608.2b If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that’s no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal. If the spell or ability is not countered, it will resolve normally. However, if any of its targets are illegal, the part of the spell or ability’s effect for which it is an illegal target can’t perform any actions on that target, make another object or player perform any actions on that target, or make that target perform any actions. If the spell or ability creates a continuous effect that affects game rules (see rule 613.10), that effect doesn’t apply to illegal targets. The effect may still determine information about illegal targets, though, and other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them.
My question is: Can we just get rid of the first underlined rule? Since we have the second underlined rule, the game should be able to handle spell effects of spells that don't have any legal targets without countering them. Why does this rule even exist?
Well, we all are accustomed to the interaction that when you play a Defiant Strike or similar on your creature, and it is killed in response, you don't get to draw a card. That kind of makes sense, but it could be either way. But there are so many situations where the outcome is entirely unintuitive:
You can counter a Coastal Discovery by destroying the land, but you can't counter Clutch of Currents in the same way. Intuitively, there's no difference. But the rules treat it differently.
You can counter the tap all creatures part of Cryptic Command if the second mode is a targeted one if you make that target illegal. To avoid that, you have to choose the draw a card mode.
As another minor benefit of removing this rule, you could remove the "spells and abilities" part in "can't be countered by spells and abilities," because spells can no longer be countered by game rules. Removing it opens the door for many mechanics with targeted non-mandatory effects without awkwardness.
And the rule just has no tangible benefit. The game would work without it; we're just used to it.
I don't think you're simplifying anything simplifying anything. However you are spreading around an issue caused by the last sentence a great deal. Currently only one card that I know rely on that rule somehow: Torrent of Souls where countering the red part that way somehow has no effect if the black half is not countered. Now an entire family of cards of the form "do something to target player's permanents" can no longer be countered by giving hexproof or protection to the player (i.e. with Seht's tiger or flashing Imperial Mask).
More commonly, certain spells that key off P/T, like Predator's Rapport suddenly becomes immune to hexproof and protection.
Ok, so there are spells that would still have an effect on a target even if the target becomes illegal. How numerous are they? Can this be fixed by making an addition to the second underlined rule?
They don't have an effect on a target, that's precisely why they still work with your rule version.
In my mind, you're just creating a new class of countering where not the entire card is countered. If for you that does not actually increase complexity in applying the rule, then there is no point in me arguing anything about it.
How many different ways can the "determine information about illegal targets" part be used? I believe that is mostly for cards like Searing Blaze where one target is dependant on another target. If the player targeted by Searing Blaze becomes an illegal target, the targeted creature that the now untargeted player controls is still a legal target. Would Predator's Rapport really fall under this rule?
A lot of two-targeted effects like exchanging two permanents two creatures fighting already take this into account and specifically prevent the effect if one is illegal. Soul's Fire was worded to specifically require that your creature was still on the battlefield, but the later Fall of the Hammer has become more lax in its wording but still requires your creature still be on the battlefield.
... actually... First Volley is Arcane. So this is currently possible.
If you cast First Volley and splice Glacial Ray onto it, then it has two targets. If the original First Volley target becomes illegal, does it still deal 1 damage to that creature's controller?
I don't think you're simplifying anything simplifying anything. However you are spreading around an issue caused by the last sentence a great deal. Currently only one card that I know rely on that rule somehow: Torrent of Souls where countering the red part that way somehow has no effect if the black half is not countered. Now an entire family of cards of the form "do something to target player's permanents" can no longer be countered by giving hexproof or protection to the player (i.e. with Seht's tiger or flashing Imperial Mask).
What is the Torrent of Souls issue here? Both parts of the ability are targeted, so of course removing one target still allows the other part to resolve. Or are you trying to say that if the red target is illegal, but the black target is still legal then the red target still has its effect? That seems highly dubious. Do you have a link to that ruling?
An interesting subset of that would be: What happens if you use Torrent of Souls, paying BR, targeting True Believer in your graveyard and targeting yourself? It seems like the black part should return True Believer, then the red part has an illegel target so it has no effect.
I don't think you're simplifying anything simplifying anything. However you are spreading around an issue caused by the last sentence a great deal. Currently only one card that I know rely on that rule somehow: Torrent of Souls where countering the red part that way somehow has no effect if the black half is not countered. Now an entire family of cards of the form "do something to target player's permanents" can no longer be countered by giving hexproof or protection to the player (i.e. with Seht's tiger or flashing Imperial Mask).
