Trigger Timing

[eepjr24]

This thought came to me during this thread: 

We were discussing incantations and how to stop them. I was trying to think outside the box of non-standard ways and I came up with Trigger. If I have say a rogue type who throws daggers and wants to be able to defend himself against spell casters, would a RKA (thrown dagger) with a trigger "seeing someone start incantations" go off before the spell was cast, even if the spell power was instant? I could not find anything referencing how long things like Gestures and Incantations take to execute besides:

 

(6e1, 382) "(If a character has two or more Instant powers that require Incantations, or Constant powers that only require Incantations to activate, he can activate them all in the same Phase.)"

 

That implies less than a half phase but it pretty vague.  If the caster is damaged, that would trigger:

 

"If he takes damage or is adversely affected by any power that requires an Attack Roll or MCV Attack Roll while he’s Incanting, the power doesn’t turn on or immediately turns off."

 

As always, thank you for your time and effort for the community.

 

- E

[Steve Long]

Intriguing question!

 

I’d rather not establish any hard and fast rules for how much time Incantations (or Gestures) require to use (absent Extra Time or some other rule that provides a precise time requirement in a specific case). I don’t think it would be helpful, and might in fact cause more problems than it would solve. This is just one of those situations that no RPG handles well, because you can’t always model a dynamic situation (like combat or vehicle chases) with precise rules about who acts first.

 

So in this case, the answer is, “That’s up to the GM.” Personally, I would be reluctant to let the knife-throwing rogue always interrupt spellcasters; that could easily render a lot of enemies more or less powerless. But by the same token, the character has come up with an intriguing and clever ability, so I’d like to include it in the campaign somehow. So here’s what I’d do:  if the rogue character is likely to hit and do damage to spellcasters with this ability more than 50% of the time, I would consider requiring some sort of DEX Roll Versus DEX Roll Contest:  if he wins, he hits before the spellcaster finishes, and has a chance to derail the spell; if he loses, the spellcaster finishes first (but may still suffer damage from the thrown knife). If the chance of the rogue successfully interrupting spellcasters is 50% or less, then the requirements of (a) hitting the target, and (b) doing damage to him past his defenses are probably enough to keep the power from unbalancing the campaign.

 

And of course, as the campaign goes on, if necessary the player and GM can work together to adjust things to keep the knife-throwing power useful, but not unbalancingly powerful.

 

I hope that helps! As always, if I haven't answered all your questions, PM me or post a follow-up.