Do you remain Stealthed if you attack yourself?

[Aegeri]

By strict RAW of the RC ruling, healing powers such as Healing Word no longer function, because you and your allies aren't meaningful threats to you. Under your "strict RAW" interpretation, you can't heal allies. Unless your allies are attacking you.

The first thing is that the heading is if the target is a legitimate target. Allies are - by RAW - a legitimate target of healing word (as it targets allies). Is an ally the legitimate target of a daily attack power to get an effect? By RAI, I would think the first problem there is if the ally is a meaningful threat or not - especially when talking about an attack power (which if you notice above I am usually specific about referring to). I would argue the RC clearly indicates the answer is no there. Not for any part of the power at that (hit, miss or effect lines - which is what the RC expanded the bag of rats to encompass). I tend to think of the bag of rats for attack powers primarily (as that is 99% of the time, where this will come up). As for the avenger power, I honestly do not see a level 1 at-will granting phasing more or less at-will as by intent. I can see the combat utility, but the way that can break the game outside of it indicates to me why the "meaningful threat" scenario is important.

Edit: It is also worth noting that the RC does state, immediately in the sentence below, to use common sense in how effects target allies and the number of allies a power targets. There is no indication the RC prevents healing word from working on your allies, but it might prevent a warlord from granting an entire army of characters a bonus to initiative.

 

[Samir]

The first thing is that the heading is if the target is a legitimate target or not for the power. Allies are - by RAW - a legitimate target of healing word (as it targets allies).

Certainly you can target an ally and use the power, but by strict RAW, Healing Word "has an effect that occurs upon hitting, missing, or otherwise affecting a target," and as such, "the effect takes place only if the target is a meaningful threat," which you and your allies are not. You can use the power, but no effect takes place and no healing occurs. The strict RAW of that page actually breaks the game.

Is an ally the legitimate target of a daily attack power to get an effect? I would argue the RC clearly indicates the answer is no there. Not for any part of the power at that (hit, miss or effect lines - which is what the RC expanded the bag of rats to encompass). I tend to think of the bag of rats for attack powers primarily (as that is 99% of the time, where this will come up).

I tend to think of bag of rats for attack powers primarily, too, but RC demands that you apply it to any powers with a target, which is nonsensical.

As for RAI? Say you take a Daily attack power with a Hit: 4[W] damage + mod, and an Effect: You gain regeneration 5 until the end of the encounter. Should you allow a PC to expend that power without a target to get regeneration 5 for an encounter (5 minutes out of combat)? Sure. He's forgoing a 4[W] damage roll to gain just the Effect of the power. That's hardly unbalancing or ridiculous.

As for the avenger power, I honestly do not see a level 1 at-will granting phasing more or less at-will as by intent. I can see the combat utility, but the way that can break the game outside of it indicates to me why the "meaningful threat" scenario is important.

It's not a level 1 at-will, it's a level 7 encounter power (Inexorable Pursuit). If you think phasing for a turn as an encounter power is game-breaking, then you may want to look at this power:

Thwart the Walls - Kundarak Ghorad'din Utility 12
You start to fade out of existence, gaining the ability to step through walls and obstacles.
Encounter
Minor Action Personal
Effect: You gain insubstantial and phasing until the end of your next turn.

There are several other encounter utility powers like it.

 

[Aegeri]

Certainly you can target an ally and use the power, but by strict RAW, Healing Word "has an effect that occurs upon hitting, missing, or otherwise affecting a target," and as such, "the effect takes place only if the target is a meaningful threat," which you and your allies are not.

You should read the next sentence immediately after, which tells you to use common sense about how powers that target allies work (and in the number of allies they effect). So this isn't actually strictly true either..

Sure. He's forgoing a 4[W] damage roll to gain just the Effect of the power. That's hardly unbalancing or ridiculous.

This falls right into my points trap. When you start doing this, now you're going to have to rule every power on a case by case basis. It can be fine in one context but utterly broken in another, especially if you didn't anticipate it working with something else. So you then need to decide some powers can be used like that and others can't on arbitrary reasoning. That's just nonsensical and it's far better to enforce the general rule - which I'd like to point out works immensely well.

It's not a level 1 at-will, it's a level 7 encounter power (Inexorable Pursuit). If you think phasing for a turn as an encounter power is game-breaking, then you may want to look at this power

For some reason I thought there was a way of getting phasing from an at-will attack powers effect (but I can't remember now). I was clearly thinking something very wrong there! Context matters though, because I would not allow that effect without a meaningful threat and once you let one thing pass I'm not going to go through logic hoops case by case examining every single other power in the game.

