Re: [HOE] Deflections. please please please a quick response ifpossible.

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> SO why dosent the reward say he has to see it coming? its a permenant
> reward, its always on. the greater reward is the one that says he has
> to see the power being cast. the only time it wont deflect is if he
> has no cards, I.E he is surprised.

I combed the accumulated rulings and the book and this is what I found:
main book page 94:
"But if he wants to, a brainer in need can try a little harder not to get
hit. This is an "active defense" as opposed to your hero's normal "passive
defense." That sounds kind of technical though, so in typical Deadlands
style, we call it "vamoosin'."

Without breaking out my good old Webster's and really boring you, "active"
means doing something. In order to do something you have to have a reason
to do it. If you are just standing around and someone shoots you in the
back of the head you have no reason to dodge (unless you're THAT quick!)
So you can't take an active defense and you can't vamoose. Therefore you
can't use deflection.

I ran into a similar situation in Deadlands with a fu-ist that had "Seize
the Pearl of Death". The gunfighter shot an evil fu-ist who used Seize the
Pearl to grab the bullet and throw it at the good fu-ist. Now the good
fu-ist wanted to use his own Seize the Pearl to throw it back. But his
back was to the gunfighter and evil-fu so I said he couldn't. He said he
could because he has a card and can actively dodge "and the rules don't
say I can't" (sound familiar?)
My response was that the rules also don't say you can't pick the
miniatures up off the table and throw them across the room to win the
fight. But you can't do that either. Then I explained that it didn't make
sense logically. His character hears a gunshot behind him, what's more
good-gunfighter is the ONLY one with guns (bunch of martial artists going
at it). Good-fuist hears his buddy's gun go off, next thing he knows a
bullets in his back. It's too late to reach out and grab it, the damage is
done. It doesn't make sense for him to be able to grab it.
He still argued so I finally had to use the marshal-thumb-of-god and say
that bottom line "You can't do it. Period. I've made my decision and it
applies to everyone so they can't do it either. End of line."
He was grumpy at the time but later admitted that my ruling made sense
(once the fight was over and they had won).

So bottom line, do it however you want in your campaign but ask yourself
if it makes sense for the Templar to be able to use an "active defense"
against an attack he wasn't aware of.

Oh and if you don't do it my way you are lame ;b

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab


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