Sacrificing A Minion To Escape

[FrogNipple]

Greetings all! My name is Keith and I am a Munchkin Bites and Munchkin Bites Pants Macabre owner.

*For those of you searching the forum in order to settle a dispute or answer a question, Sacrificing a Minion is the same situation as Sacrificing a Sidekick as in other versions of Munchkin.*

While playing we had a dispute about specifically who can allow who to automatically escape.

The rules say "A Minion can sacrifice himself for you. If you lose a fight, then instead of rolling to run away, you may discard a Minion. ... If someone was helping you in the fight, YOU decide whether that person automatically escapes as well, or must roll to escape."

The situation was this: It was Esther's turn and Esther was fighting a monster she did not have the effective level to beat. Keith agreed to help her. Keith had a minion. Other players added to the monster such that it was greater than Esther and Keith's combined effective fighting level. Because the Bad Stuff was so heinous, Keith sacrificed his minion to automatically escape. Keith then chose for Esther to automatically escape too BUT another rather zealous player chose to interperet the rules differently than Keith.

He quoted "If someone was helping you in the fight, ..." saying that "helping you" means since it was Esther's turn and she was facing the monster that Keith was helping Esther, and then by default it was not Esther helping Keith. On that technicality he said that Keith shouldn't be allowed to excuse Esther from rolling to escape.

From my point of view, it shouldn't matter because Keith and Esther were both helping each other regardless of whose turn it was.

What to do?