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Strife and +Invader Damage

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Bunston
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Strife and +Invader Damage

It has recently been brought to my attention that if Invaders have a 2+ damage modifier they can blight the land even if every Invader in that land is strifed (pg. 11 of B&C rulebook). This doesn't make sense to me; if all the Invaders are unable to deal damage due to being strifed, then who/what is blighting the land?

dpt
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This is a pretty rare circumstance. I believe only the Event cards Destroy the Unnatural and Fearful Mobs can do this. I think the justification is more for consistency of rules than thematic.

jffdougan
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Cultural Assimilation, too, I think.

Eric R
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The primary reason is for (rules consistency + simplicity), though there was some thought given to theme. Basically, there are two ways to interpret "every Invader in a land has Strife":

1. They're so preoccupied with internal turmoil that absolutely no Ravaging-type activites (farming, expansionist/cultural clashes with Dahan) happen at all.

2. They're so preoccupied with internal turmoil that what Ravaging-type activites they manage are ineffectual, unfocused, and not sufficient to actually reach the threshold of doing large-scale harm (Damage).

In interpretation #1, the rule would be "If all Invaders in a land have Strife, skip the Ravage in that land and remove 1 Strife from each Invader." (And thus, the "+Damage when Ravaging" events wouldn't do anything.) This is probably slightly more thematically likely, but is also an exception-case to the general rules for how Strife work, and creates weird cases where in order for Dahan to counterattack you need to avoid adding Strife to the last Invader. You could increase consistency with a rule that Strifed Invaders don't participate in Ravage at all - ie, can't be damaged by counterattacking - but that would have weakened Strife considerably.

Interpretation #2 is the one I went with, because it still strikes me as plausible and it's much simpler rules-wise. This leads to "+Damage when Ravaging" events affecting all-Strifed Ravages; thematically what's happening is that the previously ineffective-and-disorganized/sporadic Ravaging-type activities (that aren't enough to deal Damage) get a big shot in arm from whatever the Event represents, becoming much more prevalent (and thus rising to the level that they do deal Damage).

speedyolrac
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Interesting, Mind adding this to the FAQ Eric?


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dpt
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speedyolrac wrote:

Interesting, Mind adding this to the FAQ Eric?

The FAQ is currently pretty tightly focused on mechanics. It could expand into some more thematic aspects, if that's a direction that Eric wants to go.
jffdougan
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I don't recall off-hand seeing the mechanical issue in question in the FAQ, which might be what speedy was referring to.

Bunston
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Eric R wrote:

2. They're so preoccupied with internal turmoil that what Ravaging-type activites they manage are ineffectual, unfocused, and not sufficient to actually reach the threshold of doing large-scale harm (Damage). [...] thematically what's happening is that the previously ineffective-and-disorganized/sporadic Ravaging-type activities (that aren't enough to deal Damage) get a big shot in arm from whatever the Event represents, becoming much more prevalent (and thus rising to the level that they do deal Damage).

Ah, ok. That makes sense.

speedyolrac
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Personally, I would love all the lore based answer there too but it is up to Eric to do that.


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Eric R
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The FAQ is for rules and product information, and the wiki is for lore. But the above is the intersection of the two - the thematic reasoning behind a mechanical decision. I'm not quite sure where that should go, outside of "designer diaries".

The purpose of the FAQ is for people to look up answers to questions about the game that arise as part of playing or researching it, so I think

dpt
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(I think your text got cut off.)

Eric R wrote:

The FAQ is for rules and product information, and the wiki is for lore. But the above is the intersection of the two - the thematic reasoning behind a mechanical decision. I'm not quite sure where that should go, outside of "designer diaries".

I think there should be some place for this that doesn't require you to write a diary. There's quite a bit of it (naturally), and you drop bits of information in the course of conversations like this one.
Eric R
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Maybe a new section on the wiki, perhaps?

(I don't think bits like this should show up when people are trying to do rules searches, which lets out the FAQ site, and I think duplicating the FAQ site for the same game but different content would just cause confusion.)

lynkfox
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We can certainly put it under a DevDiary/Mechanics Meet Lore sort of deal on the wiki?


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