Resolving Agg Damage

When you are faced with agg strikes and non-agg environmental damage (i.e. crows) in the following situation what happens?

I am at one blood. Crows are coming at me, which would send me to torpor all by themself. Then there is 1 agg from ivory bow. Do I burn?

I think yes, but an opponent thought that you resolve strike damage before environmental. They also claimed that because the strike was agg they went to torpor, then the two environmental damage just caused them to lose blood.

The way I understand it regular is resolved first, then agg. The two normal would send someone to torpor. I also believe that the agg would then not be prevented by burning blood, so the vampire would burn. No prevent cards were played this action.

The order is:

1) 1st point of aggravated damage is dealt with by sending the vampire to torpor at the end of the combat. (In rulings called Wounding?? Anyway, is will go to torpor at the end of combat unless there is other intervention).

2) All normal damage is applied and will burn 1 blood for each point of normal damage. Excess normal damage does nothing else because the vampire is already going to torpor.

3) If there is more aggravated damage, then now the minion burns, assuming they reach this state with 0 blood or less blood than the aggravated damage.


So, you in general need 2 agg damage + X damage of any type where X = the blood on the minion.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

1) 1st point of aggravated damage is dealt with by sending the vampire to torpor at the end of the combat. (In rulings called Wounding?? Anyway, is will go to torpor at the end of combat unless there is other intervention).

No, the order is normal damage, then aggravated damage. It's written in the rulebook, explicitly, in 6.4.6: "If both regular damage and aggravated damage are successfully inflicted on a vampire at the same time, the regular damage is handled first."

The first point of aggravated damage is not dealt with by sending the vampire to torpor. The first point of aggravated damage handled by an unwounded vampire is dealt with by sending the vampire to torpor. If the vampire is already wounded (such as by excessive normal damage, or by a go-to-torpor strike from Rowan Ring, say), none of the aggravated damage is used to send the opponent to torpor.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

2) All normal damage is applied and will burn 1 blood for each point of normal damage. Excess normal damage does nothing else because the vampire is already going to torpor.

Normal damage is "healed". If you run out of blood to heal, the excess damage sends you to torpor - you don't have blood to heal the damage, so you are wounded. Excess normal damage sends you to torpor in this way when dealing with normal+agg damage, because you are not already going to torpor, because aggravated damage isn't handled first.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

3) If there is more aggravated damage, then now the minion burns, assuming they reach this state with 0 blood or less blood than the aggravated damage.

No, in the real world, a vampire reaching this point with 0 blood taking a point of agg damage does not necessarily burn. They must be wounded for that to happen.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

So, you in general need 2 agg damage + X damage of any type where X = the blood on the minion.

Incorrect.

In general (without other fun "go to torpor" or wounding effects lurking around, or without the fun of Undead Persistence), you need X+2 damage, where at least one of the damage is aggravated.

So say the vampire has 4 blood. I deal to him 6 damage - 5 normal, 1 agg. Handle the normal first. The first four normal damage are healed. The vampire is now on zero blood. The fifth normal damage cannot be healed, because there is no blood to heal it with. So the vampire is now wounded. The remaining point of agg damage is now handled. Because the vampire is wounded, we immediately ask the vampire to burn a blood to prevent destruction to handle it. Since they have no blood, they can't, so they burn.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

So say the vampire has 4 blood. I deal to him 6 damage - 5 normal, 1 agg. Handle the normal first. The first four normal damage are healed. The vampire is now on zero blood. The fifth normal damage cannot be healed, because there is no blood to heal it with. So the vampire is now wounded. The remaining point of agg damage is now handled. Because the vampire is wounded, we immediately ask the vampire to burn a blood to prevent destruction to handle it. Since they have no blood, they can't, so they burn.

And, to clarify even more - the vampire doesn't go to torpor before he or she burns. This means, that effects like Fame do not trigger.

Could almost swear we just had this talk like 5 months back.

"X+2" where x is current blood on vamp, and the equation equals "what i need to burn vampire" is the incomplete equation. If you have flamethrower and mass realities, its basically that equation, with nothing else involved. Its rare that you ONLY have big agg with no normal. If you target vitals, the damage is done(2 more target damage) then the agg (lets say one). So, 3 blood means two damage, then a,wounded vamp in torpor. One blood means one damage heals, one wounds, then the universe asks the vampire "would you like to burn blood to stop being burnt, or just burn?" The vampire is unable to burn blood, so burns.

We (even, and ESPECIALLY myself) as players get used to "vampire takes damage, damage knocks off beads if i dont prevent it. If i take more damage than i have beads, torpor. If i take agg, torpor."

When its really blood spent healing the damage, and the going to torpor is wounding. Frankly, teaching players like this adds even more confusion to a confusing mess.

Hell, until i started using repair the undead flesh, i forgot all about those terms. But, i think thats why agg burn math is so hard to grasp.