupts just lost a whole level of usefulness.

 

[Nikosandros]

Hmm, I'm really confused by this thread, when I never was before on this subject.

My Avenger uses Vengeful Parry. The trigger is an enemy hits or misses you. Lets assume a hit. Okay, he's hit - according to the arguments here, everything will happen because the hit has happened. Its an immediate interrupt as well. Allows you to do a 2w hit in return.

But...Vengeful Parry applies a -2 to the hit, so why would that even be in there if it wasn't possible to make the hit a miss? And if the hit becomes a miss.... then nothing happened not even the damage. On top of that, if the 2w hit kills the enemy, and since it is an immediate interrupt, the enemy is dead, his swing is interrupted, he has no strength left since he is dead, and I take zero damage.

That's the way I've always understood it.

Otherwise, IMHO, immediate interrupts just lost a whole level of usefulness.

I think that the difference is between interrupting a hit (like most powers do) and interrupting the damage. In the latter case, the hit has already happened so it cannot be undone.

Still, I'd like to have clearer rules on all those ambiguous timing issues. Maybe they can ask the folks that develop Magic some help in writing them...

 

[Aulirophile]

Guarding Wind:
-trigger: you are Hit by an attack
-Immediate Interrupt: gain a +2 power bonus to all defenses...etc

Iron Mind:
-Trigger: you are hit by an attack
-Immediate Interrupt: gain +2 bonus to all defenses...etc

Claws of Retribution (lvl13)
- ... until the end of your next turn, if an enemy attack or misses you, you can make an MBA as an opportunity action to enemies adjacent to him... etc
- with the MBA, the druid has some feats that can slide the target 3 squares, now placing him out of reach to make the attack in the first place, thereby cancelling his attack action altogether, despite he "hit/missed"... meaning he takes no damage since he's now out of range to make a legal attack.

I mentioned this post to my players, and the player who plays the druid pointed out a quote from the compendium, among other things:

Interrupt: An immediate interrupt lets you jump in when a certain trigger condition arises, acting before the trigger resolves. If an interrupt invalidates a triggering action, that action is lost. For example, an enemy makes a melee attack against you, but you use a power that lets you shift away as an immediate interrupt. If your enemy can no longer reach you, the enemy’s attack action is lost"?

No. The hit happens, but does not resolve. If this is incredibly confusing then you're in the vast majority. Damage is different, because the attack sequence specifies that once a hit has happened, it has happened, and the damage happens regardless. In the majority of cases it is far, far easier to just say "it happened before the trigger" and in 99% of cases, you'll get the same result.

But the rules don't say that. The actual rules are far more granular. They have not only each step (target/roll/hit miss crit/damage) by they also have an invisible step (target, resolve target, roll, resolve roll, hit, resolve hit, damage, resolve damage). II's come in between "hit" and "Resolve hit." If the II makes it so that resolution step cannot happen, the whole action is lost. The trigger still technically happened, but it never resolved.

The default "happens before the trigger" does work in most cases, but as someone who occasionally is an RPGA judge I like to be precise.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Ignoring the ruleskvetching, I believe the gist of it is "Hey, you're brought to 0 HP, but you get one last attack on the bastard before going down! And if he dies too, then you both die on each others' blades! Metal!"

 

[Smurtis]

Ignoring the ruleskvetching, I believe the gist of it is "Hey, you're brought to 0 HP, but you get one last attack on the bastard before going down! And if he dies too, then you both die on each others' blades! Metal!"

100% agreed... you dont need rules to see the intent in the power...

 

[S'mon]

100% agreed... you dont need rules to see the intent in the power...

The problem for me was that there are lots of quite similarly worded powers that can turn hits into misses, so I was genuinely a bit uncertain if maybe the designers intended the II to keep the minotaur from taking any damage.

I think the best interpretation though is "go with whatever is more Metal"

 

[Klaus]

Ignoring the ruleskvetching, I believe the gist of it is "Hey, you're brought to 0 HP, but you get one last attack on the bastard before going down! And if he dies too, then you both die on each others' blades! Metal!"

Seeing as though this is the sacred gesture to Baphomet in D&D...

... METAAAAAAL!!!!

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

The power interrupts the action of dropping to 0 hp or fewer (which would usually entail unconsciousness), not the actual attack that caused the drop.

Of course, if the minotaur has an item/ally/feat that grants it hp when he hits with an attack, the healing could bounce him back to positive hp.

Given that the attack would be an interupt, any healing it does would occur prior to the damage that triggered the attack... so the healing wouldn't "bounce him back", but might prevent the minotaur from dropping to zero.

For example, a minotaur has 10 HP. He is hit for 15 points of damage. His minotaur power allows him an attack before he drops, and he chooses an attack that allows him to heal 5. As the minotaur power interupts the damage, he heals before the damage is resolved, bringing him from 10 to 15 HP. He then takes the 15 damage, which still drops him to zero. Now if his minotaur power triggered attack had allowed him to heal 6 HP instead, he would still be conscious with 1 HP.

Or at least that's my read on it...