Interesting to note that shared fate does not share Pacifism effects, Wall of Frost effects, tapping or detaining. However, the creature changing fields like being sacrificed, dying, destroyed, returned to hand, phased out, exiled, and put into the library, and being taken controlled of do apply. You can Shared Fate an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, cast Act of Treason on your own shared fate creature that is paired with Emrakul, and VOILA! you have gained control of emrakul! Permanently!

Wait. No it wouldn't. Because your own shared fate creature doesn't actually change game zones when you target it with your own Act of Treason. It WILL however, be pretty fucking funny to watch in EDH.

Reword:

Fate share: "You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters the battlefield. If one of the paired creatures gets any new abilities, changes to power or toughness, or change game zones, the same thing will apply to the other creature, for as long as they are paired".

Well, not a good wording. The thing with your wording is, that it only applies to spells and abilities. If you equip one of the creatures, the other creature won't get the same abilities....

Also, called it Fate Share. Many keywords are only 1 word. Maybe Fateshare? Idk, not an English person :)

Ah, good point NorthernRaven. Here's the edited version.

• Shared Fate (You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters the battlefield. As long as they are paired, changes in the power, toughness, abilities or game zone location of only one creature also applies to the paired creature as long as that change doesn't require the creatures to be paired.)

Coalesce could be a good name for it.

Also I'm not too happy with the "change game zones" part since it is very complicated for new players. I'd personally have it read "You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters the battlefield. As long as they are paired, both creatures share changes in power, toughness, and abilities. If one of the paired creatures dies or is exiled, the other paired creature also dies or is exiled."

Also one issue with this is that this mechanic doesn't work well with Soulbond currently, since both require unpaired creatures. For example, lets say I have a Soulbond creature paired with my Bond Beetle. If I play a Coalesce creature, it can pair with my Soulbond creature, but it can't pair with my Bond Beetle. This could be an issue.

Here are the comprehensive rulings for Soulbond. Interestingly enough, if a soulbond creature is paired, it cannot become unpair and pair again with another creature when it enters the battlefield unless the original creature it is currently paired with leaves the battlefield somehow.

702.94. Soulbond

702.94a Soulbond is a keyword that represents two triggered abilities. "Soulbond" means "When this creature enters the battlefield, if you control both this creature and another creature and both are unpaired, you may pair this creature with another unpaired creature you control for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control" and "Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, if you control both that creature and this one and both are unpaired, you may pair that creature with this creature for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield under your control."

702.94b A creature becomes "paired" with another as the result of a soulbond ability. Abilities may refer to a paired creature, the creature another creature is paired with, or whether a creature is paired. An "unpaired" creature is one that is not paired.

702.94c When the soulbond ability resolves, if either object that would be paired is no longer a creature, no longer on the battlefield, or no longer under the control of the player who controls the soulbond ability, neither object becomes paired.

702.94d A creature can be paired with only one other creature.

702.94e A paired creature becomes unpaired if any of the following occur: another player gains control of it or the creature it's paired with; it or the creature it's paired with stops being a creature; or it or the creature it's paired with leaves the battlefield.

So I'm just going to edit this as a section for Shared Fate, putting the suffix, SF at the end of each section to dictate its difference from soulbond.

702.94sf. Shared Fate.

702.94asf Shared Fate is a keyword that represents two triggered abilities. "Shared Fate" means "When this creature enters the battlefield, if this creature and another creature are unpaired, you may pair this creature with another unpaired creature for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield" and "Whenever another creature enters the battlefield, if both that creature and this one are unpaired, you may pair that creature with this creature for as long as both remain creatures on the battlefield." Additionally, it means that both creatures gain "whenever this creature's power or toughness is increased or decreased or set to a certain value, then the creature it is paired with will have its power or toughness increased or decreased by the same amount or set to the same value as long as the change in power or toughness was not caused by being paired with a creature" and "whenever this creature gains or loses an ability, the the creature it is paired with will gain or lose those same abilities if applicable as long as the change was not caused by being paired with a creature" and "whenever this creature becomes sacrificed, dies from a state-based action, gets placed into the graveyard, becomes exiled, gets returned to its owners hand, gets put into its owner's library, phases out, gets placed into the command zone (if both creatures in a pair are generals), gets put up for ante, becomes placed on the stack or gets placed under another player's control then the creature it is paired with also becomes sacrificed, dies from a state-based action, gets placed into the graveyard, becomes exiled, gets returned to its owners hand, gets put into its owner's library, phases out, gets placed into the command zone (if both creatures in a pair are generals), gets put up for ante, becomes placed on the stack or gets placed under another player's control."

702.94bsf A creature becomes "paired" with another as the result of a soulbond or shared fate ability. Abilities may refer to a paired creature, the creature another creature is paired with, or whether a creature is paired. An "unpaired" creature is one that is not paired.

702.94csf When the soulbond or shared fate ability resolves, if either object that would be paired is no longer a creature, no longer on the battlefield, or no longer under the control of the player who controls the soulbond or shared fate ability, neither object becomes paired.

