Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Actually, the first set of premises/conclusions prove that a word has a definition...It isn't actually talking about a 40k rule

If you can prove one conclusion, you can use it as premise to another conclusion. I could have just as easily strung all the premises together into one conclusion. I chose to break them up for the sake of clarity.

The second conclusion is dependant on the first conclusion, so if you disprove the first it disproves the second. But you have yet to do that.

Posted By Phryxis on 11/17/2006 4:09 PM

Let's go over it one more time, by the YMTC book.

P1: You agreed that models "forfeit their chance to assault in order to rapid-fire."

Incorrect, unless it's buried on a different page...

Pg 29 of the BGB

Models carrying rapid fire weapons that wish to charge into close combat in the Assault phase may not fire in the Shooting phase

Pg. 36 of the BGB

An infantry unit that fired twice with pistols or which shot with rapid fire weapons or remained stationary to fire heavy weapons may not charge at all in the Assault phase.

Similarly, the vehicle section removes your model's permission to assault after disembarking.

The key being that the verbage is completely different between these rules and the one for the Prisms.  Therefore, I call Shenanigans on your analogies.

And, snipped from your earlier responce to me:

<snip>

5. consequence or disadvantage attached to any action, condition, etc.

The most applicable definition here is 5, as the others refer to violations of rules or are cyclical references back to forfeit. The consequence of using the prism cannon in a combined shot is that you lose your chance to shoot it.

<snip>

So where's the consequence or disadvantage again?  If you couldn't shoot to begin with, then what consequence or disadvantage are you taking in order to gain the combined shot?

That's what Flavius said. If he says it's the case, I presume it to be true.

The question here is what "forfeit" means. The entire meaning of the prism cannon rule hinges on that definition.

I know what it means to me. I presume, since I picked up that meaning from talking to people throughout my existence, that everyone else thinks it means the same thing. So, I watched how Flavius used it in context, and then I copied and pasted his quote.

If I had all the Codices in digital format, I'd gladly search for all instances of the word "forfeit" and attempt to establish a precedent for its meaning.



The consequence is that you can't fire the prism cannon.  Just because you found a situation where it's not of any additional detriment to the Fire Prism, that doesn't make it any less a consequence.  A consequence doesn't necessarily mean that anything changes. It simply means that after the consequence, a given condition will be in effect.

For example, the consequence of rolling a 1 on the Glancing hit table is a Shaken result. If a vehicle is Shaken, and then another Glancing hit occurs, and another roll comes up 1, the consequence is another Shaken result. But nothing changes. The vehicle is still Shaken. That's it.

Wow, I wish GW gave their rules this much thought. Seriously, do you think you may be overthinking something GW wrote?

No problem:

First argument, P1--it is true that I agreed, but you can't use the fact that I agreed to something as a premise meaning that what I agreed to is true. The premise should be a quotation from the rules, not something I agreed to.
P2 & P3 are true, because they are accurate paraphrases of rules from the book.

C: The conclusion of argument one doesn't follow deductively from any of these premises. You can only get to this conclusion by *inductive* reasoning. You present three examples of something and then conclude that the case is universally true. This is like saying "I saw three blue birds, so that means all birds are blue." Inductive reasoning has no place in a literal reading of the rules, because there's no way to determine if the conclusions that it produces are sound.

Second Argument
P1: is an assumption. It is the conclusion of an inductive argument, so we can't know that it is always true according to the rules. It may be true in some cases, but in order to work in a deductive argument we have to know it is always true.
P2 & 3 are true
C: The conclusion is unsound because P1 is an assumption. But even if we knew P1 was true, the conclusion doesn't follow logically from these premises because P1 is inductive.
In order to get this conclusion from this argument, P1 has to say "A model is *always* considered to have forfeited an ability..." That premise cannot be derived from the rules as written.

Which brings us back around to why this is a false analogy. Yes, it is true that in some cases units are considered to have forfeited an ability for a reason unrelated to the conditions of what they want to do at the moment. Is that also true of prism cannons? Maybe, but we can't know for sure. So a reading that assumes that conclusion arbitrarily from among the possibilities is not a literal reading. The analogy just conceals the assumption and disguises the unsound argument in an assortment of fallacies.

Here's the correct versions of the deductive reasoning.  Because we agree on the line of sight thing, I'm going to leave it out for simplicity.

P1A: [Prism cannons] may forfeit their chance to fire in order to combine beams (quoted from the rules).
P2A: Prism cannons that choose not to fire in the shooting phase in order to combine beams forfeit their chance to fire in order to combine beams.
CA: Prism cannons that choose not to fire in the shooting phase in order to combine beams may combine beams.

The argument above is the one that says you can choose not to fire in the shooting phase and that the rules allow you to do this.  I sketched it out here for the sake of completeness and as a model of a sound deductive argument.  We know both premises are true, we know that the conclusion follows logically from the premises, so the conclusion must also be true according to the rules.

