So I had a game recently where this came up. Domaru Neko peeks corner as his first short skill Cadin throws grenade as ARO The blast of the grenade centered on the Domaru Neko also hits Shinobu Kitsune who is hanging on the wall just above him. Domaru declares shoot targeted at Cadin as his second short skill. Now my understanding is that Cadin and Domaru Neko now do their face to face as normal. But Shinobu Kitsune gets no defensive reaction dodge to this blast because it is that players active turn and they were not given an order. Meaning if any of Cadin's rolls would have been a hit on Domaru Neko they still would hit Shinobu Kitsune as well. is this correct?
Yes, it's correct that you can only declare AROs in your Reactive Turn. I underlined and emphasised the relevant clause. But, Cadin's Grenade will hit Shinobe even if he loses the FTF with the Domaru so long as he passes his Roll. Effectively you treat it as two different Rolls (1 FTF with the Domaru, 1 Normal vs Shinobe) but performed with the same dice. Mods are worked out based on the Domaru (the main target).
The best possible rule of thumb for handling templates is that a template is an attack on everyone in the template. Couple this with the rule of thumb that the only way to avoid an attack is to declare a skill that allows you to avoid or face to face an attack directed at yourself.
Smoke templates are attacks. Very specifically they are attacks. They have a rule that says they don't cause face to face with dodge attempts in spite of being attacks.
Throwing a grenade of any type (Smoke as well) is a BS Attack action. Smoke itself is not an attack, it's Template is a Zone and it doesn't affect troopers, it only affects Lines of Sight.
Here's what it says in the rules: Performing an Attack with a weapon with Smoke Ammunition allows the user to make a Face to Face Roll against all enemy Attacks that require a Roll and LoF, and whose LoF passes through the Zero Visibility Zone generated by the Smoke Template.
So, yeah. It's a BS Attack with a weapon with Smoke Ammunition. It doesn't affect enemy troopers. Instead, it allows a FtF vs enemy Attacks because it breaks LoF. The trooper himself is not attacked, not affected. Doesn't take a wound, doesn't test ARM/BTS, doesn't gain States, nothing. Smoke is completely external to the enemy trooper, it affects the table (the 3D combat space, lines of sight, etc.).
"Area of Effect The Area of Effect of a Template is the area it covers with a single declaration of use. For example, if you declare an Attack using a Template Weapon, all Troopers or targets in Silhouette contact or inside the Area of Effect of the Template are affected by the Attack."
Yeah, but it's Smoke. Smoke doesn't affect targets. At all. All the extent of "affected" the troopers covered by Smoke have is that THEIR LoF is limited.
Read that again. There is nothing in the text which says that it is not an attack. It even says "performing an attack with [..] Smoke Ammunition". The line about Smoke not being an attack is from N3 and has been removed from N4. The orange "Remember" box points out how to handle a friendly trooper being hit by it as the rule no longer relies on "not being an attack" to work in that manner. Also, your statement that smoke does not affect troopers inside the aoe needs specific citation. Normally proving that something doesn't exist is impossible, but in this case we have shown that a rule exists that make a unit inside an AOE affect all units touched by the aoe and that smoke is an attack, so for your reasoning to work you have to be able to show that there is a rule that makes an exception to these fundamental rules.
Eh, not interested in rehashing the same argument as before. Smoke Ammo explicitly has no Damage Rating and inflicts no States. It has no way to affect a Trooper. You would have to prove that the enemy or friendly Trooper under Smoke is somehow altered, influenced, changed first. That's the initial statement I contested. Nothing changes on the enemy trooper, zero, nada. He's not affected per the literal meaning of the word. The table is affected, there's a Zone now on it. The orange box text about friendly troopers is an exception itself, because the template could not be placed without it - it can because specifically Smoke does not affect Troopers - neither friendly nor enemy. CB uses "affect" here in a broader sense, unfortunately, to mean "friendly Trooper is at least in base contact with or completely / partially within the Template area" and this means that he has his LoF limited by the Zone created from the Template. If it were a normal Grenade, it would be nullified because of the friendly Trooper. A friendly trooper cannot have Damage or States applied to it, so the Template placement would be illegal and it would vanish. This orange box phrasing is a specific exception to that, explicitly allowing Smoke to "affect" friendlies because Smoke doesn't really affect Troopers, it changes the rules of the table by creating a temporary Zone. That's all I'm gonna say, it's become circular because of the imprecise wording used by CB around the "affect" phrasing and what "affect" really means. TL;DR - it's not the Template that affects the Troopers, the only interaction is from the Zone it creates after the fact. And that interaction is still external to the Troopers.
inane.imp already posted the definition of effect which is if it is an attack that touches a trooper. Having a lasting effect does not factor into this. In fact, Smoke ammo wouldn't need to go to such length as to define that smoke can affect friendly troopers if what you write is correct.
