Council of Elrond

In order to contribute to this thread please follow these rules:

1) The thread will be open until Dec 16th.
2) There will be a maximum of one reply per forum user, and that reply cannot be edited. We want to actively avoid starting "flame wars", so please speak your peace, let others speak their peace, and that's it.
3) After the review period, the RC will carefully consider everyone's contributions, revise the draft as appropriate, and then the Digest will be published and official.

Can a character tap and discard Healing Herbs to untap “himself”?

Short answer:

Yes

Explanation:

Here is the relevant text from Healing Herbs:

Alternatively, the bearer can tap and discard this item to untap a character in his company that is not wounded.

In the past, there have been contradictory answers to this question. Here is what the previous NetReps said, first in ICE 107:

10-07-1998 Craig Ichabod O'Brien

QUERY 11

Q: Also Healing Herbs altenative effect, I suppose could be used to untap an untapped character or to untap the bearer which tapped to use it?

A: Yes.

And then CoE 82:

06-09-2004 Chad Martin

QUERY 11

Q: Can a character tap and discard Healing Herbs to untap “himself”

A: No.

So, who is correct? To dissect the logic one way or the other, remember that an action always entails a declaration and a resolution within a chain of effects, which in this case, would proceed as follows:

Declaration:

In order to declare the action, the following active conditions must be met:

- The bearer of the Healing Herbs must be untapped, and you must tap him at declaration (per Annotation 5).

- You must discard the Healing Herbs at declaration (per Annotation 6).

- The target for the action must be chosen (per Annotation . In the case of Healing Herbs, there are 2 stipulations for the target: the target character must be in the bearer’s company, and he must not be wounded. Since the bearer is in his own company, and is not wounded, he is a valid target.

Resolution

-The active conditions are checked to ensure that they are still valid, which they normally should be. Then the action resolves with the target character being rotated from the “tapped” position to the “untapped” position.

Conclusion: ICE 107 is correct.

Note that this ruling overturns CoE Digest #82 Q11.

This means that untapped character (or any untapped entity) may be target of untap action.
And Forth He Hastened on unttaped character is OK. Look More Closely Later on untapped site is OK.
Are them all OK?