Lifelink marks life gain with damage, correct? So if I swing with an 11 power lifelinker, and an opponent blocks with a 1 toughness creature, will I gain 11 or 1 (or some other number I'm missing)?
Lifelink means that as a creature does damage, you will gain life equal to the damage.
The creature does 11 damage to the 1 toughness creature, so you gain 11 life.
Hello, can someone clarify that damage can go over a creature's toughness? A friend of mine isn't satisfied by this answer and would like a cite from the Comp Rules.
Hello, can someone clarify that damage can go over a creature's toughness? A friend of mine isn't satisfied by this answer and would like a cite from the Comp Rules.
Here is the entirety of the rules concerning Lifelink.
118.3e Damage dealt to an object or player by a source with lifelink causes that source’s controller to gain that much life, in addition to the damage’s other results.
702.13. Lifelink 702.13a Lifelink is a static ability. Damage dealt by a source with lifelink causes that source’s controller, or its owner if it has no controller, to gain that much life (in addition to any other results that damage causes). See rule 118.3. 702.13b If a permanent leaves the battlefield before an effect causes it to deal damage, its last known information is used to determine whether it had lifelink. 702.13c The lifelink rules function no matter what zone an object with lifelink deals damage from. 702.13d Multiple instances of lifelink on the same object are redundant.
As you can see, there is nothing there says that you cannot gain more life than the damaged creature's thoughness, the damaged planeswalker's loyalty or the damaged player's life.
I'm a former judge (lapsed), who keeps up to date on rules and policy. Keep in mind that judges' answers aren't necessarily more valid than those of people who aren't judges; what matters is we can quote the rules to back up our answers. When in doubt, ask for such quotes.
Hello, can someone clarify that damage can go over a creature's toughness? A friend of mine isn't satisfied by this answer and would like a cite from the Comp Rules.
Hopefully this will do it for him:
510.1a Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its
power. Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at
all.
118.2a Damage may be dealt as a result of combat. Each attacking and blocking creature deals combat damage equal to its power during the combat damage step.
There is no stated exception in the rules for creatures with lower toughness.
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510.1a Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its
power. Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at
all.
You're gonna also need the one that says damage is dealt as assigned. This player could still deny that the damage is dealt in excess of the toughness.
... hmm, the way 510.2 asserts itself is different now.
Or you can quote this:
Quote from CR »
510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. If exactly one creature is blocking it, it assigns all its combat damage to that creature. If two or more creatures are blocking it, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign combat damage to a creature that’s blocking it unless each creature that precedes that blocking creature in its order is assigned lethal damage. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it.
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Blue is me, red is my friend who believes damage is assigned otherwise:
702.13a -- Lifelink is a static ability. Damage dealt by a source with lifelink causes that source’s controller, or its owner if it has no controller, to gain that much life (in addition to any other results that damage causes).
**Damage**, not how much toughness the blocking creature had. So swinging an 11/11 at a 1/1 will net you 11 life gain.
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check ur resources. I just did an official tournament with a friend using my number and it was done the way we have been doing it and i even had another friend of ours look it up. We've been doing it right. The problem is that if the creature only has 1 toughness it only takes 1 damage. thats what is being said. so what ur saying is right, but you have to add other things to it. Ur body can only take so much damage before it disintigrates. same goes for any creature. thats the way it's been explained. so no. u still only gain 1 life hitting a 1/1 with an 11/11. sorry man. too many times we've looked that up recently. its a recently changed rule, but thats what it is.
look at it this way also.
our body only has so much energy and blood in it. You cant take more than what is there.
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My resource is the newest edition of the Comp. Rules (updated October 1, 2009), do a "CTRL+F" -- on 702.13a for Lifelink.
Damage rules are located in section 118. There is nothing to state that something can only take damage up to its toughness.
Also: 510.1a ****Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its power.**** Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at all.
"... equal to its power." does not mean "damage only up to the blocking creature's toughness."
As for the tournament, I would have called a judge (knowing what I know now).
