Does Loss of life counts as noncombat damage?
Asked by madorange 13 years ago
for example i have chandra's spitfire and liliana's caress both in play then i cast duress which which force my opponent to discard a card. This will activate the liliana's caress effect which my opponent to loss 2 life will this trigger the ability of chandra's spitfire to gain +3/+0 until end of turn?
theemptyquiver says... #2
card links: card:Liliana's Caress, card:Chandra's Spitfire, Duress
February 7, 2011 3:36 a.m.
@madorange.
Loss of life is the effect that will cause a player's life to go down. It's the reverse for gain life.
Combat damage, noncombat damage causes loss of life but it is not loss of life.
A Platinum Emperion will not stop a Lightning Bolt to the dome, but it will cause that its controller not to lose the 3 life resulted from dealing 3 damage.
card:Chandra's Spitfire will activate on noncombat damage, even if it is not causing loss of life. But a Bloodchief Ascension will not.
So, Losing life is not the same as damage to player. card:Chandra's Spitfire activates on damage to player in noncombat (spells, abilities). Bloodchief Ascension will activate on loss of life (combat, non-combat, abilities).
Platinum Emperion stops ascension but not card:Chandra's Spitfire, if a Lightning Bolt is cast
theemptyquiver says... Accepted answer #1
No. Life loss and damage are different.
The reason I know this is because I play an EDH deck with Ob Nixilis, the Fallen he specifically does life loss with is landfall ability, which means that even if that ability triggers enough to do 21 loss of life it does not count as 21 damage for the sake of EDH rules where general damage ends the game at 21.
I know that is a completely different scenario, but it points out how the game checks for the differences between the wordings on the cards.
Hope that helps.
February 7, 2011 3:34 a.m.