A reddit user asked an interesting question, so I'm putting it here.

How does Light of Aforgomon interact with damage/horror that is explicitly dealt to allies.

Example: Beat Cop(2)'s ability, or Aquinnah's ability, or an encounter card that specifies damage be dealt to allies like "Claws of steam" or "Passage into the veil." [I realize neither of these can be in the same scenario as LoA, but I'm just giving an example here.]

Note that Light of Aforgomon does not say "treat all damage dealt to investigators as direct damage and all horror dealt to investigators as direct horror."

It just says "Treat all damage as direct damage and all horror as direct horror."

Fascinating question. Seems no obvious precedent for one encounter card over-ruling another, but the Beat Cop & Aquinnah situations are tricky, particularly as the dealing of damage to those allies is part of a cost to trigger an ability. Perhaps LoA turns those abilities off? For your latter examples, I suspect it's intentional that LoA isn't in the same encounter decks, but that's not a good explanation. Definitely interested to hear what others think.

Seems fairly straightforward to me: You can't activate these abilities. That's how I've always played. You can't meet the condition to trigger the ability, so the ability fizzles in the case of Aquinnah or Beat Cop.

For Claws of Steam or Passage into the Veil, like zooeyglass said it shouldn't come up.

Nothing tricky going on here. Only your choice to reassign the damage elsewhere is taken.

Quote

Direct Damage, Direct Horror
If an ability causes a card to take direct damage or direct horror,
that damage or horror must be assigned directly to the specified
card, and cannot be assigned or re-assigned elsewhere.

So Light of Aforgomon doesn't interact at all with damage dealt to assets (except to prevent reassignment, which isn't possible in that direction, anyway).

Does not look like there is a consensus here either.

Consensus or not, Adny quoted the Rules Reference, which clearly states the meaning of "direct damage" and "direct horror" as "cannot be assigned or re-assigned elsewhere", which in no way prevents triggering Beat Cop or Aquinah.

Sorry, I missed that.

It's interesting how easy it is to think we know the actual definition of a term based only on how it is often used. We typically think of direct damage as "damage I have to take because I cannot assign it to my allies," when in reality the rules reference definition is more general and applicable to this situation in a clear way.

The rules reference, quoted by Adny (which I can't seem to requote correctly) says:

Quote

If an ability causes a card to take direct damage or direct horror, that damage or horror must be assigned directly to the specified card, and cannot be assigned or re-assigned elsewhere.

Light of Aforgomon says:

Quote

Treat all damage as direct damage and all horror as direct horror.

The trigger ability on Beat Cop (lvl.2) says:

Quote

Exhaust Beat Cop and deal 1 damage to it: Deal 1 damage to an enemy at your location.

I read that linearly as: "Deal 1 damage directly to Beat Cop (lvl.2), and the preform consequence of the action (deal 1 damage to an enemy)."

My reasoning is that we are dealing direct damage to the Beat Cop card. It cannot be assigned or reassigned elsewhere. (Which we haven't seen yet as available option, but may someday.)

I think there was an assumption made when we learned the rules (yes, I thought differently about this topic before I started reading and researching this post) that Direct Damage/Horror is assigned to the investigator. However, that's because what we usually look at is an attack or cards like Umordoth's Wrath: "Test Will(5). For each point you fail by, you must either (choose one): Choose and discard a card from your hand, or take 1 damage and 1 horror." That damage can be reassigned (so long as Light of Aforgomon isn't in play). I believe that Beat Cop (lvl.2) and the like still perform normally, but if you could otherwise redirect their damage/horror, you can't when Light is in play.

yeah, you make a fair point. You've changed my mind.