Hi, I have an idea for a custom creature, but it has two triggered abilities that I'm not sure how to write. I tried writing the two abilities myself (see attachment), but I don't think they interact the way I want them to.
Refer below for how I want them to actually work and examples of how the abilities would resolve in different situations.
Triggered Ability A:
Whenever Skar, the Blood Siphon deals damage to a creature, if that creature died, boost Skar's toughness by that creature's toughness. Otherwise, boost Skar's toughness by the amount of damage it dealt to that creature.
Triggered Ability B:
At the beginning of each (end step or upkeep, not sure which makes more sense), check if Skar's power and toughness are unequal. If so, the higher of the two becomes its power and the lower of the two becomes its toughness.
Here is what it would look like for Skar after being blocked by different creatures (for simplicity's sake, assume there are no additional spells or effects by either player):
1. I've declared Skar as my only attacker (Skar is 4/2 with first strike).
[Scenario 1: Akroan Jailer declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Jailer.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Jailer died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 1.
5. Skar becomes a 4/3.
6. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
7. Triggered Ability B resolves and checks Skar's power and toughness.
8. Since its power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 4/3.
[Scenario 2: Alpine Watchdog declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Watchdog.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Watchdog died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 2.
5. Skar becomes a 4/4.
6. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
7. Triggered Ability B checks Skar's power and toughness.
8. Since its power and toughness are equal, no changes are made and Skar remains a 4/4.
[Scenario 3: Aetherstream Leopard declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Leopard.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Leopard died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 3.
5. Skar becomes a 4/5.
6. Leopard deals 2 damage to Skar.
7. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
8. Triggered Ability B checks power and toughness.
9. Since power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 5/4.
[Scenario 4: Keeper of Fables declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Keeper.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Keeper did not die, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 4.
5. Skar becomes a 4/6.
6. Keeper deals 4 damage to Skar.
7. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
8. Triggered Ability B checks power and toughness.
9. Since power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 6/4.
The attachment is pretty close, assuming you want the boosts not to end at the end of turn, aside of using +0/+1 counters which aren't really supported any more. I think the only thing that would be templated different would be "If that creature died..." insread of "dies" and the Ys would just be Xs (You'd only need the two different variables if the both had to be defined at the same time)
That said, this effect is super fiddly and confusing and +0/+1 counters aren't a great idea for gameplay in general. Most relevantly, having the ability swap power and toughness while also adding uneven counters means that the "Toughness" side will pretty much always be higher, because the swapping is applied after the counter has changed the toughness (good God, I hate dealing with layers). The problem is, most people don't understand how all these p/t changing effects interact and so this is going to get played wrong more often than right.
The card would be both better and more understandable (though probably undercosted) if you removed the p/t swap and just made the counters +1/+1.
So, for the first ability, you are right that the current wording won't work. An intervening if clause, which is what you have, will never trigger appropriately because nothing dies from damage being dealt; they die from State Based Actions after damage is dealt. But the trigger condition is looking for damage dealt so the order ends up being "deal damage -> trigger -> SBAs are checked -> trigger is put onto the stack. In this case, the second step never happens.
Out of curiosity, why not just make it equal to the damage in both cases? It seems somewhat odd to make the ability worse because a creature died and it makes the ability super wordy. And introduces potential issues where a creature was destroyed by damage but didn't actually die thanks to something like Rest in Peace. If that is still the intent, you could try something like this:
Whenever ~ deals damage to a creature, ~ gets +0/+X where X is the toughness of the creature it damaged if the second creature died. Otherwise, ~ gets +0/+X where X is the amount of the damage ~ dealt.
For the other ability, something like this might work:
At the beginning of your Upkeep, if ~ power is less than its toughness, switch its P/T.
Are these supposed to be permanent? The way you have worded them, it seems like they are which seems like a nightmare to track over the course of a few turns. The first can sort of be solved with counters ("~ gets X +0/+1 counters where...") but the latter doesn't seem to have an easy tracking mechanism. It is printed as a 4/2 and then 4 turns later it is a 13/9 somehow but nothing on the card tells you what the values are which seems really confusing. Especially once you get into the issue of missed triggers (and this seems like a super easy one to miss).
I think the first has some potential (ignoring the wording clunkiness) but the second just seems like it potentially has too many problems if you intend on making it permanent. If it is just for the turn, it is probably alright since it doesn't need to be tracked for more than the one turn.
So, for the first ability, you are right that the current wording won't work. An intervening if clause, which is what you have, will never trigger appropriately because nothing dies from damage being dealt; they die from State Based Actions after damage is dealt. But the trigger condition is looking for damage dealt so the order ends up being "deal damage -> trigger -> SBAs are checked -> trigger is put onto the stack. In this case, the second step never happens.