On the other hand, Thwart the Walls (which is a utility power) is fine. It's exactly what a utility power should be doing and requires taking a specific paragon path to actually use. I have no problem with utility powers performing their role as utility powers.

Edit: Okay the original example was at-will, accomplished using some stuff that got errata'ed into oblivion (EG never compiled). So that answers that.

 

[IanB]

This falls right into my points trap. When you start doing this, now you're going to have to rule every power on a case by case basis. It can be fine in one context but utterly broken in another, especially if you didn't anticipate it working with something else. So you then need to decide some powers can be used like that and others can't on arbitrary reasoning. That's just nonsensical and it's far better to enforce the general rule - which I'd like to point out works immensely well.

Immensely well, if you want a world where vampires can only suck the blood out of people who are fighting back.

In practice you're not actually opening up that large of a can of worms by doing a bag-of-rats ruling on a case by case basis, as while there certainly are a huge crazy number of powers out there in a general sense, you only actually have to care about the ones your players have actually picked. The number of crazy interactions that might come up are thus perhaps not as overwhelming as they might initially seem.

Obviously the blanket "no" will work better for situations like Encounters, etc., where there's less narrative give and take between the DM and the group. I'm sure that's why the rule is written as a hard and fast thing. I really don't think it works as well as being a bit more flexible for a regular group of players, though.

 

[Aegeri]

Immensely well, if you want a world where vampires can only suck the blood out of people who are fighting back.

I don't really compromise rules due to badly designed classes: I just change the class in question. It's worth noting that if you allow this, why not allow the vampire to drop rats and get back surges? I mean you're literally at the point where you have a pure example of the bag of rats rule. If an unconscious enemy that can't fight back and isn't a meaningful threat can be used to get a surge, what is the difference between carting around a pet horse, a rat or similar?

There isn't one that you can logically claim whatsoever. So I don't buy your argument.

In practice you're not actually opening up that large of a can of worms by doing a bag-of-rats ruling on a case by case basis

Looking right above, I'm going to flat out disagree with you. You've already done so with your sole "example" - which I imagine you think is some kind of "Gotcha" argument here. Why isn't the parties horse (or some other beast that the party captured in a cage for example) just as good a target for the vampire as a previous enemy that cannot fight anymore? What's the difference to you?

Quite frankly, I've run 2 games consistently for over 2 years now. I have had an IRL game before moving country that was run for around 2 years (I miss that game and players ). I've honestly never found that being consistent was a bad thing whatsoever. This sort of thing in this thread has literally come up once, I explained the ruling and the reasoning then we went back to playing DnD. It really doesn't feel unfair if you're completely consistent on how you rule it across the entire game.

 

[IanB]

I'm not arguing fairness, really. More verisimilitude, in general. I don't see the vampire one as some kind of 'gotcha', I use it as my example because it is a really obvious case of 'bag of rats rule causes illogical result', that's all. (And yes I know that it also strains credulity to have a vampire drink an iron golem's blood. )

As far as the literal bag of rats goes, the vampire's power does specify enemy, but if it specified creature instead, I don't know that I'd have a tremendous problem with the literal bag of rats in this case. Maybe I'd limit it in some way - perhaps a requirement that a creature be big enough to provide enough blood, maybe not let them go over their normal complement of surges when used in this way, but I'm confident I could find a compromise that works for both player and game when these things come up.

EDIT: I should add the vampire does have another mechanic already for borrowing surges from 'allies', and it wouldn't be too hard to adapt that to non-PC sources as well I imagine. That horse only has one surge to 'borrow', after all, and rats might be minions and have none. Etc.

 

[Aegeri]

I'm not arguing fairness, really. More verisimilitude, in general. I don't see the vampire one as some kind of 'gotcha', I use it as my example because it is a really obvious case of 'bag of rats rule causes illogical result', that's all. (And yes I know that it also strains credulity to have a vampire drink an iron golem's blood. )

I was about to say that, because your problems with verisimilitude and the vampire go a lot deeper than what they do out of combat. I mean, you really shouldn't be throwing around the word verisimilitude in this context with how the vampire works

As far as the literal bag of rats goes, the vampire's power does specify enemy, but if it specified creature instead, I don't know that I'd have a tremendous problem with the literal bag of rats in this case.

