Healing Word

[Rel]

Nope. Basic Attacks (melee and ranged) are at-will powers that all creatures have. They even have power blocks in the PH1.

Yeah you're right. I guess I'd forgotten that since the CB doesn't make power card for them (at lest not by default).

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Which would make all scoot n' shoot powers pointless.

A clear case of RAI vs. RAW to me.

Hardly. Shifting as part of your attack is one of the few ways to reliably use stealth to gain combat advantage. Moving next to the monster will cause you to end your action in sight, and lose any benefit your stealth gives.

 

[eamon]

Hardly. Shifting as part of your attack is one of the few ways to reliably use stealth to gain combat advantage. Moving next to the monster will cause you to end your action in sight, and lose any benefit your stealth gives.

Moving as part of your attack would have the same benefit.

The only normal difference between shifting and moving as part of a ranged attack power (as far as I can tell) would be that if you're doing a multi-square shift, you wouldn't provoke an OA in squares that you leave except the first square and all squares you make an attack from.

In practice, this difference is irrelevant for powers which move only few squares. Some other distinctions related to other power/effect interactions exist, but they're fairly minor. I'm fairly sure that if indeed ranged powers with movement always provoke in the first square, then, to avoid confusion, ranged powers should never include shifting - the distinction between shifting and moving (being the provoking of OA's) is absent, so drawing attention to it is merely misleading.

You could even argue that "using" is continuous and you provoke in all squares, in which case there is truly (almost) no reason ever to use the term "shift" in such powers; no copy-writer that doesn't hate his readers should ever let that pass.

Assuming that the word shift was chosen to convey some useful meaning in the writing of these powers, I'd say that it's likely these ranged powers should only provoke when the actual attacks are made.

Anybody ask CS about this?

 

[Colmarr]

Stuff... and Hyp's response

Told ya

But yes, I agree with Starfox. A clear case where RAI and RAW don't gel, and in which IMO it is far better to apply RAI.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, 'using a power' is a specific sort of action, and occurs when and while you take that action.

So, in Hypersmurf's example, you are using the Nimble Attack power at all points during that, as you are still using the 'Use a Power' action. However, if said power includes shifts and such, those shifts and such -explicitly- deny the interruption via opportunity actions during those shifts.

Hmmm. Ranged attack that isn't using a ranged power.

Flaming Sphere comes to mind immediately off the top of my head. The Sustain entry is not part of the Using a Power action, and Sustaining is not an action that provokes. However, it includes a ranged attack, and therefore provokes via -that- mechanism.

There are others, but this example is a -very- common one.

(Yes, it does involve a ranged power, but it does not involve the Use a Power action, which is what is important to realise here)

Yeah, you're not even close to the bottom of that well yet. I direct you to the druid using Wild Shape and in his beast form. Note the way the Wild Shape power SPECIFICALLY says you can sustain other powers while Wild Shaped even if they lack the beast form keyword. According to CS this is so because EVEN SUSTAINING A POWER IS USING IT. As a consequence if a druid casts a summons and then uses Wild Shape he has apparently no way to command his summons because to do so would be a forbidden use of the power (assuming it lacks the beast form keyword, which is true of all extant summons powers).

This CS ruling also has the consequence that a caster taking ANY action which relates to an ongoing ranged or area power provokes an OA. This includes sustaining any such power, making some type of attack, commanding a summons, etc. In fact the consequences are quite broad.

Beyond that there are some rather absurd consequences we can dismiss out of hand, but they still exist. For example if sustain counts as use the wording of the rule restricting you to using a daily once a day kicks in and sustain is illegal by RAW.

Now, I obviously think CS is full of it, but that doesn't entirely settle the argument. For example druid summons have instinctive actions. Why do they have these? Probably because in beast form the druid can't command them. Thus we see that in some contexts "use" NEEDS to include secondary ongoing usage of the effects of a power. Yet sustain clearly needs to be excluded from the definition of using a power, at least in the general case.

