Total Immunity - ARM/BTS roll choice

I'm aware that that is what you've done, I just disagree with that decision. It's not how I read the rule.

 

"Valid" is a loaded word here.

I think your interpretation is incorrect.

I've already said that I think the rule could be written more clearly. It's certainly not an interpretation I would have ever come up with given that text, and I feel like your attempts to defend your interpretation have been more about talking down to others who disagree with you rather than being willing to meet them halfway and have an honest and open discussion. That doesn't affect the validity of your position, but does make it hard to continue maintaining my own half of an intellectually honest conversation on the topic.

 

My evidence is the same words you are using for your evidence. I fundamentally disagree with your interpretation. I understand how you could read it that way (so yes, I guess it's "valid"), but I disagree with it and therefore consider it incorrect.

I'm fairly confident there have been a number of posts making a number of rational arguments about how and why we do not read english prose in the way you are suggesting.

Just to play the game - here's how I read the first two bullets of Total Immunity:

• 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.
• In addition, players can choose between making an ARM Roll or BTS Roll, choosing the most advantageous for them.

I read the second bullet point as adding an additional effect; whether or not the previous effect was applied is not relevant. Since it's "additional", it still has the same condition as the most recently stated condition.

My fully expanded version would look like this:

• 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.
• When suffering a successful Attack—or being affected by any weapon or rule—that forces any ARM or BTS Rolls, players can choose between making an ARM Roll or BTS Roll, choosing the most advantageous for them.

The one condition now has two effects, which are evaluated independently. As discussed in the Protheon thread, this also means that the second effect can apply to attacks that did not trigger the first one, such as with Normal ammo or ammo-less attacks such as Protheion.

[Minor edits for clarity]

 

Ginrei - what bothers me, other than you standing there and refusing to ever say all of you may be right, is you don't even play the game. Why in the world are you keeping up with it and coming in the forum and just trolling. You are not part of the infinity community. Wait until 4th edition comes out and see if you like that better.
I stopped playing 40k after 30ish years because 8th is just not good to me or fun. I do keep up with broad strokes but I would never go add comments or participate in any forum because I am not part of that community. Your comments across the forum are disruptive, lead to bad impressions from new players trying to learn and are enjoying a great game and you may be too demanding a player for table top gaming in general and infinity definitely.
Even though logically and when I first read the faq I agreed with your vision of the rule, but that 2nd bullet is about as clear as it gets and with the point increase I feel like my initial reading was off and the community is agreeing with my 2nd impression so discussion over.

 

I've lost the thread. What is there even still to debate here? Can the TI RAW be read the way it seems the majority of people commenting here are reading it? Clearly it can be that's how they're interpreting it. Can the TI RAW be read the way @Ginrei is interpreting it? Clearly it can be because that's how @Ginrei is reading it. But we also know the RAI because @ijw told us what it is. When you combine all that, then isn't the most reasonable course to say "The TI rules are not written clearly because they are open to different conflicting interpretations. They need to be edited to match RAI."

What is the merit debating the semantics of RAW if we know what RAI is? Yeah in a perfect world RAI and RAW will always be in complete alignment and that's what rules should strive for. Is a rule book where you need to double check RAI elsewhere because RAW is unclear well constructed? No, and I think most people here will agree on that. But the fact remains that we know the RAI and we know the RAW could be better and we all want the rules to be clearer, so what is everyone arguing about?

 

Okay, that sounds less like an argument and more like just ridiculous arrogance. It's pretty hard to take someone seriously when they say stuff like this.

 

@ambisinister Part of the issue is that Symbiomates making the bearer flat-out immune to nonlethal ammo is a very questionable design decision, so it tends to provoke more outrage from people who are paying attention.

Depending on how much Flash Pulses are being used for ARO duty, it might represent an upgrade over SymbioMates in their earlier state, and Tohaa were already one of the most competitive factions in ITS, before the Spiral profiles and this change.

 

I'm on board with that scenario also being a bit of a clarity fiasco. I would like to point out, though, that this is the "can you choose to roll BTS against normal ammo" thread, not the "Does shooting a pokemon in the eye with a laser pointer cause it to faint" thread.

 

Well, ditto for the "Karakuris are now ARM 6 without having to pay for it like other troopers" factor.

 

It isn’t though. Every point you bring forth is something you claim is backed with evidence and structure etc. Except it isn’t. You have failed to demonstrate a counter argument to the simplest refutation of your entire premise; why do you exclude Normal Ammo when the literal RAW INCLUDES Normal Ammo in the TI description? Because this isn’t a case of RAW vs RAI, there’s no way to get around neither RAW nor RAI.

Some might agree on some wording issues but not on anything that breaks RAW, again you’re merely arrogantly suggesting people who refute your point are doing it because they are mere simpletons who are dogpiling you. This isn’t the case.

 

By "valid" I simply mean "an interpretation that is possible without intentionally violating the way things are written". You did not define your terms so I had to assume a definition.

Sometimes a rule is not written 100% clearly, and as a result sometimes there is more than one way to read it. At that point I think it's important for a community to come together and figure out what it means. Sometimes we get official clarification, and sometimes we have a consensus, and sometimes we disagree.

Can you play it how you want? Sure. In your own games of Infinity you're free to interpret any and all rules however you like, even if they expressly violate the rules stated by Corvus Belli.

Can we have discussions on the rules forum about what we think was intended, and what we (collectively) think is the most likely, most sensible, etc. interpretation? Also yes.

 

I mean, I think you're misreading the text. I don't think you're intentionally misreading the text out of bad faith, which is the important distinction I was going for previously with the "correct/incorrect" vs. "valid/invalid".

I'm a pretty easygoing person, so I wouldn't just refuse to play the game until you came around to my point of view or anything like that. But that's not a terribly high bar, and I would want to make sure we worked something out before playing another game where it would come up. The only thing worse than having someone unexpectedly flip a rule on you is knowing that a conflict exists and then just walking into it again unprepared.

I strongly disagree with your characterization. There were a number of posts that clearly stated how they read the rule and why they did, and you blew them off because they did not format their arguments exactly how you wanted to receive them. You don't get to dictate the way people phrase their points.

There are plenty of rules threads that have ended up with no resolved consensus because both sides have equal footing when it comes to how the rules are phrased. I don't think this is one of them. It's not strictly a popularity contest, but it would really help your case if anyone else were taking your position. Sometimes we have to apply the Gordian Knot style of conflict resolution, and if only one person holds belief A and everyone else holds belief B, it's pretty likely that A is wrong.