Addendum:
510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. If exactly one creature is blocking it, it assigns all its combat damage to that creature. If two or more creatures are blocking it, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign combat damage to a creature that’s blocking it unless each creature that precedes that blocking creature in its order is assigned lethal damage. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. ******An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it.******
One more thing: at a sanctioned match, that would have been a 3.6 - Game Play Error -- Game Rule Violation. In Regular (like Friday Night Magic) a Caution (just a verbal caution) would have been assigned. At the Competitive (Pro Tour Qualifier) or Professional (Pro Tour and up) it would have been a Warning (which are officially tracked by the DCI).
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hmm....well our friend and i looked it up less than a week ago from the same thing. all damage that is dealt more than the toughness floats. its not dealt.
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Damage doesn't reduce toughness (unless it's Wither, but that is neither here nor there). It's placed beside it. A creature gets marked with damage, and if damage is equal or greater than, the creature die. Damage is damage. In the end, damage doesn't "float". Essentially it's like over-beating a dead horse. Cite me stuff from the Comp Rules, otherwise it's just your word versus the rules I've looked up for you for this.
The italic part of his conversation, where in the rules could he be possibly be making that misconception? Also, I'm not sure if I made the right call when I said "Game Play Error -- Game Rule Violation" was how that might be handled if a judge was called.
...the only time I can see that misconception coming from is a serious misunderstanding of trample, where the trampler deals lethal to the creature then the rest to the player. So an 11/11 Lifelink Trampler that was blocked by a 1/1 would only do 1 damage to the creature, then the other 10 would go over to the player, but even then you'd still gain 11 because you dealt 1 to the creature & 10 to the player.
Actually, that's optional. You can deal the extra damage to the player, but you can assign any amount between lethal and all of the damage to the blocker(s).
502.9b The controller of an attacking creature with trample first assigns damage to the creature(s) blocking it. If all those blocking creatures are assigned lethal damage, any remaining damage is assigned as its controller chooses among those blocking creatures and the player or planeswalker the creature is attacking. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already on the creature and damage from other creatures that will be assigned at the same time (see rule 502.9e). The controller need not assign lethal damage to all those blocking creatures but in that case can’t assign any damage to the player or planeswalker it’s attacking.
As for the op, I don't know what to say. You gave him the rules and multiple explanations. You can try to argue his "only so much blood/flesh/etc" argument by saying
"While a few bullets will kill somebody, you can shoot them with a thousand. If you are getting something for each bullet that hits them, you get one thousand of those somethings. It doesn't matter that only a few of those bullets were lethal. If you weren't able to gain life over the toughness of the creature, it would say so."
Not as far as I know. I'm pretty sure that it's always been that creatures assign their full damage, then their full damage is dealt. Effects that look at damage dealt will use that damage dealt (unless some card somehow changes that). Like I said earlier, the fact that Drain Life says "Drain Life deals X damage to target creature or player. You gain life equal to the damage dealt, but not more life than the player's life total before Drain Life dealt damage or the creature's toughness." reinforces the fact that you are normally able to gain more life than damage is dealt. Otherwise, why would it say that?
Did old Lifelink or damage function this way (only up to toughness)? He's a longer playing player than I, so maybe it has something to do with that?
Nope. He may be thinking of Drain Life, but that card explicitly states that the caster can't gain more life than the creature's toughness or player's previous life total.
The amount of damage a creature can take (ie its toughness) has no bearing on lifelink. It's the amount of damage that the lifelinker can deal (ie its power).
Lifelink relies on damage dealt (which under normal circumstances is the creatures power), and is not affected by how much (or how little) the other creature can take (which, again under normal circumstances, is its toughness).
You keep talking about how much damage a creature "can take" as though that were a useful concept. It's not. There is no limit to how much damage a creature can take. If a 1000000 point Fireball resolves on a 1/1, that 1/1 will take 1000000 damage. It will be a 1/1 with 1000000 damage marked on it, and State-Based Actions will destroy it because it has lethal damage marked on it.