What is the Torrent of Souls issue here? Both parts of the ability are targeted, so of course removing one target still allows the other part to resolve. Or are you trying to say that if the red target is illegal, but the black target is still legal then the red target still has its effect? That seems highly dubious. Do you have a link to that ruling?
An interesting subset of that would be: What happens if you use Torrent of Souls, paying BR, targeting True Believer in your graveyard and targeting yourself? It seems like the black part should return True Believer, then the red part has an illegel target so it has no effect.
Believe it or not, if only the target of the red half becomes illegal (your scenario is meaningless because the spell is already resolving when True Believer ETBs) the creatures will still get +2/+0. There was a lengthy thread about it on the official MtG rules forum before they shut down the whole damn thing back in October.
If so, then that is the problem and countering spells with all illegal targets feels like just a patch. If Predator's Rapport with an illegal target would still gain you life if it were not for the rule countering spells with all illegal targets, then that problem is possibly even limiting design space to avoid that interaction. A simple example:
Energy TieWB Instant (U)
Choose one or both --
* Target creature's controller gains life equal to its toughness.
* Target creature's controller loses life equal to its power.
And that was bizarre when WotC unplugged their forum.
The important rule is the last sentence: "The effect may still determine information about illegal targets, though, and other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them."
This rule has to be reworked before the counterspell rule can be removed. Let's make the simplest change possible and also remove this rule altogether. To what problems will this lead?
Predator's Rapport would gain you life without the counterspell rule because, although the creature is an illegal target, the game can still extract information about that creature's toughness + power. If it wouldn't be able to extract that information, you could not gain life.
Similarly to silvercut's example above, if Afterlife's text was just its current text times two, and you'd choose two different creatures of which one becomes illegal, two Spirit tokens would still be put into play, because the game can determine the controller of the illegal target.
So, removing this rule could potentially fix this issue (except you'd have to insert a rule that handles what happens when an indeterminate player is supposed to do something), but it would probably introduce other issues in their place. What are they?
I still think you're just creating a weird class of cards of which some effects, but not all will be cancelled by fizzling as opposed to countering the spell. If a player is allegedly already confused by the situations you describe, how are they supposed to not be confused by the other ones this will create?
I still fail to see how any presumed complexity (related to the difference between single and multi-targeted spells) is supposedly removed. You're just moving and transforming it into a far more abstruse distinction between different classes of single-targeted spells!
As a more meta observation, I highly doubt that, should such a change happen, R&D would simply accept the change in functionality. As a result we would drop exactly 20 "by spells or abilities" on cards, only one of which sees significant play, but I can't even begin to fathom how many more cards we'd see gain/be printed with the far, far more repellent (not to mention confusing for players who are already confused by the new rule distinction you're creating, assuming they know anything about it to begin with) "if a creature is Xed this way/if that creature is on the battlefield" template. So I have a hard time seeing it at anything close to a "minor benefit".
Also remember that you're going to have to add an extra rule, right there in the middle of 608.2, covering what _precisely_ happens to a spell that fizzles (which means basically everything mentioned in 701.5), including the whole messy partial resolution thing. The current system may be inelegant in creating this weird countering situation (and result in a somewhat convoluted rule 608.2), but the alternative is a complete rewriting of at least the whole 608.2 subrules, if not the entire 608 section of the rules. Otherwise I'm sure they would've adjusted so that there is true no-counter fizzling AND removed the weird torrent of souls situation already.
On an unrelated, but amusing note, the rules DO allow for a spell to truly fizzle (rule 608.3b), but it has to be a permanent somehow prevented from entering the battlefield.
Torrent of Souls not giving +2/+0 if the player is given shroud/protection.
Basically, everything that is done to or based on the illegal target is prevented, while all other effects still happen. I think the rule set that results in this is the most desirable with the least possible inconsistency and confusion, but such a rule set may not exist.
So I wondered how you could go about doing that. If you remove the "The effect may still determine information about illegal targets" part, Coastal Discovery would still draw cards, because no information about the land is required. Predator's Rapport would gain an indeterminate amount of life, and the game would treat that as 0. For Torrent of Souls I have no idea how to interpret the rules.
Torrent of Souls not giving +2/+0 if the player is given shroud/protection.
This is intuitive Magic. You're ahead of the times if you ask me. Magic's Comprehensive Rules are not perfect, and this is INDEED a comprehensive rule that NEEDS to be streamlined. I believe it will once WotC designs a mechanic that necessitates doing so.
