Flesh of Marble and aggravated damage

Mewcat wrote:

From rulebook

Damage resolution has two steps: prevent damage and heal damage.

First, the minion taking damage can play damage prevention cards (such as the combat card Skin of Rock) if he is able to do so. These damage prevention cards are played one at a time until all the damage is prevented or until the minion chooses not to play any more.

Any remaining damage (damage that was not prevented) is successfully inflicted.

I know the game not working like the rules say is nothing new, but that's what it says.

It seems you missed the most important word of the paragraph. It is not "prevent", it is "play". Flesh of Marble prevention is not something that is played, it is a mandatory triggered effect that resolves when the trigger is met, as all triggered effects, and since describing the trigger is part of the card text, timing is also part of the card text. This is not a case of card trumping rule. This is a case of one rule not being applicable because the card does not meet its preconditions.

This just goes to what livesbyproxy said. The rules do not allow prevention without playing cards.

Mewcat wrote:

It's been said countless times, the golden rule isn't an excuse for sloppy templating and wording. We still need some way to be able to figure out how the cards work other then royal decree.

But it's been clearly explained how the card works and in fact the thing that's throwing people off is how the rulebook contradicts the card. Rulebook should help people understand the game but if people are reading only parts of it ignoring other parts it can lead to confusion.

I do agree card and rulebook should go hand in hand, but in this case I would prefer we change the text in the 6.4.6 in the rulebook as pointed already in this thread, Flesh of Marble is not the only card playing wonky with it. My quess it at some point that part of the rules was modified from the ages past one in attempt to make it easier for new players to grasp how prevent-inflict works and speed up the procees by having people play the cards "all at once" instead going 1 damage at a time until all damage is being dealt with.

Because if you consider, first having the incoming damage form a stack, then having the defending player deal with it following the normal, then aggravated order one damage at a time is simple to understand with Flesh of Marble. But then someone might declare "I play this card Skin of Rock that prevents 2, but the damage is deal at steps of 1, I cannot prevent more then 1 per damage and nothing in Skin of Rock says it's prevent carries over to next damage because we clearly have cards like Skin of Steel that say all damage from all strikes, aka multiple sources." They would be as right as people claiming now that printed card and it's text doesn't play well with the rules.

We could change the rules to have "prevent" instead give vampire "prevent counters" that can be used to remove "damage counters". In that world, Flesh of Marble would give infinite amount of "prevent counters" to a minion against certain types of damage after the first damage counter affects the minion. It would be easy for new player to understand that yes, you can use "lump" of certain kind of prevent counters to remove certain types of "damage counters" even when the sources vary and damage is handled on 1 "damage counter" at a time. Now imagine actual physical game where players start to add "damage counters, prevent counters" etc. on the already counter filled playspace. Not to mention the time it would add to a combat that only tends to involve two players in the table. It works well when visualizing and explaining the mechanic but as constant way to handle things, not so much when even simple 1-1 handstrike exchange would have players toss 1 damage counter each to the table at opposing minions.

Card text should be as easy and accessible as possible and handle all cases arising with it's use. Rulebook should be as easy and accessible as possible and handle the framework along with all cases arising from the interaction in the game.

The Card texts cannot be changed with easy solution to follow rulebooks current form without changing balance of power and in this case, some suggestions take already "weak" and "utility" cards to even more obscure position instead their intended purpose of a "response counter." Case in point, the original Jyhad era Flesh of Marble did reduce the damage to 1 but was changed by the time eternal struggle rolled in.

"Jyhad Flesh of Marble

Only usable at the beginning of a round. If the vampire takes more then 1 damage in a round, then the total is reduced to 1. Aggravated damage cannot be prevented. This lasts the duration of combat.
As above, but aggravated damage can be prevented."

Funny anecdote back then we thought for a while (with my old friend) that Flesh of Marble was damage boost card on normal and ensured the hand damage turned aggravated with Claws could not be prevented by opposing vampire either. The "aggravated damage cannot be prevented." sentence was quite easy to understand. Naturally that was not the intent of the game design and with access to following red rectangle eternal struggle and it's different card text it was clarified. We still played some games following the mantra of "cards played as they're printed" that also applied to MTG, meaning Flesh of Marble effect along with others varied from card to card. Fun casual games in their own way, I recommend people sometimes try playing VTES with cards being played as they are, especially if they have to multiple variants of the same card, it gets wild.

We should change the section in the rulebook to ensure it follows the cards and their intent, or figure out way to change text for Flesh of Marble, Guardian angel, flak jacket and multitude of other cards to follow the rulebooks 6.4.6 Damage resolution part. I would vote that rulebook section to receive the needed clarification if 1.4 is too obscure to handle it.

In general, it is true that the timing of printed effects can get messy (the templating of Imbued powers was an improvement in that regard,) but that could easily be fixed by replacing cards with "cards and effects", and it is not the point here. It is much more fundamental than that. Play = make a choice. Something that is mandatory is not a play. If it must happen, then the source that tells you why it must happen must also tell you when it happens. You are not going to find the two split between a card and the core rules.

Besides, the play / not play distinction is important because there are phases when players are allowed to play, and the are phases when they are not. However, mandatory effects can and do happen in all phases, because if a phase has no play and no mandatory effects, then nothing is happening, and it does not need to exist at all. It is not logically sound to force a triggered effect to happen in a play phase, because mandatory effects have more freedom by design.

That is the case for Flesh of Marble. Normally people do not play effects when taking the damage, but there is already a lot of stuff scheduled to happen in there, and there is nothing wrong with a card previously played adding more stuff to that schedule.

Perhaps we can agree that we know what the card is supposed to do but the rules are far from clear on this matter.

Honestly I feel bad for ahnka. There are more rules questions than anything else. Be nice to take some of the burden of the rules team.

Tadori wrote:

If you read V:TES Complete Rules Reference VII A:
"Resolve each point of damage in turn.
NOTE: Normal damage is resolved before aggravated damage."

That's in the "Heal Damage/Prevent Destruction" section. Once you get to Heal Damage/Prevent Destruction, you're dealing with damage that hasn't been prevented (including by Flesh of Marble). There, it makes a difference how you handle the damage because going through normal first increases the ability of aggravated damage to burn you - because the normal damage can wound you first, then potentially a single point of agg damage while you're wounded can burn you.

If you look above at C(c):
The "heal damage/prevent destruction" step only applies to unprevented damage. And Flesh of Marble prevents the damage.

Flesh of Marble effectively creates a gap between being done playing prevent effects and moving on to heal / prevent destruction. Okay, I'm choosing not to play any more Skin of Rock (or whatever) and we're just about done with preventing damage.... so Flesh of Marble does its thing. Then we move into heal damage/prevent destruction, and at that point you split the damage out one by one, normal then agg.