Basic question is: Why?

Old and irrelevant text:

If the card has a cost, he pays with its cost in life to use its ability. If the card requires a Discipline, he may only use the basic ability of that card as a vampire with a capacity of 1.


Existing rules:

Shadow Court Satyr:

Shadow Court Satyr cannot use a mutli-discipline effect (an effect that requires two Disciplines), although it can use any single discipline effect of a split discipline card. [LSJ 20021216] [LSJ 20021210]
Can only use the combat card when he is in combat. [LSJ 20060502]
Shadow Court Satyr cannot use a mutli-discipline effect (an effect that requires two Disciplines), although it can use any single discipline effect of a split discipline card. [RTR ] [ ]

We have solid correspondence between old (and irrelevant) card text and the rulings.


New (and relevant card text):

If the card requires a vampire to play (e.g. costs blood or requires a Discipline), he may use it as a vampire with the basic level of the Discipline (if any).

Observe how the reference to the key word 'Discipline' has changed to a clarification. The second time the word the term Discipline occurs it's to limit its use to the basic ability, with a further clarification that such a limitation is only implemented if there are any disciplines associated with the card at all. The main change of the card text has gone from how to handle costs and disciplines to how to handle cards normally only playable by vampires.

The rulings suffer from poor correspondence with the new card text. There is (for rather obvious reasons) nothing inherent with vampires normally disallowing them to play dual discipline cards. The limitation given in the new cardtext has changed to allow this ally to make us of a combat card that requires a vampire to play, followed by a clarification of how to define such a card, and then again followed by a limition to only use the basic level of such a discipline, as referenced in the first clarification.

At best the card text is ambigious as to wether dual disciplines are allowed or not. At worst it's explicitly in conflict with the current ruling.

Discipline is singular not plural in the text. It is only ambiguous, if you ignore that fact.

The word 'Discipline' is used inside brackets, to clarify and exemplify the meaning of 'card requires a vampire to play'. The second use of the word 'Discipline' refers back to the singular form used in the clarification.

This is a result of using proper English grammar in the sentence and has nothing to do with the fact that 'Discipline' in singular form is only used as a clarification to the meaning of 'requires a vampire to play'.

Given that 'English language' has been given as a rules enforcing argument on numerous occasions it follows that RAW and not RAI should be followed.

A fully valid alternative is of course to change official card text in order to make RAW correspond to RAI.


Edit: To clarify my argumnt above. The second instance of the word 'Discipline' refers back to a clarification. As the primary key to the card text is 'requires a vampire', the interpretation becomes dependent on a positivitic or negativistic interpretation of the aggregated card text. You end up with an ambiguity with three perfectly valid interpretations of the card text:

1) It's only a clarification. Handle dual discipline cards as single discipline cards (both disciplines involved may only be used at inferior)

2) You may only use one discipline (dual discipline cards are illegal to play)

3) The restriction to inferior level only applies to single discipline cards, because there is an explicit referral to that example in the clarification. Apart from that specified limitation, any other card-effect that 'requires a vampire' is legal to play (dual discipline cards may be played at any combination, including superior/superior).


Version 3 is obviously not RAI, but RAW always takes presedence over RAI, and in this case that would be a BAD thing.

yappo wrote:


And to restrict it to levels of cards requiring one discipline.

See the various rulings you've cited for confirmation of this.

See clarification above.

yappo wrote:


Your argument is still that you magically know what the word was meant to mean, despite multiple rulings telling you, quite explicitly, that the card doesn't work the way you want it to.

Since the argument boils down to "I'M PSYCHIC SHUT UP", you'll make little headway.

No, I'm reading the card text.

The card reads as follows, in sequential order:

1) May play cards that requires a vampire.

2) Two examples in brackets to clarify the meaning of 'requires a vampire'.

3) One restriction pertaining to one of the examples given.

Nothing more and nothing less.

I have a card in my hand, and follow RAW (ie, the very opposite of making a magic understanding).

1) Does it require a vampire to play? Yes. Check.
2) Is it restricted by the restriction referring to one of the examples given to clarify the meaning of 'requires a vampire'? Yes/No. Check.
3) Apply card.

1) I have a dual discipline card in my hand. Does it require a vampire to play? Yes, cards requiring one, two or more disciplines to play implicitly requires a vampire to play. Check.

2) Is a dual discipline card included in the restriction referring to one of the examples given by card text? No. Check.