The rats are enemies. 4E has a major flaw in that there are two kinds of creature: Allies and Enemies. An enemy is everything that isn't your ally, and an ally is defined by being a willing recipient of your effects. 4E seriously could use a "bystander" or similar kind of designation, so that we can clearly differentiate between "Random rats", "Enemy Rats" and the wizards ally "Rat Familiar". Because as it is, the random rats and enemy rats have no distinction in the rules.

This does mean you're literally allowing the bag of rats to work on the vampire. Unless you somehow argue they are all his friends (therefore allies). But again, that's going to be one amusing debate and one I avoid from the get go. Personally I wouldn't even care if it did specify creatures: It wouldn't work on rats regardless of how clever the logic. I mean I'm perfectly willing to buy a vampire can drain the life out of an iron golem.. somehow (don't ask me how). I'm not going to buy the vampire getting special considerations on how the rules work with rats that nobody else does.

Edit: Also I don't mind if something doesn't make sense, as long as it's consistent. I'll take a vampire being able to drain surges from undead, golems and crystal things from other dimensions. I totally will: Because it's consistently applied mechanics. I suppose if you should take anything from my points, it's that I am a fan of consistent mechanics. It doesn't make sense a vampire can't use blood drain out of combat. It doesn't make sense that a fighter can't throw away a 4[W] power to get pre-buffed regen before a battle. But at the same time, the balance issues these create by letting them work that way are not worth me saying "MAH IMMERSHUNS DEMANDS CHANGE!". Therefore, Vampires get to blood drain whatever they want - they just have to live with the same rules everyone else does and use their attack powers in combat on valid enemies.

 

[IanB]

In the case of the other stuff, I generally won't make a decision that makes a PC weaker just for my own OCD need for verisimilitude.

Stuff that makes them vaguely stronger doesn't bother me unless it literally becomes game-breaking, and there's usually some social contract that can be reached with stuff like that if there's no way to fluff the it-doesn't-work-like-that appropriately.

I'm not sure I actually have a tremendous problem with letting PCs decide for themselves who constitutes an enemy or an ally when it comes to, say, area effect powers - I'm not going to make a cleric kill innocent bystanders with an enemy-targeting power like fire storm, for example. Really I think that enemy/ally distinction only exists so you can differentiate between powers that target just one group and powers that target creatures in general, so I'm pretty ok with letting characters decide for themselves who constitutes members of each group at a given time under most circumstances.

 

[Aegeri]

For the most part I work around that rules oddity in the same way. If you've got a rampaging horde of demons on one side and on the other, a group of guys going "Run this way to safety, we'll stop them!" - I have a hard time believing the civilians wouldn't count themselves as allies (mechanically at least). On the other hand that's a damn good reason for such a distinction on their part. In other cases it may be much less black and white, so it won't be up to the PCs to just dictate who they think are allies/enemies.

Personally, I find consistent rules more important because I have found (in fact did find) that some players can feel (more than rightly) aggrieved when something doesn't work one way - yet will in another. I also really dislike putting the system to my fiat as much as possible. So one ruling that everyone understands is far better than a *lot* of individual rulings, everyone may or may not remember on a consistent basis. So I perfectly accept that the vampire is an illogical class that doesn't work right. Ultimately it matters very little if I think a vampire should be able to blood drain a iron golem. I even agree that it doesn't make sense he can't (by RAW) use the power out of combat. But it's not important enough for me to think making the rules inconsistent is worth it - so I don't. The vampire already has clear provisions outside of combat for regaining HP (with an ally donating a surge), so it's really not an issue for me in any way.

 

[mneme]

My not liking "I swing and try to miss" is really separate from the issue; I don't like "try to miss" attempts, as I think they're lame, but that's a "not in my game, you don't", not related to BoR (except that they're both abuses).

IMO, PCs should be able to decide to treat any character they like as an ally for the purpose of their effects. They should not, however, be able to treat allies as enemies when they manifestly aren't.

Regarding the topic...I don't think not letting you target allies with damaging attacks that happen to be tactically useful is at all intentional. Aegeri, how do you rule on Thunderwave vs allies? Does it matter if there's an enemy in the blast? How about Bolstering Breath, with its explicit ally effect?

Regarding consistency -- I think the game is better if you rule iffy things on a case by case basis, rather than falling back on a consistent (if funky) rule. Page 42+extra interpretation rules; if a player wants to use a game effect in a variant way, it should either just work, require a roll, or be refused, based on the situation; stunting is a big part of making the game not just a video game. But obviously, your game is your game.