Total Immunity - ARM/BTS roll choice

No, I'm getting fed up of you reading the rule wrong.

Your "evidence" is wrong.

The rule works, it can be written better but the RAW is functional.

 

why you ignore the fact Forward observer not use ANY ammunition at all, in contrary with combi-rifle's & other weapon's firing Normal ammunition?
UPD: & of course the fact it is non-lethal

 

The cringe

 

I honestly believe this is both RAW and RAI. I can think the rule is adequate but still recognize room for improvement. Look around these forums and you can find plenty of times I’ve criticized their rules writing practices or other decisions.

I understand why you are frustrated with how it’s written but I think your proposed reading in the first post is inaccurate and adds constraints that are not present in the text.

 

Try not asking a question you don't want an answer to then. Instead of asking:

ask:

"Can someone articulate to me why, specifically, a TI trooper is allowed to use their BTS against Normal (N) ammunition type?"

The rules follow simple "if, then" statements with bullet points usually being their own separate clause or idea, sometimes they can support the previous bullet but they can always stand on their own – it's seen in so many other special rules across the board. I would be happy to post examples, should you choose to ask. Why you're choosing to not use this simple layout of reading comprehension on this specific instance is beyond me. To me, it seems like you just don't like the idea of a TI trooper using BTS against Normal.

who hurt you?

 

Forward observer has no ammo type and provokes no saving throw. A combi rifle has an ammo type (normal, not special, yes) and does provoke a saving throw.

Again, that example could be written more clearly, but the two cases are not equivalent.

 

The second bullet point of protheion can absolutely stand on it's own. If you were to remove "Also" nothing about the rule would change in the slightest bit.

Same goes for Total Immunity – you can remove the word "Additionally" from the second bullet point and nothing changes.

 

What are you talking about? I said remove the word "In addition" not every other clause?

TOTAL IMMUNITY AUTOMATIC SKILL
Optional
REQUIREMENTS
EFFECTS

• When suffering a successful Attack—or being affected by any weapon or rule—that forces any ARM or BTS Rolls, the owner is immune to the special effects of the Special Ammunitions, treating them as Normal Ammunition.
• Players can choose between making an ARM Roll or BTS Roll, choosing the most advantageous for them.
• If affected by a weapon or Ammunition with the Non-Lethal Trait (see Infinity N3) that forces an ARM or BTS Roll, owners of Total Immunity won't suffer its effects, so they won't make the ARM or BTS Roll, nor any corresponding Guts Roll.
• This Special Skill is not applied if the owner suffers a Hacking or Comms Attack.

No, because of bullet 4

?????

 

My dude, you haven’t even provided evidence of your own claim (despite your numerous claims of doing otherwise). Again, how did you arrive at the conclusion that Normal Ammo doesn’t trigger TI when the first bullet says this:

“when suffering a successful Attack—or being affected by ANY WEAPON or RULE—that forces any ARM or BTS Rolls”

I’m sorry but how the fuck does ANY WEAPON or RULE translate into your head as ‘literally anything in the game EXCEPT Normal Ammo, for reasons entirely unexplained’? Listen, son. Do yourself a favour and stop arguing like everyone in the world is telling you the world is flat and you’re the only one holding the divine truth. None wants to engage seriously with you in such a manner and it’s even worse when you act so condescending, arrogant and stubborn, when you’re demonstrably wrong, painfully so even.

 

It doesn't matter how it arrived to the conclusion (and what it stated to be the reason it arrived to the conclusion).

It doesn't work because the "Example. Special Case:" said so. It doesn't apply to anything that is outside that specific "Special Case". If the "doesn't work" applied to combi, it would be written "Example. General Case:"

 

IMO the intent is pretty clear even if the rules are ever so slightly less so

 

You've got a preconception of how rules are meant to be structured that are not quite aligned with reality.

No one has set up any rules for how a piece of rule must be announced or structured. It can take the form of any piece of text structured in any way possible.

Rules are simply a set of text describing the logic by which the players agree to work within.

The rules can absolutely set up what can be considered a "trigger" outside of the requirements box. It's not necessarily a good idea to write rules that way and I'm sure you'll find more than one peer reviewed paper on how to best present game rules.
This doesn't mean the rules stop working.

The sentence "When a person finds himself falling a great distance, they will eventually land and hurt themselves" sets up a condition and then a consequence of this condition. You can't divide the sentence up in half and proclaim that the text gives no indication to what happens when a person falling hits the ground, because the reason the sentence no longer tells you what might happen is not the text structure, but rather how you chose to read it.

So in the case of Total Immunity, if your point is that the rules are poorly structured you'll probably find support. No one is likely going to argue against you, in fact, but some might say "it doesn't matter".
However, the reason you seem to arrive at a vastlt different conclusion from everyone else here is not that we're trying to shield CB from criticism - it's more likely that we don't expect half a sentence to stand on its own and that we're willing to take the text at face value instead of trying to force it into a specific structure and reading it only as it would read through that structure.

We're all clever adaptive humans, we don't need text presented to us perfectly, like a computer does, in order to understand it.
Even if it is preferable.

 

I assure you I’m trying my best to treat you as a rational and competent adult.

 

CB does, actually, plenty of the recent FAQ entries back up this premise.

 

I think this is the crux of the issue here. You are looking to improve the ruleset and have it changed, which is fine, but you need to understand what the primary purpose of the Rules forum is. If a rule is unclear or ambiguous to you, this is the place to post and find out how you should play it. Take the answer, even if it wasn't the conclusion you came to from reading the rule, thank IJW for the closest thing you will get to an official response, and then either play it that way or don't (with the expectation others will play it that way).

If you then think "hey, this could have been written better so others don't come to the same conclusion I did!", then that's good feedback! You can mention it and leave it at that for IJW to take up with CB, or, make a thread in the discussion form to discuss how you think it could be better written. That's perfectly fine. But why stick to the same thread to aggressively bash the wording over the head? This isn't the way to accomplish what you say you are trying to accomplish.