So, after some discussion on Discord, we can't quite come to any conclusion how this would actually work. On the one hand, Lieutenant is a unique skill to the army and when you enter Loss of Lieutenant for any reason the skill is removed from the current Lieutenant and then you assign a new Lieutenant. On the other hand, Lieutenant is written as a skill with a MOD and there's no real indication that the unit can lose the MOD. So, imagine an Avatar getting Isolated, army enters Loss of Lieutenant, then at the end of their turn after having fixed the Avatar, the Avatar is re-assigned the army's Lieutenant; Is the Avatar still generating 2 Lieutenant Orders or is it only generating 1?
When a new lieutenant is appointed no additional abilities are gained. The +1 order or +1 command token are defined as an additional ability.
You didn't quite quote the rule in full. "When a new Lieutenant is appointed (due to Loss of Lieutenant, Chain of Command...), they gain the Lieutenant Special Skill, with no additional abilities." If the original Lt is reinstated then they do not need to gain the Lieutenant special skill because they already have it.
Having the Lieutenant skill is in every way equal to being the Lieutenant. There's no mechanism for putting the skill in a "dormant" state, so when a Lieutenant becomes a non-Lieutenant they also have to be stripped of the skill - hence the meta question of "what about the MODs, though?"
It's bizarre that write "there's no mechanism for putting the skill in a 'dormant' state, when that's completely irrelevant. The loss of lieutenant condition doesn't remove the lieutenant skill from any troopers, it changes how the game mechanics work. That's completely irrelevant. An army is in loss of lieutenant when it either has no lieutenant trooper or the lieutenant trooper is in a null state. In other words: You have Fusilier Trooper A as your lieutenant. FTA gets shot and goes unconscious. At the start of your turn, you check and because FTA is unconscious you go into loss of lieutenant. FTA still has the fieutentat skill. The next turn, when you appoint a new lieutenant, that's when FTA has to lose the lieutenant skill. How about t meta question posed by how there are people who appear to be of the position "We refuse to accept the fact that there's a bullet point in the Lieutenant skill declaring that the 'mods' listed for the lieutenant skill are 'additional abilities', and the previous bullet point (and the loss of lieutenant rules) specifies doesn't transfer."?
But they're not being transferred. Turn 1. Avatar is LT, Avatar goes ISO. The Avatar has the Skill LT (+1 Order, +1 Command Token). Turn 2. LOL. Avatar Resets out of ISO. It's appointed the LT and gains the skill LT (without any additional abilities) but it STILL has the skill LT (+1 Order, +1 Command Token). Turn 3. The Avatar is the LT and generates ? Orders. The question is, on turn 3 - which version of the LT skill must the Avatar use? The version it had organically or the version it gained when it was appointed the LT at the end of turn 2.
Does it still have the LT skill with the MODs, though? It seems odd that you'd have a trooper running around with the Lieutenant skill if it wasn't the Lieutenant. Just for reference, this hasn't been brought up in N4 yet, and given that levelled skills are no longer a thing, works slightly different to N3, but I'm basing the logic off of answers like this: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threa...d-lieutenant-level-2.26179/page-3#post-259648 (Yes, that's me giving IJW grief on technicalities) Back then the Lieutenant skill got transferred, and it's entirely possible that the whole reason why Lieutenant says you get the Lieutenant skill without additional rules is so that this transfer shouldn't be interpreted as "My BIT is LT+1 now"
Hmm. An Effect of the Lieutenant Special Skill is that "The user of this Special Skill has a Lieutenant Special Order." There's no Requirement or other qualification that says "unless the user is not the army's Lieutenant." Consequently, if the Avatar Lt gets Isolated and, following LoL, a Daturazi is appointed Lt, the Avatar must no longer have the Lieutenant Special Skill. If it still had the skill, it would still generate a Lieutenant Special Order. As @Mahtamori points out, the rules don't contain any mechanism for the skill's Effects to not apply in these circumstances. It's also notable that the skill says "When a new Lieutenant is appointed (due to Loss of Lieutenant, Chain of Command...), they gain the Lieutenant Special Skill." If the Lieutenant Special Skill and the fact of being the army's Lt were two different things, then this line would be unnecessary. Consequently, I agree with @Mahtamori that "having the Lieutenant Special Skill" and "being the army's lieutenant" are the same thing. When an Lt is appointed at the end of LoL, the previous Lt loses the Skill and the new Lt gains it - but without any additional abilities. It doesn't matter if the new Lt happens to be the same trooper as the previous Lt - it will still lose it's Lt Special Skill, and also gain the Lt Special Skill without any additional abilities. The reading where the Avatar doesn't lose the skill would result in the Avatar having the skill twice, once with the additional ability and once without, generating three Lt orders...
Disagree with assertion that they'd have 3 orders. Redundant skills do nothing: Lt says the user *has* A Lt order, so even if they had the Lt skill twice they would still only give them A Lt order. But I think @Mahtamori has the right of it. "Is appointed the Lt of the army" is NOT a Requirement of the Lt skill - so the skill would function even if the Avatar was not currently appointed the Lt unless it was removed on LOL. So EITHER an Isolated Lt continues to generate Lt orders even while in LOL and when a subsequent LT is appointed (ie. you can have multiple Lts) OR the LT skill must be effectively removed on entering LOL. From an ITS POV the former is implied to be correct. You score points for Lts even if they weren't the Lt at the time: implying that they retain the Lt skill regardless of LOL. However, it's also patently absurd. My personal belief is that "Is appointed the Lt" is a missing requirement for the Lt skill and the "Is appointed the Lt and gains the Lt skill" are two separate actions. As this means that a Lt kill in ITS applies to anyone with the Lt skill. Overall this is the simplest way to apply CB's intent: it just requires the largest rewriting of the rules. So, I agree that the cleanest way to play it is that the Lt skill has no effects outside of ITS once LOL occurs. Which means in my example the Avatar would need to use its NEW LT skill.