It should be noted that quite a lot of these examples (especially the examples with nonexisting cards e. g. double Afterlife) lies in the wording and choices made by designers. The reason the current rule for countering spells without targets will likely not change is that the current system has evolved around it and uses it as an intentional balance mechanism for many cards.
I personally just think making awaken target is the second worst decision regarding targets Wizards has made that block and it simply should be choice-based rather than target-based, but that's spilled milk...
But to come back to possible fixes... couldn't one change the rule that makes it impossible to affect an illegal target so it also makes it impossible to get information about an illegal target? E. g. for Torrent of Souls you currently can still determine which creatures were controlled by the now illegal target player and hence they get +2/+0, but if the rules are changed to instead return a NULL pointer for every requested information about the target (like a list of creatures it controls, its color, its power (fixing Predator's Rapport as well this way) etc.) then the intuitive interaction is restored. Does that open up problems anywhere else?
EDIT: Did I just miss two posts discussing my idea? Where they there before? I think my browser wasn't showing them... <.<")
Private Mod Note
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Is an outdated version of the CR being used? I don't see the cited rules entry in the January 16 version of the CR.
The current CR's relevant rule states:
608.2b. If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that's no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word "target," are now illegal. If the spell or ability is not countered, it will resolve normally. Illegal targets, if any, won't be affected by parts of a resolving spell's effect for which they're illegal. Other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them. If the spell or ability creates any continuous effects that affect game rules (see rule 613.10), those effects don't apply to illegal targets. If part of the effect requires information about an illegal target, it fails to determine any such information. Any part of the effect that requires that information won't happen.
So if you cast Torrent of Souls using both B and R, and the player becomes illegal but the card remains valid, the player's creatures don't get the power boost for the turn.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How to use card tags (please use them for everybody's sanity)
[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] -> Lightning Bolt
[c=Lightning Bolt]Apple Pie[/c] -> Apple Pie
Vowels-Only Format Minimum deck size: 60 Maximum number of identical cards: 4 Ban list: Cards whose English names begin with a consonant, Unglued and Unhinged cards, cards involving ante, Ancestral Recall
Don't know. There is no link to the Torrent of Souls ruling, so we don't know what version of the rules it was under. That is the problem with WotC taking down their forums. There were a lot rules minutia discussions there that are not available other places.
So, this was changed two days before I made this thread.
Interesting. I guess it has to mean that I'm a psychic and they're preparing to get rid of the no-legal-targets rule.
If I recall correctly, the rule was changed to its current incarnation due to problems with Frost Breath and Twinflame.
It used to be the case that even if one of the targets was illegal for Frost Breath, even the illegal target would be "frozen" for an extra turn; in Twinflame's case, a token copy of each creature would be made, regardless of the target legality of each of the targeted creatures. This no longer happens, though.
How to use card tags (please use them for everybody's sanity)
[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] -> Lightning Bolt
[c=Lightning Bolt]Apple Pie[/c] -> Apple Pie
Vowels-Only Format Minimum deck size: 60 Maximum number of identical cards: 4 Ban list: Cards whose English names begin with a consonant, Unglued and Unhinged cards, cards involving ante, Ancestral Recall
608.2b If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that’s no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal. If the spell or ability is not countered, it will resolve normally. However, if any of its targets are illegal, the part of the spell or ability’s effect for which it is an illegal target can’t perform any actions on that target, make another object or player perform any actions on that target, or make that target perform any actions. If the spell or ability creates a continuous effect that affects game rules (see rule 613.10), that effect doesn’t apply to illegal targets. The effect may still determine information about illegal targets, though, and other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them.
My question is: Can we just get rid of the first underlined rule? Since we have the second underlined rule, the game should be able to handle spell effects of spells that don't have any legal targets without countering them. Why does this rule even exist?
Well, we all are accustomed to the interaction that when you play a Defiant Strike or similar on your creature, and it is killed in response, you don't get to draw a card. That kind of makes sense, but it could be either way. But there are so many situations where the outcome is entirely unintuitive:
As another minor benefit of removing this rule, you could remove the "spells and abilities" part in "can't be countered by spells and abilities," because spells can no longer be countered by game rules. Removing it opens the door for many mechanics with targeted non-mandatory effects without awkwardness.
And the rule just has no tangible benefit. The game would work without it; we're just used to it.
Completed sets:
Iamur — The Underwater Set
Overworld — Pirates vs. Octopuses
Esparand — The Sands of Time
Unfinished Sets:
Siege of Ravnica — Eldrazi in Ravnica
Shandalar — The Mana Set
Iamur Reimagined — Iamur v2
You can find more creative projects on my page Antaresdesigns!