3) Apply it at superior/superior.


Now, how on earth can I make this insane interpretation? Because a dual discipline cards doesn't require 'a' (one) discipline to play.

How can I be certain that 'a' means one? Because the second referral to the word 'Discipline' is prepended by the word 'the'.

A dual discipline card explicitly requires two (more than one) disciplines to play, and is thus not covered by the restriction, but still fills the requirement of being a card that 'requires a vampire'.

Of course I'm totally aware that the Satyr was never means to play dual discipline cards at a stronger level than single discipline cards.

However, how the card was meant to function has never prevented us from allowing actual text to override designer intent before. Guard Duty is a very good example of a card where card text takes presedence over designer intent.

While RTR is the sound ruling of how we want the card to function, card text should still correspond to the ruling, and in this case it no longer does.

Here is the card text.

Changeling with 3 life. 1 strength, 1 bleed.
When the Satyr enters play, you may put a combat card from your hand on him. Once each combat, the Satyr may use the ability of that card as if played from your hand. If the card requires a vampire (e.g., costs blood or requires a Discipline), he may use it as a vampire with the basic level of the Discipline (if any).

Here is the card text, with out the clarifications (i.e. within parenthesis).

Changeling with 3 life. 1 strength, 1 bleed.
When the Satyr enters play, you may put a combat card from your hand on him. Once each combat, the Satyr may use the ability of that card as if played from your hand. If the card requires a vampire , he may use it as a vampire with the basic level of the Discipline.

Here are the clarifications(i.e. within parenthesis)

(e.g., costs blood or requires a Discipline)

(if any)

What portion of any this text leads you to think that the satyr can "emulate" more than one discipline?


.

yappo wrote:


So are other people - see, for example, the very first reply you got.

You disagree with other people's interpretations. How very convenient, then, that we have a consistent history of rulings regarding how LSJ intended Shadow Court Satyr to interact with multi-discipline cards.

There was a reason that I included the old card text. LSJ 2002 refers to that text. It has since been changed.

LSJ 2006 doesn't concern disciplines at all.

So, LSJ 2002 corresponds perfectly with the card text it pertains to. The RTR does not.

I don't expect LSJ to be pre-scient. He had no reason to base a ruling during the year 2002 on a card text which didn't yet exist.

Now, if you would please cease with your condescending tone the rules conversation could continue to be civil.

In no way have I disagreed with peoples intepretation of a card text which is no longer valid. The opposite. I made it prefectly clear that that intepretation was based on an old card text, and that such an intepretation made perfect sense given the card text at that time.

When the design team decided to change the card text, then such a change risks invalidating rulings based on the previous card text. It is this problem I'm pointing out.

In VTES we rule restrictions on 1) text written on the card, or 2) in the absence of such text, text written in the general rules.

If there still is an absence of written restrictions, then you are allowed to do it. I believe you yourself have described and explained this in very consice terms in another thread on this forum. Stacking effects if I recall correctly.

Now, back on topic, and also a reply to Shard.

For grammatical reasons you can't just remove the clarification from the sentence. The construction 'the Discipine' requires a referee, in this case 'a Discipline'. Also, when only one referee exists, then the construction 'the Discipline' MUST refer to that referee.

This is what creates a problem, because the clarification actually reads (including, but not limited to, the following two attributes associated with requiring a vampire). This is not how I want it to read, but how it is indeed written.

Given that we don't allow restrictions which are not explicitly written anywhere, this creates a problem. The aggregated constructions 'a Discipline' and 'the Discipline' forces us to read 'a Discipline' as 'one Discipline' because the referer is written in singular form.

A dual discipline card explicitly requires two (more than one) discipline, and the card text doesn't place any restrictions here. However, a dual discipline card still belongs to the category of cards which requires a vampire to play. Hence, in difference from a single discipline card, its use is not restricted by card text.

Satyr presents us with the opposite to Ian Forestal. He's allowed to use X requiring a (one) Y. For this reason he may not use X requiring both Y and Z. Satyr has a restriction on using X requiring a (one) Y. For this reason he does NOT have a restriction on using X requiring both Y and Z.

This is a bad thing, because RAW supercedes RAI. I most definitely don't want Satyr to be allowed to play dual discipline cards at superior/superior, but what I want really doesn't have any impact on how the card text is actually written. And currently it would seem that Satyr may play duals at the most powerful effect. This should be rectified.