Pattern Recognition #36 - Damage and Life Loss

Features Opinion

berryjon

13 July 2017

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Hello everybody! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass. I have been playing this game for a very long time, and I've forgotten more rules than I care to admit. Heck, I remember when the Legendary Rule applied to all players on the table, and not just to each player by themselves.

Today's subject is about a rule that's even older than that, and one that you don't really think about. I'm also half-certain that without the existence of Planeswalkers, this particular rule would have been reduced out of the game at some point just to keep things simple.

Confused yet, because you didn't read the title of the article before clicking?

I want to talk about the difference between Life Loss and Damage

And there go most of you, being very confused again. Oh well, that's why I'm here, right?

For 99.999% of the time, give or take, the difference between the two will be academic at best. There is no immediately apparent functional difference between the two, except that Life Loss can only affect players. So, let's back up for a second here and actually break that down a little bit first.

Damage is dealt by one of the two manners. The first is whenever a source says that it deals damage, be it from Shock or Crossbow Infantry's activated ability. The other source is on a creature - the number on the left side of the slash in the lower right corner of the card represents how much damage it causes while in combat. It can affect, depending on the cards and the rules in question, creatures, Planeswalkers and Players. And how it works, depends on what it is affecting.

Now, while I want to talk about players, it's only fair (and eating up word count) that I also address creatures and Planeswalkers first. So, on to Creatures!

Every creature has a Toughness, that being the number on the right side of the slash in the lower-right corner of the creature's card. This is an absolute, and mostly binary distinction between the creature being alive, and being dead and off to the graveyard. Creatures take damage over the turn, and if the total accumulated damage exceeds their current toughness, they die. It's as simple as that. Damage 'resets' at the end of each turn, meaning that any creature that is still alive when a turn ends, starts the next turn with no damage on it.

Any damage that does not kill a creature has no other detrimental effects on it.

Planeswalkers are a special case, as they hitch their rules regarding damage to Players. Each Planeswalker has a certain number of Loyalty Counters on them, first when they come into play, and can be modified by a player activating one of their Loyalty Abilities. Whenever a player would receive damage from a source an opponent controls, that source's controller may, as that source resolves, redirect the damage away from the player and to a Planeswalker they control. This damage is applied to their Loyalty, and when a Planeswalker's Loyalty is reduced to 0 or less, they are discarded as a state-based action, like any dead creature.

Let me give you an example.

Anne casts Shock, and wants to target Nathan's Jace, the Mind Sculptor. However, Shock says that it only targets Players or Creatures. So what she can do is target Nathan with the Shock, but as it resolves, she can say that the damage is applied to Jace, the Mind Sculptor instead. Jace then takes 2 damage.

This is the same case with combat and creatures. You attack a player, but can redirect the damage to any Planeswalker they control during the Damage Resolution step of combat. Deciding that Jace, the Mind Sculptor wasn't dead enough, she attacks Nathan with her Gurzigost, and after blockers are declared, she activates it's ability and redirects all its damage to Jace, killing him because he has zero or less Loyalty counters.

No, I'm not picking on Jace at all. He deserves it! :)

Now, when it comes to players, I've pretty much already explained what happens to them. Except there's a small, but vital difference. You see, players don't have toughness, nor loyalty. But what they do have is a Life Total. Traditionally, this starts at 20 - though that can change based on your Vanguard leader, or what format you're playing.

Life totals are not counters (though you can use them to measure it), and thus cannot be affected by things like Doubling Season. It also doesn't reset at the end of the turn like a creature's toughness. And when a player's life total reaches zero? They Leave the Game.

So, what's the point I'm getting at here? What does all this have to do with Life Loss?

You see, Life Loss is the point where a player actively loses life, reducing their total.

And aside from that being blatantly self-evident, what's the point?

Well, let me break it down for you, starting with combat and general 'source of damage' effects. After damage is applied to a player (and before it can be redirected to a Planeswalker), the player taking the damage can respond to do something to mitigate the damage, or otherwise do something about it. This includes casting Healing Salve or Healing Leaves, or triggering a redirect on Pariah.

But once all that is done, the damage being dealt to the player takes an intermediate step. At this point, all damage is converted to life loss, and the player looses that much life.

Never, in the history of Magic, has anyone ever died due to damage. It has been to Life Loss, or some other condition or action.

Damage becomes Life Loss, but Life Loss can never become damage.

And for the most part none of this matters. Except when it does. So, when does it then?

Well, there are things that bypass the 'damage' step and go straight to loosing life. And they are all through and through. This is an important and vital distinction to make, as nothing can be done about life loss. It happens!

Damage can be prevented, absorbed or redirected. But once it hits the 'Life Loss', that's it.

This is one of Black's hidden advantages, and one that was implemented into the colour from a very early stage. Why, you may be wondering, would Black get this, and not straight up damage? Two - no, three - reasons for that. First is that Direct Damage is now the domain of . Red gets all the direct damage effects, edging out (Fledgling Mawcor) and in almost all cases that don't involve combat.

Second is the colour pie. As Red and Black are really good at causing pain like this, White has become really, really, really good at preventing damage. From Samite Healer to Lashknife Barrier to Battlefield Medic to Master Healer and beyond, White is the uncontested champion of not only keeping their existing life total, but also in improving it. So, while Red attempts to overpower White's defences, Black simply goes around it.

The third advantage, although I can't really say it's an advantage, is one of sacrifice. You see, Black will pay their life directly for some advantage - and it's often 1 life for a single card drawn, but can be anything else. Look at Phyrexian Scuta for example. And this can only apply to a player - never to a creature or Planeswalker.

This is the core concept behind Suicide Black as an archetype. You can and will burn every resource you have to gain an advantage, even if it means killing yourself in the process. And as any old time Black player will tell you - the only point of life that matters is the last one.

Now, how does this all tie together and why do I think that Planeswalkers helped save this small facet of damage to players.

Well, I want to point out first that there was some evidence that Wizards was considering removing Life Loss as a concept, and replacing it with a conditional on damage that read "this damage can't be prevented." Look at Demonfire or Flames of the Blood Hand or Lightning Surge.

Yes, these sources are all in Red, but the idea is there. That you can have plain old normal damage that skips the annoying parts of White and goes straight for the player. Or creature. Or Planeswalker.

So what happened? Why did Wizards step back from implementing a potential rules change to make the rules simpler at the cost of putting more words on the cards? Well, for starters, there would need to be a huge revision of the text on all the older cards. Make no mistake, this would have been a massive undertaking, even before the 'walkers first showed up, and that may have added some reluctance to make the change. It would have been too little, too late to amount to anything.

The second was the impending New World Order. Adding text to cards increases their complexity, and having a rider on certain sources of damage that say "no, you can't do anything to this damage" may have been a bridge too far in terms of what they wanted to put on a card.

And the third reason, I believe, was the impending introduction of Planeswalkers.

As I pointed out earlier, 'walkers take a lot of their damage cues from how they act as a sort of 'second player' on the field. So, how would such a change interact with the 'walkers? On the surface, it seems easy, but then you have to account for how players will react to unpreventable damage being redirected. Can it be? Well, sure, but you're still going to get players asking that question.

In the end, Life Loss is here to stay. There's too much weight and usefulness behind it, and too much to lose by getting rid of it.

And isn't it so much more fun when your opponents can't do a thing to stop you?

Join me next week, when I talk about ... something or other.

Until then, I'm selling out! Or is that tapping out? Visit my Patreon page, and see if you want to help me out. Basic donors get a preview copy of the final article, while advanced donors get that as well as the opportunity to join me in a podcast version of the series where I talk and you respond.