John Paleologus' ability

I actually agree that the wording is a problem. It's not immediately obvious, for example, that cards like John Paleologus are different than Maris Streck who reads:

Camarilla Malkavian Justicar: Maris can burn a blood to give a blocking minion +1 intercept. She can take a +1 stealth action to allow you to look at and rearrange the top 5 cards of your library.

In both cases, its sounds like you can do X to get Y result (burn exactly 2 blood for exactly 1 pool damage, or burn exactly 1 blood for +1 intercept). But one can be used multiple times and the other can't. I think that we need some very clear and precise way of indicating limited (once per phase) and unlimited (as often as you want per phase) abilities. Including a "at the beginning of the X phase" actually seems like a good idea to me for limited cases.

To me, the difference in wording is quite clear, at least clear enough.
During X do Y should be clear (after some games), it is a very common term in V:tES.

Of course, most cards don't give you extra hints concerning the possibilities they offer, but it would take lots of card text to phrase those possibilities out (properly). The basic approach seems to be: "What is not restricted (by rule / by the card text itself), is allowed."

Compare "Persia" with "Maris Streck":

Persia wrote:

Once each action, Persia can burn 1 blood to get +1 intercept.

Maris wrote:

Maris can burn a blood to give a blocking minion +1 intercept.

I'm not suggesting that the game is unplayable as written, I'm just saying that I think it could be improved with the addition of only a few words. I really like the "at the beginning of the X phase" as suggested by Bloodartist for limited abilities. The beginning of a phase only happens once, after all.

brettscho wrote:

I'm not suggesting that the game is unplayable as written, I'm just saying that I think it could be improved with the addition of only a few words. I really like the "at the beginning of the X phase" as suggested by Bloodartist for limited abilities. The beginning of a phase only happens once, after all.

So I create two cards that both say "At the beginning of the master phase, you may do a thing"[0]. Card A and Card B. Two different cards, not two copies of the same card - say, a reworded Seattle Committee and Temptation .

But then someone comes along and says "But the beginning of the phase only happens once, after all". So you can only use Card A or Card B at the beginning of the phase, because once you've used Card A, you're no longer at the beginning of the phase, so you can't use Card B. But we want you to be able to use Card A and Card B at the beginning of the master phase. So we could put an explanation in the rulebook of what "At the beginning of..." means, which doesn't seem like much of a step forward - card text churn without really simplifying anything.

And if you can use Card A at the beginning of your master phase and it's still the beginning of your master phase so you can use Card B, why can't I use Card A again? It's still the beginning of my master phase - otherwise I can't use Card B - so why can't I use Card A again? Of course, we can clarify this by explaining what "At the beginning of..." means in the rulebook.

But we seem to have just replaced "During your" with "At the beginning of your" without making anything actually better.

[0] I've deliberately not picked the untap phase, because the first thing that happens in your untap phase is untapping cards. All the other "during your untap phase" cards come after that.

Ankha wrote:

Back to VTES: "Once each X do Y" ... is equivalent to "During X do Y", but as I said, having two identical effects each stating "once" could lead to confusion. It works well for vampires that are unique, but for cumulative cards such as Anarch Revolt, it's not necessarily very intuitive neither.

Does that mean that Montano can do his ability just one time per turn? I thought that the once each action was self-explainatory compared with the once each minion phase/once each turn that was covered with the "during x" rule

Edit: repeated word

Nac wrote:

Does that mean that Montano can do his ability just one time per turn? I thought that the once each action was self-explainatory compared with the once each minion phase/once each turn that was covered with the "during x" rule

I'm not sure how you're mangling his card text to mean that.

According to www.vekn.net/images/stories/expansions/SL2015/Storyline-Rewards-2015-crypt.pdf , Montano's text is: "Once each action, he can burn one blood to give an acting minion you control +1 stealth." That could equally be written "During an action, he can..." and it would mean the same, because "During X, do Y" means "once during X, do Y". Where X is an action, it means once per action - nothing more, nothing less.

The During X, do Y template doesn't magically transmogrify "action" into meaning "minion phase" or "turn" or anything else, just "action". Nor - if it was "during combat, you may" - does it transmogrify "combat" into meaning "minion phase" or "turn" or "game" or anything else, it just means "once during combat".