1. Active trooper is in cover and declares BS Attack as it's first short skill against the reactive trooper. 2. Reactive trooper AROs with Light Shotgun BS attack and places the template on the active trooper. 3. Active declares Move as it's second short skill and moves out of the cover. Q: Does the reactive trooper still apply the BS MOD for Partial Cover to his roll?
Especially with teardrop impact templates, you’re choosing where to fire at the target when you place the template. This would be a case that you’ve chosen to fire at the trooper while it’s in cover, instead of when it’s in the open, so the cover MOD to BS applies.
You can't, you have to ARO to the first skill and impact templates are placed immediately, so you have no opportunity to shoot the target out of cover with a LSG (in the described situation). It's one of the few situations where the active player should shoot first then move.
... in ARO you can attack any time during the order, this is 101 Infinity basics another stupid exception to remember
The Spanish version of the acronym ARO: ORA (Orden de Reacción Automática). It sometimes makes automatic translations of the rules sound silly. :)
the problem is you are assuming the general rule applies in all cases. it doesnt, nor should it necessarily be required too for good game design.
Just to be sure: You place the template immediately after declaration, but do you pick it up afterwards? I thought everyone moving into the danger zone is affected - even civilians, which made the Xenotech such a huge thing. Reference: N3 Frequently Asked Question FAQ Version: 1.1 Q: When a group of troopers activate simultaneously (using a Coordinated Order or a Fireteam, for example), and they receive an ARO from a Template Weapon, does the attack affect all the troops that traverse the area of effect at any time during the Order, or does the Reactive Player have to declare the exact moment where he places the template, affecting only some of the targets? A: The template affects all the troopers that get in contact with the area of effect during this Order, as everything happening during the Order is simultaneous. Related Pages: ARO, Coordinated Orders, Fireteams in the Active Turn, G: Servant, G: Synchronized, Template Weapon
According to the game mechanics, you place the template when you declare the attack and it stays there until resolved. In practice, because players may only have one set of templates, once you know who’s affected you’ll take the templates out of the way. But they’ve still there as far as the game is concerned. (I think there was some residual 2nd edition bias when N3 came out where people wanted to still do 2nd edition-style putting the template down again at the end...) In particular, there’s the smoke quote: When, as part of an Order or ARO, the trooper throwing Smoke is facing off against several enemies, his Roll is used against all eligible Face to Face Attack Rolls, but he will need to win every single Face to Face Roll in order to leave the Smoke Template on the table. You take the smoke off the table if it fails. If you win, you leave it where it was placed when you declared the attack.
I don't agree it's not good game design: this is the only situation in the whole game where you can't put your ARO attack in the second half of the order, your forced to put it in the first short order it is just another RAW bug If you get ARoed by a direct template as an active player you just don't run with all your fire team in front of it with this bug you can force the position of the template and then move all your fireteam safely. This just remove the intent of the ARO: why only for the direct template why not for all the weapon ? it's bad mechanic and only few ppl will know this bug, another small detail that will divide the community between the rules nerd and the casuals
@Sangarn this interaction is mostly plain and simple Active Player advantage. As the Reactive Player you can offset it by using Hit Mode for your Impact Template weapon ARO, if you choose to not do that (or are using a ITW without Hit Mode like a LSG) then that's your decision and you have to deal with the result. However BS Attack + Move (in that order) declarations can be quite risky, especially for Links. You never know when a TO troop just barely couldn't see you or wasn't in ZOC and you might eat an unopposed Sniper shot or Hack for what seemed like a nifty move. What this isn't is a "bug" or unintended interaction. Templates getting placed on declaration makes life for Fireteams so much easier since you know where that template will be before you walk through it with all five members. Not having that would be a massive nerf to Fireteams, G:sync, Coordinated Orders etc. The game needs that rule to function although it is a bit clunky.
@Teslarod "bug" was a poor choice of word (pardon my english) we will agree on "clunky" as a warcor I spend every week my time at explaining rules to new and old players and typically this drive me crazy >< anyway, I've learned something else.
Can confirm that placing templates on resolution in N2 was a right pain in the arse. N3 method is purely to speed up and improve gameplay, and works much better.
It makes sense to have a basic rule and exceptions to that rule. However the exceptions need to be listed in one place.
