Bungled Heal will heal the closest enemy to the target character. But I haven't worked out how the target is decided when the distance is equal. I've raised this question before, and suggested a change of rules for clarity - but the suggestion was not well received, and obviously I still haven't learnt how the current rules work! In that previous thread, the implication was that the details of the rules can be found on the 'how to play' page, but as far as I can see, this particular rule isn't described. The closest thing I can find is this: Obviously this is referring to terrain attachments, but perhaps the same ordering is meant to be applied as a distance tie-breaker.(?) Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, the text is unclear: It refers to rows and columns, and to the 'bottom' and 'left' of the board, but inside the game the board is shown on a 45° angle and so it isn't clear whether the 'bottom' of the board is in the bottom left corner or in the bottom right corner. Also, 'columns' usually refer to vertical arrays and 'rows' refer to horizontal arrays. So to instruction to 'proceed by column from left to right' just confuses me further. Secondly, regardless of which side is the bottom, the rule doesn't work anyway! Here's a screenshot of an example where Bungled Heal has two potential targets and each distance, and it chooses the character which is closer to the top right corner - and so whichever corner is the 'bottom' of the board, clearly the that rule isn't being used. The confusion about the orientation board prevented me from noticing this sooner. But this particular example clearly shows that the bottom-left character does not get priority, and so the rules that determine the order of terrain attachments are not the same as the tie-breaker rules for distances. My guess is actual tie-breaker rule is to use the order of the characters in the party. eg. in this case, the wizard is the first member of the party (as seen at the bottom of the screen), and so he gets healed before the elf. That still leaves me wondering a few things. Firstly, am I right that the tie-breaker is the order of characters in the part? Secondly, do global spells such as Firestorm use this ordering, or do they use the bottom-to-top ordering? Thirdly, is there any way for me to determine the order of AI characters that are in a single group (such as the zombies in this map)? And finally, I think it would be good if these rules were clarified on the 'how to play' page (and I think it would probably be good reword the part about the order of terrain attachments).
Well... I agree with you that the spell should have hit your elf from how I understood target mechanics. Watching Fireball is a good idea for decoding the behavior, but I haven't picked up any new Firestorms yet to participate in this. Might belt out a Test Server account to give this a whirl. Just thinking back on prior use of Firestorm, the screen was bouncing all over the field, so I would not be shocked if the order was by the order in the card lists (with groups being in order as displayed on mouseover)
I am pretty sure that Bungled Heal resolves ties by choosing the target that is closest to the caster. I am not positive on this, but that seems to be how the interaction has been working. In the case that you posted, the wizard would get the secondary heal since he is 1 square away from the priest.
Bungled Heal will heal your target + an enemy of your target. He wanted to heal his elf, but not heal the nearby wounded zombie. So he cast the heal on a further away full health zombie, allowing the "drawback" heal to hit his character. Which it then failed to do so, because target selection didn't resolve the distance 3 tie between his human and elf how he thought it would.
I think the way this Card works is that it will heal the target plus an enemy. Not, an enemy of the target. So you will want to target yourself or a team member for this to work right. Since you targeted an enemy first, the mechanics must have defaulted to use you as the base point for the "drawback" heal thus the Wizard behind you was targeted.
Card text is: " The closest enemy to the target character also heals 5." Which now that you mention it is ambiguous. Either it is saying that proximity is based on target choice, or that enemy classification is based on target choice, or it is saying both are based on target. So proximity could very well be based from the caster, not the target. But if that was the case, then the caster himself should either always or never be the one healed when you target an enemy for the initial heal.
I got it in the way that you heal your character and the closest enemy of your own character receives 5 too, i didn't try it by healing an enemy first ... I have to say that the card text is ambiguous
I agree that the card text is ambiguous in that it isn't clear whether it refers to an enemy of the caster or an enemy of the primary target - but I've used this card a lot and I'm absolutely certain that it secondary target is always an enemy of the primary target. On the screenshot in the OP, I've highlighted who I cast it on, and who the secondary target was. You can confirm this by looking at the message log in the screenshot. Since posting this, I've used the card a few more times and I'm almost certain that the party order is used as a tiebreaker when the distances are equal. I'm quite confident of that now. But I'm still wondering whether it's the same rules for Firestorm. My guess is that the party order does determine the target order for Firestorm, but that it doesn't for AoE cards such as Fireball and Cone Of Cold. After thinking about it a bit more, I've decided that maybe these kinds of rules are obscure enough to justify not mentioning them on Melvin's detailed 'how to play' page - but I do think it would be good if they were documented somewhere.. perhaps on a second page dedicated to weird rules. (I'd like all rules to be documented, but I'd probably best not to clutter the game instructions with details for rare and obscure rules.)
I'm with you on that Karadoc. Especially with the Test Server existing, where with enough time and dedication anyone can reverse engineer everything about the game, including probabilities on item drops... it makes sense to just show us this information. Don't try to just blindly create a "here is everything you ever want to know" thread for us Devs. That is a huge undertaking, and you will likely include so much stuff we don't want (or know we want) that we cannot see what we DO want. Just have a thread somewhere devoted to revealing the answers to information as we request it, with a continually growing first post as you add in each answer given. This would be a place where you can get absolutely as technical as you want, because the thread isn't meant for Joe-Schmoe to stumble across, it is meant for people who think about game design, or form complex strategies and NEED to know complex mechanics.
Speaking of confusing order of effect rules, I would love to know who gets to move first when elvish mobility is played when there are elves on both teams. Sometimes the enemies elves must move first, and sometimes my elves must move first (and it often makes a huge difference which one happens if I'm using mobility to chase/run away). It's very confusing when I've seen both cases happen and it appears to be arbitrary.
Ack! You found me! heh heh. Much more enjoyable so far as well. Since this one is built for the single player I don't see a looming "Pay, or play 20,000 hours, in order to see the end game!" Now that we have the "order on the border" concept for turn selection I am curious if Elvish Mobility is decided based on who moved first in the course of the whole match. Or maybe just who had first move for that round.
