Toreador Grand Ball/Mask of 1000 Faces

Borrelstein wrote:

The phrase 'Not usable if any action modifiers or other effects have been used that could not have been used if this vampire were the acting vampire' implies that you would need to test whether the 2 vampires could have been exchanged in the action without consequence.
If an effect (such as inherent stealth or TGB) causes a difference in options for the blocker, then Masking can not be played.
I believe that this is in accordance with the intended mechanics of the card.

I understand what the card says and what it means. Part of this old discussion had to do with whether Mo1KF should be changed or banned. The sentence in question has required a lot of rulings, so much so that many players have suggested that it should be banned. I was throwing out an idea to make it very easy to play.

The card has two aspects to consider:
1. The way in which an action modifier and "effects" played by or on one vampire could be applied to a new vampire.

This idea shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how action modifiers actually work or should work. Even though the rules team has said that generally action modifiers modify the action and not the minion, that is extremely problematic thinking for a variety of fairly self-evident reasons. I say that action modifiers are cards played by an acting player's minions during an action. Action modifier cards that say +stealth increase the stealth characteristic of the vampire who played them until the end of the action, just as intercept cards increase the intercept characteristic of a vampire until the end of the action. That is the best and cleanest way to treat them.

If Gilbert Duane has increased his stealth by playing Lost in Crowds, that stealth should not transfer to Zebulon who has played Mo1KF because there is no obvious mechanic by which that can (or should) happen through the rules or card text, except by a jumbled set of rulings. Although we say actions have stealth, that is a shorthand - minions have stealth, not actions.

By setting aside this idea of "inheriting" action modifiers and other effects (and consider that "effect" is not a defined term in the game), Mo1KF becomes much, much easier to resolve.

It would require a change in the current rulings, and an important shift in how action modifiers are considered to function.

2. The other aspect is the intention behind the card. The intention is to mimic the RPG Obfuscate power of Mask of 1000 Faces, which allows a vampire to look like someone else, even impersonating a specific person. The idea is that the first vampire was actually the Masking vampire in disguise.

Following this thinking, the first vampire couldn't have demonstrated abilities that the Masking vampire didn't have, because it was actually the Masking vampire all along. I get this concept, but there is no unified game mechanic for identifying "effects that are used on a vampire during an action". It is a fiddly masterwork of messed up since each unique case has to be adjudicated individually.

Rather than trying to slavishly simulate the effect of the RPG power, I propose it would be fine to simplify it for the purposes of the card game. Say the Masking vampire has to meet the requirements of the action, because that has a standard meaning within the game. A vampire can either play Govern the Unaligned at basic or not. Who cares if the other powers don't match up between the vampires, if the card is easy to play?

My basic point of view is that I wouldn't create Mask as it is now if I had a magic wand. (But I don't.) That said...

AaronC wrote:

If Gilbert Duane has increased his stealth by playing Lost in Crowds, that stealth should not transfer to Zebulon who has played Mo1KF because there is no obvious mechanic by which that can (or should) happen through the rules or card text, except by a jumbled set of rulings. Although we say actions have stealth, that is a shorthand - minions have stealth, not actions.

By setting aside this idea of "inheriting" action modifiers and other effects (and consider that "effect" is not a defined term in the game), Mo1KF becomes much, much easier to resolve.

It would require a change in the current rulings, and an important shift in how action modifiers are considered to function.

There's a history here that tried to exclude effects that modify the minion. DS: Summary of Official Errata, Clarifications, Rulings, and Statements e.g.
Distinguishing between things that modified the action vs modified the minion was unpleasant, hence the moves towards the functionality we have now.

Thing is, some action modifiers (and effects from cards in play) do modify the action, or have been ruled to do so. Example:

[LSJ 20020106]

LSJ wrote:

Note: Confusion modifies the bleed, not the minion. The +bleed would carry
over through a Mask, for example.

This isn't short-hand or sloppiness - the action has been modified, not just the minion - and this part has been pretty consistent all along, anything that modified the action could carry over. It is possible to change it, but we shouldn't change things by imagining that short-hand has got us into a wrong position.

There's also the issue of what it means to set aside "inheriting" action modifiers. If your vampire doesn't inherit action modifiers, can I re-block after you've used a block fails and cannot reblock effect like Elder Impersonation? If I play Circumspect Revelation - "The block attempt fails, and that Sabbat vampire cannot attempt to block this action again." - then does that persist, and if not why should I inherit that but not stealth? If I reduce a bleed with Folderol (reducing it from the base 1 to 0, on an action with no other modifiers), does playing Mask to a second vampire bump the bleed back up to 1, if we decide that that affected the minion? Who burns a blood (if anyone) if I play superior Ecstasy and you then play Mask, and the bleed resolves for zero - is that inherited?


Aside: "Effect" is just a generic term for a thing that you want to do (and announce) - whether it's a card you're playing, or tapping the Barrens, or activiting a vampire's optional special ability. Hence tapping the Barrens follows the same rules on sequencing as playing Earth Control etc. If you know how to sequence who gets to declare tapping a master location vs activating a vampire's special reaction-like ability, you know what an effect is.

AaronC wrote:

IFollowing this thinking, the first vampire couldn't have demonstrated abilities that the Masking vampire didn't have, because it was actually the Masking vampire all along.

If you're going on a lore point of view, there are a variety of things a vampire could have done while pretending to be another vampire that would benefit from the other vampire's identity - obviously, not disciplines, but things based on their identity. People might follow my orders, let me in to places etc. If Rom Gypsy think I'm a Ravnos and give me some access into a situation, that I later turn out to actually have been a Mask-ing Nosferatu doesn't have to undo that, and similarly with a bunch of clan-stealth masters, and similar cards. These are currently disallowed, when slavish adherence to the RPG would potentially allow them.

AaronC wrote:

Rather than trying to slavishly simulate the effect of the RPG power, I propose it would be fine to simplify it for the purposes of the card game. Say the Masking vampire has to meet the requirements of the action, because that has a standard meaning within the game. A vampire can either play Govern the Unaligned at basic or not. Who cares if the other powers don't match up between the vampires, if the card is easy to play?

It might make the card simpler, but would it see much play afterwards? It's not clear that it would be particularly useful.