Stupid Question: PHB3 Minotaur Ferocity...

[OhGodtheRats]

I'm SURE this is a stupid question but it came up and was debated at D&D Encounters this week so I figured I'd post and see if something obvious came through.

Most of us have noticed the Minotaur race got tweaked on the way from Dragon to PHB3, one of these changes was how Ferocity worked. As it is now it reads:

Ferocity: When you drop to 0 hit points or fewer, you
can make a melee basic attack as an immediate interrupt.

So the core question: If an attack damages me and drops me to 0 hit points and my Immediate Interrupt kills the attacker, does that mean I don't take the damage and am not reduced to 0 (or less) hit points?

The follow-up, which is weird. I was playing a Minotaur Battlemind/Warlock Hybrid, with Eldritch Strike as my Basic Melee attack (Arcane Melee, slides enemy 1 square). In my case, if the Immediate Interrupt hits the enemy that was the cause of the damage that would drop me to 0 and I slide it one square so that I'm no long with its reach, does the triggering damage still apply because my Immediate Interrupt made it so the attack couldn't have occurred? I hope I'm explaining this right, it got freaking weird at the table because of it.

Thanks for the help and if I'm missing something obvious, my apologies far in advance.
-Jared
"admittedly rule dumb sometimes"

 

[Trebor62]

You take the damage. The trigger is not being hit but dropping to zero or fewer hit points. If your interrupt killed the target and stopped the damage it would also stop its own trigger.

 

[DracoSuave]

You take the damage. The trigger is not being hit but dropping to zero or fewer hit points. If your interrupt killed the target and stopped the damage it would also stop its own trigger.

Incorrect.

Immediate Interrupts occur before the -action- that triggered them, irregardless of which individual part of that action was the trigger.

So, yes, Ferocity can kill your opponent, thus rendering him unable to take actions, thus invalidating his entire action.


And in the second case, the melee basic attack can be replaced with an Eldritch Strike (or Savage Rend) and if that causes the opponent to move out of range of the attack, then yes, it does invalidate the attack.


Just so you know, Trebor62, Immediate Interrupts are allowed to invalidate their own trigger, most of them exist to do precisely that.

 

[Flipguarder]

I would say it needs to say either "trigger: you take damage that reduces you to 0 or fewer hitpoints" or "special: the damage is negated if this attack would somehow prevent the attack or the damage."

 

[DracoSuave]

I would say it needs to say either "trigger: you take damage that reduces you to 0 or fewer hitpoints" or "special: the damage is negated if this attack would somehow prevent the attack or the damage."

The former is not necessary because it's not a power and tells you what the trigger is (so it's needless formatting that doesn't clarify the when of the power) and the second is written down there already.

'Immediate Interrupt' already says that. Nothing special about it.

 

[Flipguarder]

So wait, someone hits you, which reduces you to 0 hp, which leads you to an immediate attack, which hits the enemy that hit you, which kills them, and somehow you don't get reduced to 0 hp, so you don't get to make the attack that came from that, so the guy doesn't die, so he gets to do that damage, so you are reduced to 0 hp, which leads you to an immediate attack, which hits the enemy that hit you, which kills them....

And how does the one immediate action per round thing work with this uroboros loop

 

[DracoSuave]

So wait, someone hits you, which reduces you to 0 hp, which leads you to an immediate attack, which hits the enemy that hit you, which kills them, and somehow you don't get reduced to 0 hp, so you don't get to make the attack that came from that, so the guy doesn't die, so he gets to do that damage, so you are reduced to 0 hp, which leads you to an immediate attack, which hits the enemy that hit you, which kills them....

And how does the one immediate action per round thing work with this uroboros loop

No.

They attack you and damage you and reduce you to one hit point.
You take your immediate interrupt which occurs before their action, and can invalidate any parts of their action it renders impossible.
You hit them, they die.
Their attack is now invalidated as they cannot take the action.
Life goes on.

This is how immediate interrupts have -always- worked. Fighters could use it to save their allies from destruction. Shield has always been able to negate incoming attacks. It has always worked this way. Ferocity is -no different- and -no less grokkable.-

It's like saying that a rapier fighter cannot parry an incoming attack because by parrying it it's no longer an incoming attack. That doesn't make sense. There's no time travel involved here... something was about to happen, a reaction occured before it would happen, and thus what was going to happen was averted at the zero hour.

 

[Flipguarder]

I may be mistaken but in every immediate interrupt that I've seen, the action being prevented is not necessarily the trigger of the use.

For instance, IIRC the fighter immediate interrupt would prevent them from doing damage by preventing them attack. If the power (or feature w/e) was triggered by an ally taking damage then you'd have the same kind of urobolos loop.

Again, maybe my memory is waaay off today, but thats how I remember that working.

 

[OhGodtheRats]

I think it's the classic Immediate Interrupt weirdness that some people end up facing. Even the fighter's "I attack them because they shifted only I do it before they shift but now they're dead so they can't shift which would trigger my hit so I can't attack them because they shifted because they didn't" thing can be spun in that direction. I think most people have gotten their heads wrapped around Immediate Interrupts, but every book introduces some weird permutation that puts some of us back to square one...and I definitely think this is one. Apparently some folks thought you don't drop to 0 hit points until after the attack has ended and thus...well, you see how it goes. Weirdness.

Thanks for the help and for at least sorting out some of the confusion. I'm glad to see someone else thinks it works like an ordinary Interrupt. We really weren't sure with the wording.
-Jared

Edit: There are some weirder examples of Immediate Interrupts if you look at the Bard & the Swordmage. Interrupts that Teleport the target after he's hit an ally so that the attack never occurs...this example was one of the main ones in last night's argument. (Berlin did D&D Encounters a day late.) There's also a few Ranger Utilities that let you move as an interrupt, which while confusing when you're charged but then as an Immediate move out of Charge range, still do invalidate the original attack.

 

[DracoSuave]

I may be mistaken but in every immediate interrupt that I've seen, the action being prevented is not necessarily the trigger of the use.

For instance, IIRC the fighter immediate interrupt would prevent them from doing damage by preventing them attack. If the power (or feature w/e) was triggered by an ally taking damage then you'd have the same kind of urobolos loop.

Again, maybe my memory is waaay off today, but thats how I remember that working.

That's because you're thinking of the damage roll as a fait accompli, which is kinda foolhardy when this rules text exists:

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.

In this case, it doesn't matter that they've already rolled to hit and are on the damage dealing part. They are dead, which means the action becomes illegal and invalidated. Therefore the entire action is lost.

Yes, this does mean that if you Ferocity a dragon who breathed on you fatally, that no other targets took any damage either. You, at the very last microsecond, killed the dragon while it was about to murder you. It's not a time travel thing, it's a last-split-second reaction to events that are occuring.

No action is a fait accompli until after it's -fully- resolved.