I would argue that, in this case, the trigger should work as written because it has a condition for died or not died baked in. The trigger condition is "is was combat damage dealt" It doesn't check if the creature died to combat damage, only that combat damage was dealt and then the result of the trigger is "Died? Yes/No" The way its currently written in fact, the creature could be dealt non-lethal damage, putting the trigger on the stack, and then hit with a removal spell before the effect resolves and the ability would see the "creature died" condition satisfied.
So, for the first ability, you are right that the current wording won't work. An intervening if clause, which is what you have, will never trigger appropriately because nothing dies from damage being dealt; they die from State Based Actions after damage is dealt. But the trigger condition is looking for damage dealt so the order ends up being "deal damage -> trigger -> SBAs are checked -> trigger is put onto the stack. In this case, the second step never happens.
I would argue that, in this case, the trigger should work as written because it has a condition for died or not died baked in. The trigger condition is "is was combat damage dealt" It doesn't check if the creature died to combat damage, only that combat damage was dealt and then the result of the trigger is "Died? Yes/No" The way its currently written in fact, the creature could be dealt non-lethal damage, putting the trigger on the stack, and then hit with a removal spell before the effect resolves and the ability would see the "creature died" condition satisfied.
That was the point. Intervening if clauses need the condition to be true in order to trigger at all. The trigger event is "creature is dealt damage" but is conditional on "creature died". The former happened (obviously) but the latter has not yet when the trigger would try to trigger. It deals damage, sees the creature has not died yet (since SBAs haven't been checked) and won't trigger at all.
In fact, you bring up a good point. Because it is written as an intervening if, but isn't meant to function like one, it doesn't work at all. It can be done the way you said and the way OP wants it. I was just saying it needs to not be an intervening if. And the simplest way to do that is move the if condition out of the middle of the trigger event and just move it to the end like my wording did. There is nothing (that I am aware of) that has a trigger condition that uses an intervening if but also allows for something to happen if that condition isn't true. For the reasons being stated; the current rules on intervening ifs just don't allow them to function and it isn't a rules change that is feasible to make something like this work. Not when there is a simple wording change to make it work the way the OP wants anyway.
Well, I am still going to point out that using an "intervening if" isn't going to work with the trigger. You need to move the condition out of the middle of the ability and put it at the end somehow.
As another example of this: Renegade Rallier entering the battlefield with nothing having left yet and an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will not allow the Rallier to trigger properly even though it will die right away. The principal is the same with your damage trigger: a creature is never going to die to damage in time for the trigger to work as an intervening if. You need to make sure it triggers first and then only checks your condition on resolution.
And I still don't think breaking it out based on the result of damage makes sense; either give it counters based on the damage it dealt or only give it counters when something dies but I think if you word it right, it can work out just fine either way. I don't think this part of it is necessarily problematic. I just think it ends up being easier to keep track of without introducing weird corner cases.
In the second trigger of "my" version, I don't think you solved for the memory issue at all. That is, if you had it as a 4/2 with four +0/+1 counters on it (making it a 4/6) you are then setting it to a 6/4 and removing the counters. Next turn, it gets six more +0/+1 counters making it a 6/10 which then becomes a 10/6. But the card says 4/2 and nothing about the card says it is a 10/6. You have to keep remembering it (or writing it down) every turn. I just don't like it. Removing the counters doesn't really make it better.
As such, I think the design of the first one (rowanalpha's version) is probably better designed. +1/+1 Counters are far easier to keep track of and it seems like the functionality mostly stays the same for what you wanted anyway. In the example above, you would have it deal 4 damage and then 8 instead of 4 and 6 but you can just cost it based on that. I would just lean into that as a reasonable solution.
WizardMN, to answer your question about why not make the buff equal to the damage, I decided to do that for a two reasons. One is that if Skar was to be a 4 drop, I wanted mitigate the boost to be sure he didn't get too powerful, too quickly. Also, it was a bit more on flavor for what I was thinking when it comes to Skar. Since he's a Vampire, he sucks blood which I associate with "health" and in Magic that's kind of represented by a creature's toughness. So if you drain a creature (it dies), you can't gain more health than it has.
Now that I reflected on what Skar is supposed to do, which is that he bites, drains blood from opponents, and then uses that to become stronger, I think rowanalpha's version is better. It's on flavor, it's easier to understand, and I don't have to keep track of uneven counters and then worrying about removing them. I think that's too clunky and too wordy.
However, I actually do need your help with one more thing on Skar. I can see Skar getting a little overpowered if he gains double strike based on the way my ability is written.
