Break the Bonds presence target

Thanks, this clears it up for me

So in general, all effects which are mandatory (if the option is chosen) need to be announced?

Like Platinum Protocol's target for corruption counters, as alternate example.

the general interpretation of the Keystone Kine ruling was thought to be based on the conditional nature of the effect ("if y, x") making it not know if it (x) would happen and therefore didn´t require the declaration of the target in the announcement and would only need to be done when and if the qualifier (y) was met... which is why this ruling in KRCG is currently also linked to eg. The Platinum Protocol

now your provided ruling (assumingly based on the same ruling) states that it is because of the unknown details of the bleed value that matters for the targeting of the conditional effect why the target declaration is delayed for it... which means it has nothing to do with conditional effects and their unknown nature of whether they will happen or not.

one would need to know about this ruling to come to the right conclusion and it is difficult to generally apply it as the argument could be made that the conditional effects all have an unknown aspect to them but this unknown fact doesn't matter only unknown aspects that affect the targeting do.

inm8 wrote:

one would need to know about this ruling to come to the right conclusion and it is difficult to generally apply it as the argument could be made that the conditional effects all have an unknown aspect to them but this unknown fact doesn't matter only unknown aspects that affect the targeting do.

Imho the ruling is on the contrary better deducable from the rulebook than before, since the RB makes no difference on which details need to be announced.

rulebook wrote:

All details of the action are defined when the action is announced, including the target(s), the cost, the effects, and so on.

What might be helpful to clarify is that an action only fizzles if all parts of the action are unsuccessful

OK, going to leave the editorial complaining out and skip straight to questions.

1) You need an uncontrolled minion to announce the line on Break the Bonds (ruled in this thread). You don't necessarily choose the minion at that time as Undue Influence's explicit text requires, one just has to be there for announcement.

QUESTION: Do you defer selection of the recipient until after the bleed is successful?

That's what the Keystone Kine precedent would suggest - the target of "if successful" lines are selected only after the bleed demonstrates success. That 2-part timing feels clumsy.

There's also that Platinum Protocol question hanging. The line is mandatory and should have a valid target on announcement if you follow the Break the Bonds ruling here. That seems to follow even if the final targets (of both the bleed and applied counter) might change.

QUESTION: Is a valid INITIAL target for every MANDATORY effect required even when there's a "if successful" that implies deferred selection of the actual target?

I get the whole Keystone Kine precedent for opting out of "can/may" lines (e.g., [obf] Break the Bonds) getting around some of this, while still having used the effect for the purposes of things like Dabbler. We're leaning more on the more general "can't do what you can't do" with thee Pt Protocol question.

As I understood Ankha, the Keystone Kine is not a precedent, since the delayed choice is caused by an unknown variable (bleed amount), not "if successful".

So for every other "if successful"-action, choices would need to be made during announcement as normal.

The rub is that magnitude is what determines if the bleed is successful (e.g. more than 0).

It's really the same comparison right?

Is my bleed value bigger than "some target value"
- target = 1 or more for BtB
- target = X or more where X is the cost of an ally.

The syntax feels the same to me. If (and only if) X, do Y.