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How is it a success for the defense if the Hero wins the battle?

"As for T2, it doesn't matter that in cases of a split decision because one of the sides of battle is no longer alive to receive any experience credit anyway, right?"

You rescue 9/9.  I block 6/6, bury my Soul and withdraw the EC to territory.  Which side of the battle is no longer alive to receive XP?

The hero dies, but in giving his life to rescue the soul, we consider it a successful rescue.

But we're not talking about a condition at end of battle, like stalemate or mutual.  We have a clear winner, and yet you are crediting the loser with a success.  Additionally, if you consider the rescue of a Lost Soul to be the matter of prime importance, then every battle challenge should be a successful block regardless of outcome, because no Lost Soul is redeemed.

I just look at it as what is my purpose.  If it is just a battle challenge the whole time, then my purpose is to beat the other character.  But if there is a LS on the line, then the characters become secondary, and my purpose is to take or keep that LS.

"Purpose" has no definition and no general outlining in the rules, and opens up a Pandora's Box of vagaries.  Players can begin battles for a variety of "purposes" unrelated to these two goals.  Samson's Sacrifice is not a winning card, even if the Hero is of a "purpose" to nuke your Evil Characters, because the rules say mutual by removal is a losing condition for the Hero.  "Purpose" is not relevant, nor is the side who played the card relevant.

Additionally, by introducing "purpose" you undermine your point and support Lambo's.  If your purpose is to get a LS and you fail, I successfully blocked.  But if your new purpose is to beat my character, and I fail, then I was UNsuccessful at the same time.  Exactly as he said.

We do have concrete definitions for a lot of other things.  A block is the presentation of an Evil Character into a battle.  It does not care about the state of the battle; a block is a block is a block.  We also have terminology already in place for if a rescue attempt fails.  We say, "if rescue attempt fails".  If a block is any attempt to counter a Hero in battle, then logically, a successful block should be if the Evil Character defeats the Hero in one of the numerous ways outlined in the rules.

We already have criteria in place for determining the success and failure of a rescue apart from the state of battle.  The addition of a blocking matrix into this formula is a needless complication.  It benefits some half-dozen cards under limited circumstances and gives the players more confusion in return.  It makes a lot more sense all the way around just to say, if you defend in battle, that's a block, and if you win, that's a successful block.

You're right that they are both still alive to get experience credit.  However, the hero failed in his purpose.  Therefore, I don't think he deserves any experience credit.

This turned out to be a poor example because the rules say specifically that the Hero must rescue a Lost Soul to get XP.  But the question is answered without indulging vague notions of "purpose", and in fact you muddy the waters more by adding the negative impact of special abilities to your calculation.  As if trying to define "harm" and "negative effect" and what transfers in conversion isn't dicey enough as it is.  And I still disagree with the notion of giving an EC experience for losing a battle.

And "no heroes in battle" trumps "mutual destruction state" for reasons not explained in the portion of the document that I quoted

Incidentally, what document is quoted here?

Okay.

Oh good! That means the rest of us can SPAM this thread while you're gone. Woo-hoo!

Hey,

Quote from: The Schaef on June 10, 2010, 09:56:39 PM

Incidentally, what document is quoted here?

It's a document entitled "Rulebook for Advanced Players" that I wrote just for fun a couple years ago and has been sitting around on my hard drive collecting dust.

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

same time as the "Advanced expansion" of kings came out?

We might as well define it for future use while we're at it. I prefer to figure things out BEFORE they show up in games.

Well, Failed rescue attempt seems to work differently.

Still, is there any reason having too many definitions is a bad thing?