Attacks invalidated by interrupts

[CM]

Interesting situation came up last week. I'm normally the DM, but I am on a brief hiatus from DMing with this group and another player is running his game.

• I am attacking with a daily melee power which has half damage on a miss. My attack hits.
• Enemy uses an on-hit immediate interrupt which both automatically pushes me 2 and lets him shift 2. I don't believe I've ever seen a creature with such a power in my years of DMing, so I assume it's custom.
• I'm now out of reach of the target and my attack is invalidated.

Do I get miss damage? If my attack had an effect is that also prevented from activating, since my entire attack was invalidated? Technically my attack never went off. I neither hit nor missed, but the power is spent regardless.

I'm sure that I've invalidated players' attacks with immediates before, but I don't remember ever having one that also prevented miss damage and (potentially) effects. Personally I'd rule that if the whole attack is negated, I'd still allow miss damage and effects. Actually in the first place I probably wouldn't use a power that's this punishing.

 

[keterys]

I'd happily agree that the system overemphasizes immediates that invalidate attacks (OAs and interrupts with forced movement being the big one, but also things like wizard's escape etc)... but yeah, they invalidate attacks. You don't fail at the miss stage, you fail at the target stage. Power is wasted. If it has any sub-Effect (putting up an aura or whatever) then that works.

If I'd decided to work on a 4e heartbreaker, I would have been moving to almost entirely reactions instead of interrupts for that reason.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Ahhh, the beauty of the interrupt. Normally it's something the players do to me!

I agree with Keterys. Personally, I don't use these sorts of powers for monsters (with a few exceptions) because I don't like players losing their dailies (and, in a case like this, I wouldn't have them forfeit the daily even though that's what the rules require).

 

[Balesir]

What [MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION] and [MENTION=87576]Scrivener of Doom[/MENTION] said, plus I don't see many interrupts that trigger on a hit for just this reason, too. Interrupts that push or move generally trigger on either movement ("enemy moves adjacent to you") or targetting ("enemy targets you with an attack"). These power specifications deal with the consequences via simple timing logic.