Tonight we had an interesting situation come up.  I was playing the vampires and one of my star players had the passing skill as his downed skill.  The player became downed while carrying the ball and the rules are a little ambiguous.  It could play out a number of ways.

1.  The player becomes downed and loses the ball, the ball goes to mid field.  The downed players downed passing skill comes into effect and moves the ball from mid-field to himself. This was my argument.

2.  The player becomes downed, his passing ability kicks in but he already has the ball and therefore nothing happens.  He then loses the ball and the ball moves to mid-field.  This was the opposing players argument.

It all depends on the timing and the rules a are a little ambigous on that point.

Downed skills enter play when the player is downed. You lose the ball as soon as you are downed. So, I'd say as soon as you're downed, you lose the ball, then the first of the downed skills is triggered.

dwculp said:

This sounds silly to me, because it makes passing useless as a downed ability.

Indeed, if the ball was mid-field before your player being downed, according to your opposing players, he would take the ball by using his downed ability, then the ball would move back to mid-field.

Why using passing, in this case ?

If I understand…

downed skills interrupt  active player's turn

so…your star player has ball. Opposite player attack and down your star player and the ball returns to the midfield

then your star player's downed ability came to the game

and if your star player has ball ability then he takes ball, then if he has second downed skill cheating/sprint/attack so he can (must in cheating) use it

and if he has regeneration and the roll X on the dice he stand up with ball

and then active player can use other ablity…When oppositing player has second tackle the game will be the same like I wrote above

I treated it like option 1 (ball goes to midfield then Passing activates), but if your friend wants to argue that Passing activates immediately, then you could argue that you should be able to pass the ball to another teammate at the matchup before dropping the ball.

you can't pass the ball to another teammate. You are down, so ball goes to midfiled and then you use down skills. In my opinion rules are clear. down skills interrupt active players turn and if down player has ball ability, he takes ball.