In Storm on Cobas Haven, there's a treachery Taking On Water, that attaches to a Ship objective as a Condition . Can I remove that with Athelas? I obviously can't heal the damage since the ships are immune to player card effects, but is an attached encounter card thus immune?

Athelas:: Attach to a Dúnedain or Healer character.
Action : Discard Athelas and exhaust attached character to heal all damage on a character. You may discard a Condition attachment from that character.

Yes, you can. You have to play the Athelas on a Dunedain or Healer, but its effect can be applied to any 'character'. If you check the Ship rules in the Grey Haven insert, you will find that Ship Objectives count as both allies and characters. Also, the 'discard a Condition' text is an independent clause to the healing with no use of a 'Then', so even though Ships can't be healed you can still do the other stuff (under the do as much as possible principle). Withdrawn. I would note that while the rules do have ship-objectives immune to player card effects, each and every ship-objective you can control has that immunity. Sigh.

23 minutes ago, RichardPlunkett said:

Athelas:: Attach to a Dúnedain or Healer character.
Action : Discard Athelas and exhaust attached character to heal all damage on a character. You may discard a Condition attachment from that character.

Yes, you can. You have to play the Athelas on a Dunedain or Healer, but its effect can be applied to any 'character'. If you check the Ship rules in the Grey Haven insert, you will find that Ship Objectives count as both allies and characters. Also, the 'discard a Condition' text is an independent clause to the healing with no use of a 'Then', so even though Ships can't be healed you can still do the other stuff (under the do as much as possible principle).

That's what I had expected but wanted to confirm. Thanks!

I disagree. The word 'to' is very significant here. Where an effect says "Do X *to* Y," if you cannot do Y, so also cannot do X. There is precedent in the ruling on Flame of Anor that it cannot target an Istari character who is ready because of the phrasing with the word 'to'. So applying this principle, Athelas cannot be targeted on a character which cannot be healed.

Athelas is clearly targeting the ship objective ("attachment from that character "), which is illegal since the ships are immune to player card effects.

This is in addition to PocketWraith's correct point about cost and effect. Though I would add that it can still be used on a regular character that has no damage on it because "all" can include 0. The important part here is that the ships are immune to player card effects and cannot be healed at all.

It would be nice to see an ally that could repair ship allies...

On 12/9/2017 at 7:44 PM, Lecitadin said:

It would be nice to see an ally that could repair ship allies...

Sounds like a job for an ally version of Cirdan!

11 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Sounds like a job for an ally version of Cirdan!

You're wright about that!