The fact that 1 damage would have been enough to kill it does in no way mean that it only "took" 1 damage from that Fireball.
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Please use card tags when you're asking a question about specific cards: [c]Serra Angel[/c] -> Serra Angel.
The question itself has been answered... it sounds like your friend is still not convinced for some reason. The only things I can recommend are (a) asking him to give him a rule from the comprehensive rulebook that shows where damage "floats" - you've given him rules references, after all; (b) just shut down any analogies to real bodies and draining energy, etc. because they simply don't work. I can have a slug equipped with four morningstars and twelve swords, because the rules say that object A and B interact with each other according to rule C, and that's all there is to it.
Well, I did challenge him to point me to a place where he saw it, so either he's looking, or he simply doesn't have an answer. Thanks though guys, you've all been a great help! b
You keep talking about how much damage a creature "can take" as though that were a useful concept. It's not. There is no limit to how much damage a creature can take. If a 1000000 point Fireball resolves on a 1/1, that 1/1 will take 1000000 damage. It will be a 1/1 with 1000000 damage marked on it, and State-Based Actions will destroy it because it has lethal damage marked on it.
The fact that 1 damage would have been enough to kill it does in no way mean that it only "took" 1 damage from that Fireball.
I don't KEEP on talking about anything...I was simply trying to explain how it doesn't matter how much the creature takes, but rather what was dealt to it. My apologies for being incorrect on that part, but I don't KEEP on saying anything.
Nope, old LL worked exactly the same except that you could stack multiple instances onto a single creature (If you had 4 Battlegrace Angels and one swung, it'd turn into an 8/8 and you'd gain 32)
The old Lifelink was a little more different than that from the new one... Lifelink used to represent a triggered ability that triggered on damage and then went on the stack rather than just happening along with damage. The reason it "stacked" was that multiple instances of Lifelink meant multiple triggered abilties on the stack, each making you gain life equal to the damage dealt when it resolved. Among other things, this also meant that Lifelink from a blocking creature could not make you survive lethal combat damage from unblocked creatures (unless that blocker of yours had first strike).
Note that this older ability still exists on many cards that predate the introduction of the Lifelink keyword. Those were errataed to have the keyword when the meaning of their printed text and Lifelink were the same, but when the meaning of Lifelink was changed with Magic 2010, they reverted back to their old wording to maintain their printed functionnality, which clearly indicates a triggered ability (starting with the word "Whenever" ). Examples : Exalted Angel, Essence Sliver.
I'm a former judge (lapsed), who keeps up to date on rules and policy. Keep in mind that judges' answers aren't necessarily more valid than those of people who aren't judges; what matters is we can quote the rules to back up our answers. When in doubt, ask for such quotes.
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The creature does 11 damage to the 1 toughness creature, so you gain 11 life.
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Hopefully this will do it for him:
510.1a Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its
power. Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at
all.
There is no stated exception in the rules for creatures with lower toughness.
You're gonna also need the one that says damage is dealt as assigned. This player could still deny that the damage is dealt in excess of the toughness.
... hmm, the way 510.2 asserts itself is different now.
Or you can quote this:
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
**Damage**, not how much toughness the blocking creature had. So swinging an 11/11 at a 1/1 will net you 11 life gain.
----
check ur resources. I just did an official tournament with a friend using my number and it was done the way we have been doing it and i even had another friend of ours look it up. We've been doing it right. The problem is that if the creature only has 1 toughness it only takes 1 damage. thats what is being said. so what ur saying is right, but you have to add other things to it. Ur body can only take so much damage before it disintigrates. same goes for any creature. thats the way it's been explained. so no. u still only gain 1 life hitting a 1/1 with an 11/11. sorry man. too many times we've looked that up recently. its a recently changed rule, but thats what it is.
look at it this way also.
our body only has so much energy and blood in it. You cant take more than what is there.
