On third thought, maybe constant abilities themselves don’t actually “activate” in Netrunner, and just timing or conditional conflicts of constant abilities are considered for resolution ordering. This would make sense in a manner; constant abilities behave “constantly”, but we have a means of resolving timing conflicts.
Between parasite and magnet, there is no timing conflict (in that they don’t trigger on the same things); they both just are, and, if magnet is, Parasite ain’t?
Yes, you’re right; I meant that rezzing is an indivisible unit. Magnet has strength and a constant ability, or it is a face down card whose only attributes are its position and the ICE type. Apologies – I am under a constant effect which says “While the poster is sleepy, he is prone to poor phrasing.” =)
I think this is closest to accurate of your three posts. Constant effects do not activate – they are just on, so there is no ‘priority’ or ‘precedent’ (poor choice of word in the UFAQ, I think).* When multiple constant effects are active, you apply them all and then look at the net result with them all active – you don’t apply them in a particular order. See Dragar’s post above, re ICE Carver.
I think the best way to think about constants is that they are effectively like temporary changes to the rules – they introduce a basic change to the way things work for as long as they are active. Triggered abilities, on the other hand, wait for something to happen and then do something afterwards. The key thing is that the activation (paid or conditional) is separate from the doing, so we have a (sometimes complex and convoluted) timing structure to resolve the potential gap between those moments. This is not the case for constant effects, which are either on or off.
*Some constant effects have conditionals (if, while, etc.), in which case you might have to think a little about the timing of the condition being met in specific circumstances, but the effect itself is still always on as long as the card text is active. These are still different than triggered effects which get activated and then the doing may wait in a queue. We sometimes say constant abilities are “faster” as a kind of shorthand, but that’s not exactly right. Even a constant ability with a conditional is always on – it just doesn’t do anything in particular until the condition is met. Constants never wait; there is no queue for them.
I could’ve sworn that there was precedent to show that there is a resolution queue for constant ability conflicts, but I can’t think of anything that proves it now. I’ll have to give this some consideration when I’m off work, but you might have the right of it.
It would line up with the ruling linked by @Dragar, if that’s the case. I initially thought that that ruling might be deprecated (it is core set, after all; before the notion of resolution queues and whatnot was really fleshed out), but the more I’m thinking about it, the more I’m leaning towards it still being relevant.
Yeah I dunno where I got the notion that constant abilities enter a resolution queue. I can’t find anything to support that.
So it seems like it works as mentioned; all constant abilities are applied simultaneously. However I still don’t know if I can get behind the resolution (from this alone) definitively being in Magnet’s favor. Consider the following hypothetical card:
Pox
Install Pox on a piece of ICE.
Host ICE has its text box blanked.
What happens if that’s hosted on Magnet? I mean, maybe I’m making the situation more confusing than it needs to be, and hopefully the above card never gets printed. But I do think it outlines that the two constant effects are at odds with another (like Magnet and Parasite), and we don’t have a clear means for resolution.
At the very least, I guess we can infer from this case that blanking effects gain priority over the would-be blanked effects.
I appreciate the effort to systematize it - and I don’t deny that we could devise constant effects which would need some kind of priority system to resolve - but Lukas was always pretty clear that he wouldn’t answer questions based on hypotheticals just to sort out the abstractions. I haven’t seen Damon say the same thing explicitly, but it seems like he is generally holding to it. In other words, until we actually have some constant effects in that kind of direct tension with one another, I don’t think we are going to get an answer.
I agree I’ll never get an answer to the question about Magnet vs. the hypothetical.
I was more so using the hypothetical to try and draw the line about what meaningful info we can get from the Magnet vs. Parasite ruling; the resolution order isn’t well-defined, but we know that blanking effects just outright trump blanked effects (or at least we can treat it as such until a conflicting ruling is made).
I have a question too: how is the Citadel Sanctuary - Joshua B. interaction? Do I get 5 clicks and possibly get rid of my tag by making money out of the trace with Power Tap?
@meh I believe the reasoning is that cards abilities are active as they’re being rezzed, before the rez finishes. Perhaps this is relevant to the Magnet/Parasite discussion (Magnet’s ability becomes active before the card is actually considered “rezzed” for Parasite to kill? Parasite doesn’t care about the rezzed status though so maybe not.). See here:
Yes. “When you rez” triggers at the end of the rez action, so Lakshmi Smartfabrics is active and can see its own rez action.
@V01dEDIT: My initial reasoning why it doesn’t work was wrong. The real reason Citadel doesn’t work with Joshua is that the condition of the “if” must be met as the ability reaches Trigger Condition Met step of ability resolution. All conditional abilities evaluate this step before any of them proceed into their Trigger and Resolution steps. Hence, Joshua doesn’t give the tag in time for Citadel to have its condition met. See here:
If the “if” part of an ability is in the trigger clause (e.g. “When X if Y, do Z” or “If Y when X, do Z”), then it is a conditional ability in which Y must be true at time X in order for the ability to meet its trigger condition.
@ironcache had the right of it. While not exactly a parallel (because it doesn’t involve conditionals), the easiest way for me to remember this stuff is by thinking about the interactions between Supplier and start of turn cards like Daily Casts. “When your turn begins” or “when your turn ends” can be a little confusing because they are also mini-phases, but for the purpose of triggering effects they are a single moment. Everything triggers at once, and then sits in a queue - if you were ineligible for the trigger at that moment (whether because you weren’t active yet or your condition wasn’t met), you don’t get to resolve.
Huh. Interesting question. My assumption would be that it is a timed loss if the corp is ahead, regardless of the corp point total. But without an explicit ruling, I could see the pedants arguing for it to go in either direction (a draw or a full win if the corp is at 7AP or greater). I think the only element of the game state we care about after time is expired/final turns are up is relative AP totals, but without going back to read the tournament rules (on a mobile atm) I imagine it might be possible they are phrased in such a way to refer explicitly to having less/more than 7AP or something.
I haven’t put a lot of thought into tournament scoring lately, but wouldn’t the runner prefer a full loss? They get the same prestige but a better SoS, right? So maybe don’t play The Black File if you’re coming up on time and don’t see a clear path to victory.
I believe this is in the tournament rules? I can check in a bit. You only count AP for tournament purposes. So if time is called and the corp has 7, and the runner fewer points, the corp wins.
Marron is worded differently though. Marron says “Remove one tag and draw a card” as its effect. With Forger, the card draw is Geist’s ability.
I don’t see why you can’t use Marron’s paid ability without tags, as the game state still changes. You can still play Lawyer Up without tags for the draw, for instance.
This is easily resolved by remembering a paid ability with two effects, but I can’t think of any right now. Do any others actually exist?
Edit: Sacrificial Clone acts as a counter example, but that has the word ‘prevent’…
The current ruling is that Prevent/Avoid effects cannot be used if they are not actually preventing/avoiding (for Sacraficial Clone). Otherwise, there is no rule against using an ability AFAIK, even if you would only get partial effect (but you must at least get partial effect).
Consider SMC. Not a great example as it involves hidden state searching (which has specifically been ruled), but you are allowed to SMC to search and shuffle your stack without a legal program install (say your worried about Neural EMP in Jinteki PU after they peek at the top card with that NBN asset or something).
There’s likely a better precedent example, but I can’t think of anything off hand (Lawyer up, as mentioned, is good, but not a paid ability). The general rule is that an ability’s effect needs to affect the game state in some way. Forger when not preventing/removing a tag can’t, but Marron can.