If I understand the way I've written the new version of the card correctly, if Skar were to face a 5/5 creature like Charging Monstrosaur as a 4/2 equipped with Fireshrieker, it would gain 9 +1/+1 counters, when I would only want Skar to gain a maximum of 5 +1/+1 counters. Is there a way to write the "if that creature died" part of the ability so that in this scenario, it would only put a single +1/+1 counter on Skar on the second strike?
Which I get. There is absolutely a flavor justification for it. But sometimes flavor needs to take a back seat to mechanical execution, or the execution needs to be done slightly differently. The way you want it to work makes sense for sure; but the method of "how" you want it to work just doesn't seem quite right to me.
Thinking on it more now, I wonder how often the "deals damage to a creature that doesn't die" is actually going to happen? For a card like this, I don't see that happening too often unless the opponent makes a mistake in combat. Which of course is going to feel even worse when they make the mistake and realize their 5/5 can't kill him unless it has First Strike. And now he is a 8/6 for next time. That potential exponential growth seems problematic on its own.
What about either just giving him a single counter when he damages a creature *or* care about when a creature dies like most other Vampire effects? You could certainly scale the latter if you want more than one counter, but I really do think that a 4 power First Striker that just has "Whenever a creature dealt damage by ~ dies, put a counter on ~" is powerful in its own right. 4 power is generally enough to kill most things as it is so it forces unfavorable blocks because of the First Strike and it still gives you the feel of a Vampire draining power without worrying about a wordy mechanical execution or an issues with exponential growth.
I would also argue that Dracula becoming twice as powerful because he drained blood from something that *didn't* die seems somehow backwards
Refer below for how I want them to actually work and examples of how the abilities would resolve in different situations.
Triggered Ability A:
Whenever Skar, the Blood Siphon deals damage to a creature, if that creature died, boost Skar's toughness by that creature's toughness. Otherwise, boost Skar's toughness by the amount of damage it dealt to that creature.
Triggered Ability B:
At the beginning of each (end step or upkeep, not sure which makes more sense), check if Skar's power and toughness are unequal. If so, the higher of the two becomes its power and the lower of the two becomes its toughness.
Here is what it would look like for Skar after being blocked by different creatures (for simplicity's sake, assume there are no additional spells or effects by either player):
1. I've declared Skar as my only attacker (Skar is 4/2 with first strike).
[Scenario 1: Akroan Jailer declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Jailer.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Jailer died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 1.
5. Skar becomes a 4/3.
6. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
7. Triggered Ability B resolves and checks Skar's power and toughness.
8. Since its power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 4/3.
[Scenario 2: Alpine Watchdog declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Watchdog.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Watchdog died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 2.
5. Skar becomes a 4/4.
6. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
7. Triggered Ability B checks Skar's power and toughness.
8. Since its power and toughness are equal, no changes are made and Skar remains a 4/4.
[Scenario 3: Aetherstream Leopard declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Leopard.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Leopard died, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 3.
5. Skar becomes a 4/5.
6. Leopard deals 2 damage to Skar.
7. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
8. Triggered Ability B checks power and toughness.
9. Since power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 5/4.
[Scenario 4: Keeper of Fables declared as a blocker]
2. Skar deals 4 first strike damage to the Keeper.
3. Triggered Ability A goes on the stack.
4. Triggered Ability A resolves and since the Keeper did not die, Skar's toughness gets boosted by 4.
5. Skar becomes a 4/6.
6. Keeper deals 4 damage to Skar.
7. Triggered Ability B goes on the stack.
8. Triggered Ability B checks power and toughness.
9. Since power and toughness are unequal, Skar becomes a 6/4.
Any help you can give me is appreciated!
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StaffThat said, this effect is super fiddly and confusing and +0/+1 counters aren't a great idea for gameplay in general. Most relevantly, having the ability swap power and toughness while also adding uneven counters means that the "Toughness" side will pretty much always be higher, because the swapping is applied after the counter has changed the toughness (good God, I hate dealing with layers). The problem is, most people don't understand how all these p/t changing effects interact and so this is going to get played wrong more often than right.
The card would be both better and more understandable (though probably undercosted) if you removed the p/t swap and just made the counters +1/+1.
Out of curiosity, why not just make it equal to the damage in both cases? It seems somewhat odd to make the ability worse because a creature died and it makes the ability super wordy. And introduces potential issues where a creature was destroyed by damage but didn't actually die thanks to something like Rest in Peace. If that is still the intent, you could try something like this:
For the other ability, something like this might work:
Are these supposed to be permanent? The way you have worded them, it seems like they are which seems like a nightmare to track over the course of a few turns. The first can sort of be solved with counters ("~ gets X +0/+1 counters where...") but the latter doesn't seem to have an easy tracking mechanism. It is printed as a 4/2 and then 4 turns later it is a 13/9 somehow but nothing on the card tells you what the values are which seems really confusing. Especially once you get into the issue of missed triggers (and this seems like a super easy one to miss).