702.94dsf A creature can be paired with only one other creature, unless specified by another card's effect. If this occurs, treat each pair as their own instance of soulbond or shared fate.

702.94esf A paired creature becomes unpaired if any of the following occur: another player gains control of it or the creature it's paired with; it or the creature it's paired with stops being a creature; or it or the creature it's paired with leaves the battlefield.

The soulbond thing is true lemmingllama, but the cards with shared fate will be a little different, in that they will be mostly cards that you will want to pair with your opponent's creatures.

You can remove the ante part, it isn't relevant. Also if we are going to be wording the short form of it as "changes zones", then we will also have to remove the phasing section from 702.94asf.

All in all, I'm ok with this ability. We just need to make sure that both abilities are worth playing in the same deck.

Did a bit of research on phasing and you are right. Phasing is more of a state, than a zone. I don't want to put states (and types) in this as it would become a bit too complicated.

I kind of like the Shared Fate concept. IF the Thannalids keep the whole zone changing stuff it'd be interesting to see the Solas have their own response to it by maybe having cards to specifically counteract the Thannalids in this way. It might get a bit confusing and maybe certain rules might overlap and get weird, but at a basis I could see it having some interesting concept going on.

@Femme_Fatale One of them phasing out wouldn't affect it at all, technically the creature is still on the battlefield, just that nothing can interact with it unless it says "target permanent phases in". Phasing is pretty weird, never again should it be in a set.

Also another thing I noticed. How would a creature be placed onto the stack if it had already resolved and been paired? You can likely remove that part too.

There's a creature that literally lets you swap control of it with a spell that's on the stack.

I'm going to pop in to offer some constructive criticism on your mechanic.

"Shared fate" is already a card name. You should avoid using it as a mechanic name. Also, two-word keywords are somewhat less attractive (although not unforgivable) than one-word keywords.

Unfortunately, shared fate is also a rules nightmare. Whenever a mechanic idea requires you to define five separate represented triggered abilities (which is how you've worded them, by the way), all of which are extremely long, it's a good hint that its time to move toward something more realistic.

And you can't place something on the battlefield onto the stack. That's not a zone change that's currently possible, there is no rules infrastructure to support it, and it's nonsensical. Your counterexample, Perplexing Chimera, never leaves the battlefield. Change of control does not suggest a change of zone.

The mockup CR entries for the abilities are nice, but they need to be templated in the same way as the actual CR.

I think it would be better if Coalesce only combined their power, toughness, and abilities. The zone change is a bit much. Even if Coalesce doesn't work out, we could still use Banding, which is similar-ish.

Also, if the Fire Elementals are like Ball Lightning than maybe we could have:

Aerial Mentor

Creature - Elemental

Soulbond(You may pair this creature with another unpaired creature when either enters the battlefield. They remain paired for as long as you control both of them.)

As long as Aerial Mentor is paired with another creature, each of those creatures gains +1/+1. If both of those creatures are Elementals, they cannot be sacrificed as well.

'Young one, you must learn to control your emotions. Otherwise, they will consume you.' - Caraz, Elder of Air

2/2

Oh my goodness, Epoch just graced us with his presence.

Yes. Multiple times, on multiple pages.

You're at risk of sounding like Tibbles and Femme. That's fangirl territory, friend, and it's a dark place.

Epoch ~ ♥ swoon

Anyways, I could deal with it just being P/T and abilities. Would that make the rulings better Epochalyptik? Beyond the Ante, Command Zone and the Stack, I had thought I had gotten a large majority of the effects solved with Shared Fate (I'll probably name it FateShare like NorthernRaven suggested), so if you could demonstrate the sections I have missed that would be wonderful.

I mean, it's still very complicated and all. The rules infrastructure required to support that is still very complicated at this point. It's also something that gets very complicated once you have multiple kinds of pairing and multiple pairs of things.

Sure is a good thing that this isn't going to be a constructed set then. I'll probably remove the Polyamory card if I'm going with this mechanic. I quite like this at the start, and we'll see how things turn out in playtests. If there are too many problems occurring in draft then I'll remove the mechanic for something else. If there aren't a whole lot of problems then I will be removing the cards other than fateshare that is causing the problems.

Regardless of whether you intend the mechanic to see Limited or Constructed play, it's suboptimal design protocol to go for something so complicated. The idea is good, but it just doesn't lend itself to a clean implementation.

You might want to commit to one idea or one vision and then pare it down to the most realistic implementation. I'll offer input if you like.

Shoot.

We could then make it like Precursor Golem. And with "if one would leave the battlefield, the other one does too".... Something along those lines. Maybe there will be too much text..... Idk..

Oh a kind of Ink-Treader Nephilim effect could be pretty fun. Would fit into Boros heroic style with the targeting of spells. Maybe have spell targets just share? Most of the time when you modify P/T is from a spell target anyways.