@Nuada Airgetlam the rules define what it means to be affected by a Template Weapon. It does not require for that weapon to impose states or other effects onto a target, rather the rules state: "all Troopers or targets in Silhouette contact or inside the Area of Effect of the Template are affected by the Attack" Now the extent and consequences of being affected by the Attack may differ but the test is simple: Was it a Template Weapon? Were they inside the Area or Effect? You then apply the appropriate effects: which - for a Smoke Grenade - are none. Which is no different to a Cubeless Trooper being hit by a Sepsitsor, or a Non-Hackable Non-Hacker being hit by a Cybermine. Yes this is different from the plain language reading of being affected by something, but that's fine because the rules provide a technical definition for the jargon they're using. Addendum, the reason that you can place a Smoke Grenade such that it affects allies is because of the rules say you can: "REMEMBER The Area of Effect of a Template can affect Allied Troopers as long as the Template has no Damage Attribute and does not inflict any State." This, incidentally, also makes it clear that the authors understand Smoke Ammunition to affect the troopers under the Area or Effect of a Smoke Template.
FWIW, I think the rule that MSV troopers don’t FtF smoke attacks pretty well supports the idea that “my LoF is altered by smoke” = “I am affected by smoke” given how FtF is all about troopers affecting each other in the first place.
Not at all, those are two rules which affect the interaction between the Trooper and the table. One creates a Zero Vis zone on the table and as a secondary consequence takes away LoF from enemy and friendly Troopers, while the other allows the Trooper to ignore the Zone completely or partially and create a LoF anyway, with modifiers or not. Throwing Smoke is a move that alters the table and takes LoF away from everything on the table on an appropriate angle through smoke, even if it's not in the Smoke template itself. You can't claim the Template "affects" a sniper in your DZ because I've thrown Smoke / Eclipse in mine and your Sniper lost LoF to me.
This brings up something I was a bit unclear on in the rules. The rules say on page 83 under Dodge: Troopers can only Dodge if at least one of these is true: ► They are the Active Trooper. ► In the Reactive Turn, they have a valid ARO. ► They are affected by a Template Weapon. So if in the example at the beginning of this thread, an impact template weapon affects a trooper during another nearby friendly trooper's activation, the non-active affected trooper cannot dodge? They do fulfill one of the necessary truisms to be able to dodge (they were affected by a template weapon) - but is the argument that they cannot activate the dodge because they can neither ARO (since it's their active turn) nor execute a short skill (because they're not the activated trooper)? I was sort-of under the impression that the 'affected by a template weapon' case is specifically to allow troops to not be penalized for being hit by blast templates with no recourse, since template weapons themselves already sort-of work around the ability to only ARO against an active trooper - otherwise you end up in a situation where multiple troopers can dodge a blast template in the reactive turn, but the same grouping of troopers would just stand still during the active turn under the exact same circumstances. Somewhat related to all of the above, the rules on Smoke ammunition say this: ► Performing an Attack with a weapon with Smoke Ammunition allows the user to make a Face to Face Roll against all enemy Attacks that require a Roll and LoF, and whose LoF passes through the Zero Visibility Zone generated by the Smoke Template. Assuming one had a valid ARO to perform this reactively, does this allow a figure that is NOT the target of an enemy attack to make a face-to-face roll against it, say, to protect an allied trooper from being hit by the attack by throwing smoke in front of it?
Dodge is a "Short Skill/ARO" so you can only declare if if you are the active trooper (short skill), or have a valid ARO. The rules for ARO give "It is affected by a Template Weapon" as one of the conditions in which a reactive trooper will have a valid ARO. There's no similar rule to turn a non-activated trooper into an active trooper if it's hit with a template during its active turn. No. Face-to-face rolls are by definition a competition between two troopers trying to affect each other, and never involve third parties. The same way if Angus' Dodge wins the f2f roll against your Missile Launcher, it cancels the attack against Angus but not against Bipendra who was also caught in the blast and failed her Dodge roll.
Right so with that in mind... assuming I'm trying to protect your ARO-ing trooper and not a 3rd party, does this still mean that the smoke grenade can be thrown anywhere that will grant me said F2F with the trooper that is attacking me? The ARO rules say: AROs must choose one of the Troopers activated by the Order as their target. Normally I'd assume that this means I need to have range to drop the smoke on the 'target' that is shooting at me rather than throwing it right at my own feet. Does 'targetless' supersede that?
