Discussion Forum

Negative Toughness with a Creature

If you have a creature enchanted with Pemmin's Aura and attacked a player, then pumped up the creature to +12/-10, will that creature deal it's damage before it dies (goes to the graveyard)?
Posted 17 July 2010 at 04:09

Permalink

If attackers and blockers are declared and you pump up the creature, it blocks the oopponent creature, but deals no damage, for it dies because of -10 toughness. Would have been another story if it were Indestructible.
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 06:02

Permalink

What I mean is, say... Player 1 has 12 life. Player 2 declares attack, then pumps up the creature to +12/-10 to attack Player 1. No Blockers, would Player 2 kill Player 1 before the -10 toughness kills the creature?
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 06:39

Permalink

"Depends". A creature with toughness of 0 or less goes to the graveyard as a State-Based Effect. State-Based Effects are cleaned up whenever someone would get priority, which is pretty often but not so often that you can't still pull nifty tricks like this.

This is one of those annoying times where you need to be extremely careful about the order you do things. In this case thanks to 509.5 I'm pretty sure the only way to pull this off is to wait until the end of the Declare Blockers step and then buff the guy with Pemmin's Aura on him.

When that happens then the game goes on to the Combat Damage step and there are no more chances to do anything between combat damage being assigned and combat damage going onto the stack. Then, after damage from both sides is assigned it goes on the stack and triggered abilities go on the stack you get priority again and just before that happens your guy will die as a State-Based Effect. Thankfully just before your dead-and-doesnt-know-it creature died he did get a chance to assign damage.
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 08:40

Permalink

Thank you very much for clearing that up and explaining it in detail. I still think that it should die immediately, but I didn't make the rules, I just play them :)
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 11:49

Permalink

Theoretically it does die immediately as state-based effects are cleaned every time priority changes, the combat damage step is essentially just there for the benefit of us players and in the context of the game's internal world it's all occuring instantly.
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 13:01

Permalink

[QUOTE=KuroRyuuD]If attackers and blockers are declared and you pump up the creature, it blocks the oopponent creature, but deals no damage, for it dies because of -10 toughness. Would have been another story if it were Indestructible.[/QUOTE]

actually no, indestructible creatures whose toughness drops to zero or lower still die.
0
Posted 17 July 2010 at 14:07

Permalink