In other words RAW is fairly worthless, CS can't be interpreted literally either and you simply MUST go with RAI in terms of what constitutes use of a power and its related consequences. The rules simply aren't implementable by strict RAW construction.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Moving as part of your attack would have the same benefit.

The only normal difference between shifting and moving as part of a ranged attack power (as far as I can tell) would be that if you're doing a multi-square shift, you wouldn't provoke an OA in squares that you leave except the first square and all squares you make an attack from.

In practice, this difference is irrelevant for powers which move only few squares. Some other distinctions related to other power/effect interactions exist, but they're fairly minor. I'm fairly sure that if indeed ranged powers with movement always provoke in the first square, then, to avoid confusion, ranged powers should never include shifting - the distinction between shifting and moving (being the provoking of OA's) is absent, so drawing attention to it is merely misleading.

You could even argue that "using" is continuous and you provoke in all squares, in which case there is truly (almost) no reason ever to use the term "shift" in such powers; no copy-writer that doesn't hate his readers should ever let that pass.

Assuming that the word shift was chosen to convey some useful meaning in the writing of these powers, I'd say that it's likely these ranged powers should only provoke when the actual attacks are made.

Anybody ask CS about this?

OK, but now what about Ranged or Area powers that do not involve an attack at all? They do exist. Obviously the intent is that they DO provoke, otherwise why would there be a need for the convolved construction of powers like Healing Word which obviously are designed to avoid provoking?

Clearly there is good way to apply RAW here. In fact it is hard to see a way that RAW could have been written to avoid this issue. The only way I can imagine would have been to declare some sort of additional keyword or specific exception text in every power not meant to provoke in and of itself. Even this wouldn't be sufficient as my earlier post clearly describes how the whole concept of using a power cannot be reconciled in a consistent fashion even within the bounds of RAW.

In other words, the rules simply don't work in terms of using and provoking. Only common sense works and the authors of the game obviously at some point realized this. All they were left with was assuming people would apply the rules with common sense. The game is DESIGNED to be interpreted and only RAI really matters at the table. Its great to stick to RAW as much as possible, but it simply isn't possible to do so 100%.

 

[Mengu]

OK, but now what about Ranged or Area powers that do not involve an attack at all? They do exist. Obviously the intent is that they DO provoke, otherwise why would there be a need for the convolved construction of powers like Healing Word which obviously are designed to avoid provoking?

To me, it's obvious that such ranged powers were an oversight, and should have been "one target in close burst" powers, or the designers simply did not quite have the distinction down between an attack and a power.

I use a house rule, where only ranged and area attacks provoke, not ranged and area powers. This avoids a lot of the confusion, and makes sustains and powers like Knight's Move, work the way I believe they were intended to work.

 

[keterys]

Eh, I think provoking for things like Bastion of Health and Shake It Off make just as much sense as not provoking, so assuming they're an oversight seems far from obvious. Preferred to you, sure, but _obvious_?

 

[Mengu]

Eh, I think provoking for things like Bastion of Health and Shake It Off make just as much sense as not provoking, so assuming they're an oversight seems far from obvious. Preferred to you, sure, but _obvious_?

Why? They are not attacks. They are minor or move actions. Why would these provoke opportunity attacks where you don't even do anything, you let someone else do something.

It's not obvious to me that these powers were designed with the _intent_ that they provoke. So what's obvious is pretty subjective (which is the point I was trying to make, though it seems I failed).

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Moving as part of your attack would have the same benefit.

Moving as part of your attack is specifically what my post was talking about. I'm not sure where the disconnect is.Anyway, the only way to move as part of your attack is to have that movement in the same attack power.

Moving is a separate action, so you cannot move into the creature's sight then use a power and still be stealthed for that power to get CA. Your stealth gets checked at the end of your move, and in most cases, you're going to need line of sight and it'll drop just before you use that power.