Official Rules Question Thread

In that example, the ability is conditional because of the when, not the middle if.

Conditional Abilities
Conditional abilities are the weird ones. They have all the extra rules that we know and “love”, especially when it comes to simultaneous effects. All conditional abilities define their trigger condition in their text. Usually, this takes the form of when or whenever, but it also includes such structures as before, after, unless, and ordinal events like “the first time” (note that this is not the same thing as the first ice, or the first program, etc.). You can usually tell an ability is conditional if it has a comma in it separating two clauses, one being the trigger condition and the other being the effect.

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A conditional ability does not have to have when in it though, or even be a clause separated by a comma. Yes most of the time it is and as the game has gone on the designers have gotten better at making sure that abilities follow this templating.

But, once again the link you provided says it does not have to be. Parasite is a core set card and they quite simply did not have/follow their templating here. It’s one of the cards which makes it so that they have to say “usually” in front of all the ways you can identify a conditional.

Parasite is a constant ability. That part isn’t debatable. It’s confusing that if isn’t inherently associated with conditionals, but it’s how it is (it even references that fact in the definition of constant abilities).

Maybe they never intended it to be, and it’s just core set templating, but they’ve rolled with it and haven’t released an errata against it, so that’s the situation we have.

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I don’t see what makes Parasite a constant ability, I consider that completely debatable. I see absolutely nothing that tells me it is.

Yes, I was mistaken when I said that the if was what made it conditional, but it falls under most rules and seems to have been considered a conditional ability by the designers before they used their universal templating. This fits every ruling that has been applied to Parasite and would also explain why our definitions for the different abilities are clouded by “fuzzy” words.

From constant ability definition:

Assume any ability that is not in the form “cost: effect” is a constant ability unless it falls under a specific timing structure of some kind (more on that below).

From the conditional ability definition:

All conditional abilities define their trigger condition in their text. Usually, this takes the form of when or whenever, but it also includes such structures as before, after, unless, and ordinal events like “the first time” (note that this is not the same thing as the first ice, or the first program, etc.).

For reference, Parasite’s ability in question:

Host ice has -1 strength for each virus counter on Parasite and is trashed if its strength is 0 or less.

What are you proposing is the conditional trigger here? It’s not the strength hitting 0. The first part of the ability does nothing if it was.

If the ability has no coherent, unifying trigger condition, it cannot be considered a conditional ability.

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Oddly, the answer to “why is this a constant ability” is usually “because it’s not a triggered ability”.

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Once again, I am saying that Parasite does not fall under the normal templating rules, just to clarify.

What you have is actually two different abilities that have been joined together by the word “and” because they happened to share the same subject, the host ICE. This is something which the designers stopped doing, thankfully. With modern templating it should read

"Host ICE has -1 strength for each Virus counter on Parasite.

Host ICE is trashed when its strength is 0 or less."

They used the language on the card how a traditional native English speaker would use it rather than ANR templating speak. Yes this causes confusion, which is why we should be very happy that we have templating now.

As has been mentioned, in cases before templating, we just have to take the designers word for it that it is conditional/triggered.

  1. The designers haven’t stated it’s a conditional as far as I know, what’s your source?
  2. If they errata the card to be worded like that, I’ll buy into your definition. Until then, this is a textbook constant ability with conditional effect. They exist even post core set (I do not think this is a templating issue, and the card is worded as intended).
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ANCUR has some discussion on Parasite, and it appears from those pages that Lukas has stated Parasite is entirely constant. So the opposite seems to be true. We should take the word from the developers that Parasite is constant, which is consistent with all other rulings surrounding constant/conditional.

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My source is every ruling they’ve made on Parasite. In every ruling involving parasite it’s conditional. I agree that in a ideal world they would just errata it, but FFG is opposed to functional errata except in extremely bad cases that affect the enjoyment of the game. (WNP, Museum, Astro are the only functional errata I can think of off the top of my head) Instead of going back and fixing their mistakes, they’ve made their indicators of different abilities"fuzzy".

If I had to guess, this is to save on costs with updating the card at the printers.

Do you mind linking me to that?

See Parasite vs. Tollbooth:

The Tollbooth would be trashed before its conditional ability triggered. You have two different constant effects (Ice Carver and Parasite) which combine to knock it off before the Tollbooth can force the Runner to pay credits.

An example of a designer ruling involving Parasite which explicitly states it is constant, not conditional.

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Well, games broken, everybody go home!

On a more serious note, yeah, didn’t see that ruling. Either they’ve changed their mind since then or I’m completely wrong.

Could you give an example of any ruling where Parasite has been stated as conditional? (The Magnet/Parasite ruling is weird but seems to come from an entirely new place of ‘precedence’ with no prior reasoning to determine this.)

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Parasite has never been conditional. It uses “is” and “has” language, constant with all constant abilities.

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At the risk of derailing this, I think a lot of folks here are getting hung up on the ‘competing’ speeds of Parasite and Magnet, while ignoring the main tenet of constant abilities: they just are. They don’t ‘activate’ at a particular speed. They exist, or they don’t.

You can’t atomize the rez action on Magnet. When you rez it, it takes on all the attributes of being rezzed simultaneously – including both having a strength (of any kind) and having the printed constant ability. There is no moment in time that the gamestate recognizes where it has strength (and is thus eligible for trashing by Parasite) but does not have the printed constant ability.

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This is probably how it works. But I don’t think we’ve ever had to deal with the issues surrounding this before. I would have liked this to be the answer for how Parasite/Magnet works, but that wasn’t the given answer (even if it might be true).

I mean this works both ways; Parasite also “just is”. It provides a constant -X strength modifier. When magnet is rezzed, there is (hypothetically) no instant when it has non-zero strength.

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On second thought I think I see your argument; it doesn’t really matter that constant abilities “just are”; moreso, you’re saying that the rezzing of ICE is atomic; at no point when the ICE is rezzed does it not have it’s ability active?

Problem I have is that even constant abilities “activate” at some time in Netrunner. It’s why resolution order also applies to them. In order for Magnet’s ability to activate, it needs to be rezzed. If it’s rezzed, how has parasite not killed it before the ability activated?

Maybe you could say that a cards constant abilities (that don’t depend on a condition) activate as it becomes active, not when it is active/rezzed. I’m unsure if there’s anything wrong with that.

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