ruleslawyer said:
I didn't suggest that a "because" was necessary, woodelf. A correlative relationship is sufficient to reach the conclusion I did. Two simple quotes:
"A condition that makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose dodge bonuses."
"She retains her Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if she is caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker."
[snip]
If the rule stated that "a condition that normally would make you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose dodge bonuses," then I'd say it'd be at least somewhat ambiguous in favor of loss of dodge bonuses. But that's not what the rule says. In fact, it creates a strict correlative relationship between actual loss of Dex bonus and loss of dodge bonus; no actual loss of Dex bonus therefore means no loss of dodge bonuses.
My point is that the actual statement of the rules (not necessarily anything you or anyone else has said in this thread when not quoting the rules verbatim) is poorly worded, and can legitimately be read as either "a condition that normally would make you lose Dex bonus also makes you lose dodge bonus"
or as "if a condition makes you lose Dex bonus, you also lose dodge bonus". I concur that the intended reading of the rules is that if you don't lose your Dex bonus, you don't lose your dodge bonus. But i do not agree that the rules, read literally, are clear on that matter. The word choice and grammar used makes it ambiguous, not as a matter of game rules, but as a matter of grammar. It is unclear from sentence structure alone whether the correlation is between the condition (regardless of whether that particular character loses Dex bonus) and the dodge bonus loss, or between the Dex bonus loss and the dodge bonus loss. And since the rules consistently use the 2nd person, one cannot be sure that the use of 2nd person in the first quote, above, refers specifically to the character in question, vice a generalized character in that position.
A: "A situation that causes you to fnoozle also causes you to garblesnatch. Being tubbled is one of those situations."
B: "Even when tubbled, you do not fnoozle."
So, given A, clearly you must garblesnatch and fnoozle.
But if A&B apply to your character, you are clearly not fnoozled. But you're still tubbled, and the rules can be read to say that tubbling causes you to be fnoozled and garblesnatched (as well as being read to say that being tubbled causes you to be fnoozled, and being fnoozled causes you to be garblesnatched).
Note that A can be restated as "When tubbled, you are fnoozled and garblesnatched." IOW, the wording in the rules could simply be shorthand for restating the same rule dozens of times, for all the various 'tubblings', which would reasonably explain its wording and structure, without necessarily meaning that avoiding fnoozling also avoids garblesnatching.