I think the first has some potential (ignoring the wording clunkiness) but the second just seems like it potentially has too many problems if you intend on making it permanent. If it is just for the turn, it is probably alright since it doesn't need to be tracked for more than the one turn.
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StaffI would argue that, in this case, the trigger should work as written because it has a condition for died or not died baked in. The trigger condition is "is was combat damage dealt" It doesn't check if the creature died to combat damage, only that combat damage was dealt and then the result of the trigger is "Died? Yes/No" The way its currently written in fact, the creature could be dealt non-lethal damage, putting the trigger on the stack, and then hit with a removal spell before the effect resolves and the ability would see the "creature died" condition satisfied.
In fact, you bring up a good point. Because it is written as an intervening if, but isn't meant to function like one, it doesn't work at all. It can be done the way you said and the way OP wants it. I was just saying it needs to not be an intervening if. And the simplest way to do that is move the if condition out of the middle of the trigger event and just move it to the end like my wording did. There is nothing (that I am aware of) that has a trigger condition that uses an intervening if but also allows for something to happen if that condition isn't true. For the reasons being stated; the current rules on intervening ifs just don't allow them to function and it isn't a rules change that is feasible to make something like this work. Not when there is a simple wording change to make it work the way the OP wants anyway.
As another example of this: Renegade Rallier entering the battlefield with nothing having left yet and an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will not allow the Rallier to trigger properly even though it will die right away. The principal is the same with your damage trigger: a creature is never going to die to damage in time for the trigger to work as an intervening if. You need to make sure it triggers first and then only checks your condition on resolution.
And I still don't think breaking it out based on the result of damage makes sense; either give it counters based on the damage it dealt or only give it counters when something dies but I think if you word it right, it can work out just fine either way. I don't think this part of it is necessarily problematic. I just think it ends up being easier to keep track of without introducing weird corner cases.
In the second trigger of "my" version, I don't think you solved for the memory issue at all. That is, if you had it as a 4/2 with four +0/+1 counters on it (making it a 4/6) you are then setting it to a 6/4 and removing the counters. Next turn, it gets six more +0/+1 counters making it a 6/10 which then becomes a 10/6. But the card says 4/2 and nothing about the card says it is a 10/6. You have to keep remembering it (or writing it down) every turn. I just don't like it. Removing the counters doesn't really make it better.
As such, I think the design of the first one (rowanalpha's version) is probably better designed. +1/+1 Counters are far easier to keep track of and it seems like the functionality mostly stays the same for what you wanted anyway. In the example above, you would have it deal 4 damage and then 8 instead of 4 and 6 but you can just cost it based on that. I would just lean into that as a reasonable solution.
Now that I reflected on what Skar is supposed to do, which is that he bites, drains blood from opponents, and then uses that to become stronger, I think rowanalpha's version is better. It's on flavor, it's easier to understand, and I don't have to keep track of uneven counters and then worrying about removing them. I think that's too clunky and too wordy.
If I understand the way I've written the new version of the card correctly, if Skar were to face a 5/5 creature like Charging Monstrosaur as a 4/2 equipped with Fireshrieker, it would gain 9 +1/+1 counters, when I would only want Skar to gain a maximum of 5 +1/+1 counters. Is there a way to write the "if that creature died" part of the ability so that in this scenario, it would only put a single +1/+1 counter on Skar on the second strike?
Thinking on it more now, I wonder how often the "deals damage to a creature that doesn't die" is actually going to happen? For a card like this, I don't see that happening too often unless the opponent makes a mistake in combat. Which of course is going to feel even worse when they make the mistake and realize their 5/5 can't kill him unless it has First Strike. And now he is a 8/6 for next time. That potential exponential growth seems problematic on its own.
What about either just giving him a single counter when he damages a creature *or* care about when a creature dies like most other Vampire effects? You could certainly scale the latter if you want more than one counter, but I really do think that a 4 power First Striker that just has "Whenever a creature dealt damage by ~ dies, put a counter on ~" is powerful in its own right. 4 power is generally enough to kill most things as it is so it forces unfavorable blocks because of the First Strike and it still gives you the feel of a Vampire draining power without worrying about a wordy mechanical execution or an issues with exponential growth.
I would also argue that Dracula becoming twice as powerful because he drained blood from something that *didn't* die seems somehow backwards