More commonly, certain spells that key off P/T, like Predator's Rapport suddenly becomes immune to hexproof and protection.
Completed sets:
Iamur — The Underwater Set
Overworld — Pirates vs. Octopuses
Esparand — The Sands of Time
Unfinished Sets:
Siege of Ravnica — Eldrazi in Ravnica
Shandalar — The Mana Set
Iamur Reimagined — Iamur v2
You can find more creative projects on my page Antaresdesigns!
In my mind, you're just creating a new class of countering where not the entire card is countered. If for you that does not actually increase complexity in applying the rule, then there is no point in me arguing anything about it.
A lot of two-targeted effects like exchanging two permanents two creatures fighting already take this into account and specifically prevent the effect if one is illegal. Soul's Fire was worded to specifically require that your creature was still on the battlefield, but the later Fall of the Hammer has become more lax in its wording but still requires your creature still be on the battlefield.
If this change were made, there would also need to be further clarifications that a separate effect like a cantrip can work, but the extra effects tied to targeted effects like these do not work if the target is illegal:
Afterlife, Burn the Impure, Call to Heel, Chain of Plasma, Chandra's Outrage, First Volley ...
... actually... First Volley is Arcane. So this is currently possible.
If you cast First Volley and splice Glacial Ray onto it, then it has two targets. If the original First Volley target becomes illegal, does it still deal 1 damage to that creature's controller?
What is the Torrent of Souls issue here? Both parts of the ability are targeted, so of course removing one target still allows the other part to resolve. Or are you trying to say that if the red target is illegal, but the black target is still legal then the red target still has its effect? That seems highly dubious. Do you have a link to that ruling?
An interesting subset of that would be: What happens if you use Torrent of Souls, paying BR, targeting True Believer in your graveyard and targeting yourself? It seems like the black part should return True Believer, then the red part has an illegel target so it has no effect.
Believe it or not, if only the target of the red half becomes illegal (your scenario is meaningless because the spell is already resolving when True Believer ETBs) the creatures will still get +2/+0. There was a lengthy thread about it on the official MtG rules forum before they shut down the whole damn thing back in October.
Instant (U)
Choose one or both --
* Target creature's controller gains life equal to its toughness.
* Target creature's controller loses life equal to its power.
And that was bizarre when WotC unplugged their forum.
This rule has to be reworked before the counterspell rule can be removed. Let's make the simplest change possible and also remove this rule altogether. To what problems will this lead?
Predator's Rapport would gain you life without the counterspell rule because, although the creature is an illegal target, the game can still extract information about that creature's toughness + power. If it wouldn't be able to extract that information, you could not gain life.
Similarly to silvercut's example above, if Afterlife's text was just its current text times two, and you'd choose two different creatures of which one becomes illegal, two Spirit tokens would still be put into play, because the game can determine the controller of the illegal target.
So, removing this rule could potentially fix this issue (except you'd have to insert a rule that handles what happens when an indeterminate player is supposed to do something), but it would probably introduce other issues in their place. What are they?
Completed sets:
Iamur — The Underwater Set
Overworld — Pirates vs. Octopuses
Esparand — The Sands of Time
Unfinished Sets:
Siege of Ravnica — Eldrazi in Ravnica
Shandalar — The Mana Set
Iamur Reimagined — Iamur v2
You can find more creative projects on my page Antaresdesigns!
I still fail to see how any presumed complexity (related to the difference between single and multi-targeted spells) is supposedly removed. You're just moving and transforming it into a far more abstruse distinction between different classes of single-targeted spells!
As a more meta observation, I highly doubt that, should such a change happen, R&D would simply accept the change in functionality. As a result we would drop exactly 20 "by spells or abilities" on cards, only one of which sees significant play, but I can't even begin to fathom how many more cards we'd see gain/be printed with the far, far more repellent (not to mention confusing for players who are already confused by the new rule distinction you're creating, assuming they know anything about it to begin with) "if a creature is Xed this way/if that creature is on the battlefield" template. So I have a hard time seeing it at anything close to a "minor benefit".
Also remember that you're going to have to add an extra rule, right there in the middle of 608.2, covering what _precisely_ happens to a spell that fizzles (which means basically everything mentioned in 701.5), including the whole messy partial resolution thing. The current system may be inelegant in creating this weird countering situation (and result in a somewhat convoluted rule 608.2), but the alternative is a complete rewriting of at least the whole 608.2 subrules, if not the entire 608 section of the rules. Otherwise I'm sure they would've adjusted so that there is true no-counter fizzling AND removed the weird torrent of souls situation already.