---
My resource is the newest edition of the Comp. Rules (updated October 1, 2009), do a "CTRL+F" -- on 702.13a for Lifelink.
Damage rules are located in section 118. There is nothing to state that something can only take damage up to its toughness.
Also: 510.1a ****Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its power.**** Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at all.
"... equal to its power." does not mean "damage only up to the blocking creature's toughness."
As for the tournament, I would have called a judge (knowing what I know now).
Addendum:
510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. If exactly one creature is blocking it, it assigns all its combat damage to that creature. If two or more creatures are blocking it, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign combat damage to a creature that’s blocking it unless each creature that precedes that blocking creature in its order is assigned lethal damage. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. ******An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it.******
One more thing: at a sanctioned match, that would have been a 3.6 - Game Play Error -- Game Rule Violation. In Regular (like Friday Night Magic) a Caution (just a verbal caution) would have been assigned. At the Competitive (Pro Tour Qualifier) or Professional (Pro Tour and up) it would have been a Warning (which are officially tracked by the DCI).
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hmm....well our friend and i looked it up less than a week ago from the same thing. all damage that is dealt more than the toughness floats. its not dealt.
----
Damage doesn't reduce toughness (unless it's Wither, but that is neither here nor there). It's placed beside it. A creature gets marked with damage, and if damage is equal or greater than, the creature die. Damage is damage. In the end, damage doesn't "float". Essentially it's like over-beating a dead horse. Cite me stuff from the Comp Rules, otherwise it's just your word versus the rules I've looked up for you for this.
The italic part of his conversation, where in the rules could he be possibly be making that misconception? Also, I'm not sure if I made the right call when I said "Game Play Error -- Game Rule Violation" was how that might be handled if a judge was called.
Actually, that's optional. You can deal the extra damage to the player, but you can assign any amount between lethal and all of the damage to the blocker(s).
As for the op, I don't know what to say. You gave him the rules and multiple explanations. You can try to argue his "only so much blood/flesh/etc" argument by saying
"While a few bullets will kill somebody, you can shoot them with a thousand. If you are getting something for each bullet that hits them, you get one thousand of those somethings. It doesn't matter that only a few of those bullets were lethal. If you weren't able to gain life over the toughness of the creature, it would say so."
Nope. He may be thinking of Drain Life, but that card explicitly states that the caster can't gain more life than the creature's toughness or player's previous life total.
You keep talking about how much damage a creature "can take" as though that were a useful concept. It's not. There is no limit to how much damage a creature can take. If a 1000000 point Fireball resolves on a 1/1, that 1/1 will take 1000000 damage. It will be a 1/1 with 1000000 damage marked on it, and State-Based Actions will destroy it because it has lethal damage marked on it.
The fact that 1 damage would have been enough to kill it does in no way mean that it only "took" 1 damage from that Fireball.
Please use card tags when you're asking a question about specific cards: [c]Serra Angel[/c] -> Serra Angel.
I don't KEEP on talking about anything...I was simply trying to explain how it doesn't matter how much the creature takes, but rather what was dealt to it. My apologies for being incorrect on that part, but I don't KEEP on saying anything.
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The old Lifelink was a little more different than that from the new one... Lifelink used to represent a triggered ability that triggered on damage and then went on the stack rather than just happening along with damage. The reason it "stacked" was that multiple instances of Lifelink meant multiple triggered abilties on the stack, each making you gain life equal to the damage dealt when it resolved. Among other things, this also meant that Lifelink from a blocking creature could not make you survive lethal combat damage from unblocked creatures (unless that blocker of yours had first strike).
Note that this older ability still exists on many cards that predate the introduction of the Lifelink keyword. Those were errataed to have the keyword when the meaning of their printed text and Lifelink were the same, but when the meaning of Lifelink was changed with Magic 2010, they reverted back to their old wording to maintain their printed functionnality, which clearly indicates a triggered ability (starting with the word "Whenever" ). Examples : Exalted Angel, Essence Sliver.
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