Longtooth Shifter Regen

[Flipguarder]

If the duration of an encounter long effects weren't also explicitly stated elsewhere as having a maximum of 5 minutes... Did you expect complete working pseudo code that explicitly states the entire flow of everything going on in the game?

I thought that was a houserule i made. I've been taking way too much credit for that lol.

 

[CovertOps]

Absolutely incorrect. (1) Melora's tide is a FEAT, not a racial power. Huge. Frackin'. Difference.

It is a feat that grants an encounter power that can be used in the "Channel Divinity" slot. In other words I am comparing two encounter powers so no...absolutely no difference (other than as you say...it took a feat to have access to the one power and the other requires you to choose a certain race at character creation).

(2) Melora's tide is RANGED, while this is PERSONAL. Another huge. Frackin'. Difference.

Irrelevant/fluff.

And nothing about that proved your case. I'd say the opposite. For Melora's Tide they wrote it very clearly that, if your case is true, would be written similar for the shifter. However, it's not so you have no basis for your position (on your quotes).

My position has always been that "while bloodied" and "until he or she is no longer bloodied" have the exact same meaning and can be used interchangeably (grammatic situations not withstanding). To assert that because they worded it one way for any given power that it therefore will always be worded that way for any future power(s) does not hold and has been proven as such here. It does not disprove my position any more than it proves yours.

I have compared two encounter powers here and (based on the majorities reading) the effect of one of them is strictly superior in every way. My position is that the two powers are nearly identical with two minor differences:
1) Melora's Tide is usable at range on any party member. Nice, but hardly a "huge frackin difference".
2) Longtooth Shifting grants a +2 damage modifier until the end of the encounter.

Those two nicely cancel each other out as one in favor of each different power making the likelyhood that the regeneration is identical to keep the powers in check.

Effect: Until it stops raining, I'm going to stay inside. In addition, while I'm wet, I'm going to keep drying myself off with this towel.

Now here are two sentences with the exact same structure. Does the rain have anything to do with when I'll be done drying off? If it does please enlighten me as to how you infer that. Does "while I'm wet" have some end point in the future regardless of if I become wet again or not?

 

[Cheesepie]

It's not really surprising that Longtooth Shifting is 'strictly superior' than Melora's Tide, considering most racial encounter powers are better than most Channel Divinity powers as a whole.

 

[mneme]

Indeed. I mean, racial power vary in ability (as they're considered as part of the whole package...until you go Revenant, anyway--Revenant Longtooth, anyone? At least a revenant longtooth stops regenerating when they hit 0, despite not automatically going unconcious, becaus otherwise that would be amazingly gross; as it is it's just gross), but compare Melora's Tide to Second Chance. The top racial powers are quite good.

 

[Garris]

The Shifter Races do not have class features. They just have the one power whose USE is conditional upon achieving bloodied health.

Their Race is (stat) +2, Wisdom +2, (skills) +2, and low light vision, prior to the use of their racial ability. It seems likely that this Racial Encounter is intended to make up for their (obviously?) missing features. One gets bonus damage, as well as regeneration while bloodied, whereas the other gets bonus speed and defenses. All of these effects are encounter long. Your assertion is that the regeneration is intended to stop completely the first time the Shifter is no longer bloodied, converting it from Regeneration 2 to "Heal 2 at the beginning of your next turn if you are unlucky", which I find reprehensibly bad.

I'm quite sure the regeneration is intended to last the Encounter. Why, when almost all Channel Divinity uses (excluding harming undead) are extremely weak relative to racial encounters, would you expect it to be any different in this case?

 

[CovertOps]

@Garris: I'm trying to stay strictly away from what I "think" it should be and stick to RAW. Having just looked at the other Shifter power I have to agree that RAI is as everyone in this thread is posting and I will probably start running it that way, but RAW is clearly not.

Effect: Until the end of the encounter, your speed increases by 2, and you gain a +1 bonus to AC and Reflex.

Modified:

Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls, and when you are bloodied you also gain regeneration 2.

They should have followed the format of the other power. Punctuation matters.

 

[mneme]

@Garris: I'm trying to stay strictly away from what I "think" it should be and stick to RAW. Having just looked at the other Shifter power I have to agree that RAI is as everyone in this thread is posting and I will probably start running it that way, but RAW is clearly not.

RAW it's arguable -- which is bad; it shouldn't be arguable.

That said, D&D4 is consistent that while" always means "for the duration of this power, this turns on whenever the condition is met".

Actually, that's the usual meaning of "while" -in a gaming context-.

This is largely, I think, the difference of "while" as a rule statement and it as a statement of fact.

"while the dog is here, I shall not be" isn't a rule; it's a statement of intent, and at least theoretically doesn't reoccur.

On the other hand, "while congress is in session, X may not happen" -clearly- reoccurs. Game rules (and rules in general) that use "while" typically refer to it this way; the while specifies the start -and- end of the rule, reoccuring as much as needed.

By contrast, "when" usually means a single thing that happens once; "when a character becomes bloodied, spend a healing surge" would be reasonable, whereas while would be inappropriate in that context; conversely, "while any enemy is bloodied, gain +1 to all your defenses" would have substantially different meaning (you'd gain stackable +1s every time an enemy was bloodied, isntead of a single +1 that disappeared and reappeared as enemies became bloodied and were killed).

To momentarily bring things back to a programming context, you're looking at the language from the perspective of a sequential language. But sequential languages aren't a good model for a roleplaying game, as roleplaying games are stacked interactions of rules (as you see in a declarative language), and not sequences of actions you do in order (as you see in sequential languages). Examining declarative languages will generally give you the rule-based type of "while" -- a rule that is applied and continues being applied as long as it's applicable. To make up some pseudocode, you could see the second phrase as (add rule thing (regeneration=2 if self.bloodied); when encounter ends, delete thing); not an event handler (too complicated) but a rule that's evaluated on each pass or every time it could change.

What's ambiguous here is that by strict reading, the second clause in longtooth shifting doesn't have an endpoint, which can cause one to misread the "while" clause (as you did) as including an endpoint rather than a condition.

 

[Starfox]

Originally Posted by Longtooth Shifting
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls, and when you are bloodied you also gain regeneration 2.

The meaning of this is clear to you. To me, this is no clearer than the original, actually more muddled than the relatively plain original version. Which just shows how muddled the whole argument is, how differently we can read a sentence of English.

Writing clear rules is hard.

 

[Thanee]

I believe, that if they wanted the regeneration to only work "once" (i.e. stops working after getting rid of bloodied status and does not restart when becoming bloodied again during the same encounter), they would have used language more like Melora's Tide.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DracoSuave]

Powers that have durations are based on end conditions in 4e. (See Powers with Durations in the PHB.)

Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls. In addition, while you are bloodied, you gain regeneration 2...

In this case, the end condition for the effect is 'Until the end of the encounter.' 'In addition' implies that the effect after is a part of that first effect.

Then, looking at it, it says 'while you are bloodied' which is not an ending condition for an effect, but a condition for an effect's activation.

So therefore, you have one singular effect, with part of that effect having a condition for it being active or not. So, if you become re-bloodied, the regeneration kicks right back in, because the effect has not expired.