On an unrelated, but amusing note, the rules DO allow for a spell to truly fizzle (rule 608.3b), but it has to be a permanent somehow prevented from entering the battlefield.
My intention was to create a rule set which results in:
Basically, everything that is done to or based on the illegal target is prevented, while all other effects still happen. I think the rule set that results in this is the most desirable with the least possible inconsistency and confusion, but such a rule set may not exist.
So I wondered how you could go about doing that. If you remove the "The effect may still determine information about illegal targets" part, Coastal Discovery would still draw cards, because no information about the land is required. Predator's Rapport would gain an indeterminate amount of life, and the game would treat that as 0. For Torrent of Souls I have no idea how to interpret the rules.
Completed sets:
Iamur — The Underwater Set
Overworld — Pirates vs. Octopuses
Esparand — The Sands of Time
Unfinished Sets:
Siege of Ravnica — Eldrazi in Ravnica
Shandalar — The Mana Set
Iamur Reimagined — Iamur v2
You can find more creative projects on my page Antaresdesigns!
This is intuitive Magic. You're ahead of the times if you ask me. Magic's Comprehensive Rules are not perfect, and this is INDEED a comprehensive rule that NEEDS to be streamlined. I believe it will once WotC designs a mechanic that necessitates doing so.
I personally just think making awaken target is the second worst decision regarding targets Wizards has made that block and it simply should be choice-based rather than target-based, but that's spilled milk...
But to come back to possible fixes... couldn't one change the rule that makes it impossible to affect an illegal target so it also makes it impossible to get information about an illegal target? E. g. for Torrent of Souls you currently can still determine which creatures were controlled by the now illegal target player and hence they get +2/+0, but if the rules are changed to instead return a NULL pointer for every requested information about the target (like a list of creatures it controls, its color, its power (fixing Predator's Rapport as well this way) etc.) then the intuitive interaction is restored. Does that open up problems anywhere else?
EDIT: Did I just miss two posts discussing my idea? Where they there before? I think my browser wasn't showing them... <.<")
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
The current CR's relevant rule states:
608.2b. If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that's no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word "target," are now illegal. If the spell or ability is not countered, it will resolve normally. Illegal targets, if any, won't be affected by parts of a resolving spell's effect for which they're illegal. Other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them. If the spell or ability creates any continuous effects that affect game rules (see rule 613.10), those effects don't apply to illegal targets. If part of the effect requires information about an illegal target, it fails to determine any such information. Any part of the effect that requires that information won't happen.
So if you cast Torrent of Souls using both B and R, and the player becomes illegal but the card remains valid, the player's creatures don't get the power boost for the turn.
[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] -> Lightning Bolt
[c=Lightning Bolt]Apple Pie[/c] -> Apple Pie
Vowels-Only Format
Minimum deck size: 60
Maximum number of identical cards: 4
Ban list: Cards whose English names begin with a consonant, Unglued and Unhinged cards, cards involving ante, Ancestral Recall
http://www.yawgatog.com/resources/rules-changes/dtk-ori/
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/magic-origins-update-bulletin-comprehensive-rules-changes-2015-07-16
The relevant part of CR608.2b was changed with Magic Origins, but the explanation is not entirely explicit. It sounds like it might answer this problem, but I would not have thought that the previous wording could have allowed this problem anyway.
Interesting. I guess it has to mean that I'm a psychic and they're preparing to get rid of the no-legal-targets rule.
Completed sets:
Iamur — The Underwater Set
Overworld — Pirates vs. Octopuses
Esparand — The Sands of Time
Unfinished Sets:
Siege of Ravnica — Eldrazi in Ravnica
Shandalar — The Mana Set
Iamur Reimagined — Iamur v2
You can find more creative projects on my page Antaresdesigns!
If I recall correctly, the rule was changed to its current incarnation due to problems with Frost Breath and Twinflame.
It used to be the case that even if one of the targets was illegal for Frost Breath, even the illegal target would be "frozen" for an extra turn; in Twinflame's case, a token copy of each creature would be made, regardless of the target legality of each of the targeted creatures. This no longer happens, though.
[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] -> Lightning Bolt
[c=Lightning Bolt]Apple Pie[/c] -> Apple Pie
Vowels-Only Format
Minimum deck size: 60
Maximum number of identical cards: 4
Ban list: Cards whose English names begin with a consonant, Unglued and Unhinged cards, cards involving ante, Ancestral Recall