P1B: According to all known meanings of the word "forfeit," something that has already been wholly forfeited cannot be forfeited again until it is first reaquired. (This is based on my reading of the dictionary--if you can disprove this one, the rest of the argument is unsound).
P2B: Prism cannons on vehicles that have been shaken/stunned wholly forfeit their chance to fire in order to satisfy the requirements of the vehicle damage rules and do not reaquire it until the following shooting turn.
P2B: [Prism cannons] may forfeit their chance to fire in order to combine beams.
CB: Prism cannons that have forfeited their chance to fire in order to satisfy the requirements of the vehicle damage rules cannot also forfeit their chance to fire in order to combine beams.

P1B is the weak spot if you want to go after it.  It's based on the assumption that a dictionary can determine the meaning of a word.  If you can refute it, then I might have to admit that it cannot be determined whether a shaken/stunned prism can combine beams.

That's true for a universal proof. I'm simply trying to prove to you that by your own standards, the Stunned prism cannon can shoot.



Actually, it does. The conclusion seeks to prove that at least one example exists in which "forfeit" fits the definition I am applying to it. It succeeds in doing so.

It's not like saying "I saw three blue birds, so that means all birds are blue." It's like saying "I saw three blue birds, so that means at least one blue bird exists."

This may be sufficient, depending on how word meaning is viewed in the ruleset. If a word is understood to have one specific meaning, then one instance is all that's needed to establish the ongoing meaning of that word.



That's true. As I've already said several times, there are different standards for defining the word "forfeit," and the meaning of this rule hinges around which meaning you use. I know what the word means to me, and given that, I know what the RAW says.

If you want to argue that we should use the British English, or the designers' understanding, or anything like that, that's legitimate.



I think we've already disproven this with the one blue bird. If this is universally true for all known meanings, then you wouldn't have agreed that the word applied to disembarking models rapid-firing.

Posted By Phryxis on 11/17/2006 11:54 PM

Incorrect, unless it's buried on a different page...

That's what Flavius said. If he says it's the case, I presume it to be true.

The question here is what "forfeit" means. The entire meaning of the prism cannon rule hinges on that definition.

I know what it means to me. I presume, since I picked up that meaning from talking to people throughout my existence, that everyone else thinks it means the same thing. So, I watched how Flavius used it in context, and then I copied and pasted his quote.

If I had all the Codices in digital format, I'd gladly search for all instances of the word "forfeit" and attempt to establish a precedent for its meaning.

So where's the consequence or disadvantage again?

The consequence is that you can't fire the prism cannon.  Just because you found a situation where it's not of any additional detriment to the Fire Prism, that doesn't make it any less a consequence.  A consequence doesn't necessarily mean that anything changes. It simply means that after the consequence, a given condition will be in effect.

For example, the consequence of rolling a 1 on the Glancing hit table is a Shaken result. If a vehicle is Shaken, and then another Glancing hit occurs, and another roll comes up 1, the consequence is another Shaken result. But nothing changes. The vehicle is still Shaken. That's it.

Look, we're going round and round here so I'll do a little summary of what I see happening in this thread:

I claim forfeit means a certain thing.

You claim the word means something different (this is, by your own admission, what the discussion boils down to)

So we seem to have two valid readings of the rules (based off of the meaning of the word forfeit).  Neither can be proven correct, but neither can be proven incorrect.

Happy?  We've just discovered a grey area in a GW product's ruleset.  Now the cosmos will proceed to tear itself asunder because of the gravity of the situation.  You have, singlehandedly, doomed the entirety of existance.  I hope you are proud of yourself.

Yeah! What Kevin said. You make baby jesus cry. That is, he would cry if he cared....

I might be looking at it too simply, but unless there's an entry that explicitly states that you may use an item when your vehicle is shaken/stunned, you can't use it. That's the case with smoke launchers. It has an entry that states that you may use in the the place of your shooting, but has a specific entry that says you may use it when the vehicle is shaken/stunned!!

I'm using a precedent from the rules with the use of smoke launchers, that if prism cannons were to be allowed to link when the vehicle is shaken/stunned, then there would be a specific entry saying that the prism cannons would be allowed to link even when the vehicle is shaken/stunned. I'm going with the precedents here with specific items and weapons that if you are allowed to use it in certain conditions (such as the vehicle being shaken/stunned), then there would be an explicit entry saying so.

I don't play Eldar, so forgive me for my ignorance, but that's the thought that crossed my mind.

I'm simply trying to look at it from the most basic, practical approach and not trying to get bogged down in interpretations of word meanings.

Posted By Skrivus on 06/06/2007 2:20 PM

I'm simply trying to look at it from the most basic, practical approach and not trying to get bogged down in interpretations of word meanings.

Yeah, I try not to concern myself with the interpretations of a words meaning like "Threadnomancy" either.

Burn the Threadnomancer!

BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNNNNNNN!

Yeah, sorry bout that.  I didn't pay attention to the dates of the posts you guys made.  I wasn't sure about the ruling and I've had Eldar players trying to pull that on me, without anything direct to back it up.  Because there was nothing explicit, I didn't allow it, the person was at least agreeable and we went on with the game. 

A guy I played with recently tried to pull that, too.

 

I told him he could do it, but then all my characters would become invincible due to a loophole in the wording of Slaanesh combat drugs.

He decided to go with the ruling that they can't combine if stunned, which is the usual result once I pull out "the old combat drug trick". 

 

Nobody wants a bunch of invincible Slaanesh characters running around

-Spellbound

oops double post