It might help to remember why this exception has to exist: In this edition, you get to ARO Dodge if you're covered by a template. In order to do that, you need to know where the template is when you declare you're firing the weapon. And the active player needs to know where the template is because it's going to be quite common that the active player is activating multiple models (fireteams, coordinated orders, G:whazzoo, etc.) Keep in mind that the teardrop template is placed along the shooter's LoF to the target, and the circular template is placed centered on the target. It doesn't explicitly say "By placing this template you've fixed the spot at which you're firing" but how else could it work?
@Sangarn I agree that it is sloppy game design. What you are really talking about is the fundamental simultaneous resolution mechanic of Infinity. All applicable Skills are Declared, then everything is Resolved as if it had happened at the same time. The way this works for BS attacks is that Weapon and Target are part of the Declaration, but Line of Fire is part of the Resolution. As you point out, BS attacks with the Impact Template Trait create an exception to this Declaration/Resolution dichotomy because all Templates are "placed" during Declaration. Impact Templates require a Line of Fire as part of placement, and thus they are technically non-functional under a strict RAW reading of the rules. In practice we understand how this exception is supposed to work and so we can roll with it, but technically Line of Fire is part of BS attack Resolution, not Declaration. Nevertheless, it is an exception to the fundamental Declare/Resolve dichotomy. In fact, Direct Template weapons are also an exception to this dichotomy, because they are BS attacks, and so technically require Line of Fire, which should only be chosen during Resolution, but because there is no Face to Face roll with a Direct Template weapon the point is moot. The logic behind requiring templates to be placed during Declaration is that being affected by a template triggers an ARO, which would violate the the Declare/Resolve dichotomy. In other words, if I place the template during Resolution and it triggers an ARO, we now have models Declaring Skills during the Resolution phase. How might one prevent this from happening while otherwise preserving the Declare/Resolve dichotomy? One option would be to remove the rule under which templates trigger AROs. Note that this rule is itself an exception to the basic ARO rules: ARO basic rules A trooper owned by the Reactive Player can declare an ARO if any of the following is true: It has Line of Fire (LoF) to a trooper being activated by the Active Player. An enemy trooper activates within its Zone of Control (ZC). It has a Special Skill or piece of Equipment allowing reaction to enemy actions without LoF. Template exception Troopers affected by a Template Weapon or Equipment can declare Dodge as their second Short Skill or ARO, even if they do not have LoF to the attacker. What would the consequences of this change be? Troopers without LoF to a template attack do not get to declare Dodge. Is allowing Troopers to declare Dodge when affected by a template from outside LoF worth the complexity of creating exceptions to two of the most universal, most fundamental, and most used rules in the game? In my humble opinion the answer is an emphatic, "No." The juice here, so to speak, is not worth the squeeze. Hence bad game design. Note that there is a logic to templates being paced during declaration. It isn't entirely nonsensical. There is a reason for it. But the reason only exists because the designers chose to create an exception to a basic rule. And then they had to create another exception to account for the way that the first exception broke the game. CB created an exception that broke the Declare/Resolve dichotomy, and then 'fixed' it by creating yet another exception that also broke the Declare/Resolve dichotomy, albeit to a lesser degree. So yes, @Sangarn, I agree with you. This is bad game design. It is, however, what it is and it is how the game functions. Of much more pressing and immediate concern to me is how the text of the rules tends to induce confusion as to how the rules function. One could substantively improve the Infinity rules by simply removing extraneous, irrelevant, duplicative text without actually changing how the system functions. There's a whole lot more bad writing in Infinity than bad design. Here, with templates, the game design is only subjectively 'bad' in the sense of the perceived complexity cost for the depth created by being able to declare Dodge when affected by a template from outside LoF. Objectively, an exception to a basic rule creates complexity. There's no argument about that. The question is simply how much 'better' or 'more functional' or 'fun' or 'balanced' the game is because of that added complexity, and whether the cost is reasonable. As I have stated, above, I feel that the value added is grossly overshadowed by the resulting complexity, so I think it is subjectively bad game design. But it works. The only thing objectively bad about it is the fact that the way the various rules are written is technically non-functional, but whatever. That's just bad writing. We all know how it is supposed to work.
@MindwormGames having played previous editions with templates placed upon resolution, and not being able to Dodge/ARO without LoF, I disagree that it's bad design. One of the Core areas of improvement in N3 was to vastly reduce the occurrence of unopposed attacks.
I strongly suggest trying a few games like this. You might not like the results. It was bad enough not getting a Dodge in N2 when the template relied on the attacker winning the FtF to place the template, with N3 rules (and Shotgun MOD changes) this change would be freaking terrifying. Apart from going directly against the stated design goal for N3 of (almost) always giving targets a roll.
