Someone got a ruling back on the issue.

What happens if after reducing a creature's power, its damage is equal to or greater than its new (lower) power score?
If at any time a creature's damage is equal to or greater than its power, it is destroyed. Therefore, in that scenario, the creature is destroyed.

What happens if King of the Crag reduces a creature's power to 0 or lower?
If at any time a creature's damage is equal to or greater than its power, it is destroyed. Therefore, even an undamaged creature (0 damage) will be destroyed if the creature's power is reduced to 0 or lower.

So common sense wins this round! Yay Inconsistency!

1 minute ago, ornithologist said:

Someone got a ruling back on the issue.

What happens if after reducing a creature's power, its damage is equal to or greater than its new (lower) power score?
If at any time a creature's damage is equal to or greater than its power, it is destroyed. Therefore, in that scenario, the creature is destroyed.

What happens if King of the Crag reduces a creature's power to 0 or lower?
If at any time a creature's damage is equal to or greater than its power, it is destroyed. Therefore, even an undamaged creature (0 damage) will be destroyed if the creature's power is reduced to 0 or lower.

So common sense wins this round! Yay Inconsistency!

Thank you. Inconsistency?

3 minutes ago, ornithologist said:

So common sense wins this round!

Yay! The logical idea prevailed. It will be usefull it they added that part "even an undamaged creature (0 damage) will be destroyed if the creature's power is reduced to 0 or lower"

My personal Pet peeve with Fantasy flight Games is how inconcsistent they are with Rules that need errata. Some times its rules as written, sometimes its as intended. Its not even consistent within a game. Keyforge seems to me like there will be quite a few of them.

My group played it as 0= dead, but knowing FFG it could have easily gone the other way. Heck, they could have printed 0 power creatures in future sets.

7 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

There's also an implied timing in the "damage" section of the rule book, which we have yet to discuss.

Sure, rule book, pg 9 (emphasis mine):

DAMAGE

Damage a creature has taken is tracked by placing damage tokens on the creature. If a creature has an amount of damage on it equal to or greater than its power, the creature is destroyed.

So what is the amount of damage on an undamaged creature? Is that equal to or greater than its power?

Academic now that somebody has posted a response, granted.

Just now, ornithologist said:

My personal Pet peeve with Fantasy flight Games is how inconcsistent they are with Rules that need errata. Some times its rules a written, sometimes its as intended. Its not even consistent within a game. Keyforge seems to me like there will be quite a few of them.

This is a consistent ruling in this case though, they're saying 0 damage is undamaged because 0 is the lack of something.

6 minutes ago, ornithologist said:

What happens if King of the Crag reduces a creature's power to 0 or lower?
If at any time a creature's damage is equal to or greater than its power, it is destroyed. Therefore, even an undamaged creature (0 damage) will be destroyed if the creature's power is reduced to 0 or lower.

It's very easy to read this as damaged = undamaged or undamaged = damaged.

But any answer is still better than no answer, even if they continue to complicate their own rule set (as usual).

2 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

It's very easy to read this as damaged = undamaged or undamaged = damaged.

Not really? They specifically say that 0 damage is undamaged. And as the amount of damage (0) on an undamaged creature is equal to or greater than 0, the creature is destroyed if its power is 0. Never does the answer or the rules say that a creature must be damaged to be destroyed (and the answer even specifically calls out that an undamaged creature can be destroyed).

12 minutes ago, dbmeboy said:

Sure, rule book, pg 9 (emphasis mine):

DAMAGE

Damage a creature has taken is tracked by placing damage tokens on the creature. If a creature has an amount of damage on it equal to or greater than its power, the creature is destroyed.

So what is the amount of damage on an undamaged creature? Is that equal to or greater than its power?

Academic now that somebody has posted a response, granted.

The implication is that in order for a creature to be damaged, it must first suffer that damage. Damage does not miraculously appear out of thin air, and so damage can not magically shift values. Thus a creature cannot suddenly shift from damaged to undamaged either; we have a mechanism for that, and it's the physical act of placing tokens. That's why in other games, with more comprehensive rules, there's a discreet set of timing steps involved with applying damage, and a separate set of rules that deal with the creature's state or status. Hence why I originally said - in this very thread - that I would consider a creature with 0 power dead, but only because of state-based effects.

Now we have an unofficial ruling, but as usual that ruling is not born of the actual rules they've already written.

4 minutes ago, TwitchyBait said:

This is a consistent ruling in this case though, they're saying 0 damage is undamaged because 0 is the lack of something.

King of the Crag is the only card in the whole game that lowers power. This isn't a consistent ruling, its the defining ruling. They rule inconsistently, in the case of this is a common sense ruling, but Biomatix backup get ruled very weirdly to how it was intended.

3 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

The implication is that in order for a creature to be damaged, it must first suffer that damage. Damage does not miraculously appear out of thin air, and so damage can not magically shift values. Thus a creature cannot suddenly shift from damaged to undamaged either; we have a mechanism for that, and it's the physical act of placing tokens. That's why in other games, with more comprehensive rules, there's a discreet set of timing steps involved with applying damage, and a separate set of rules that deal with the creature's state or status. Hence why I originally said - in this very thread - that I would consider a creature with 0 power dead, but only because of state-based effects.

I don’t actually think I disagree with anything here.

It was basically a question of whether or not a creature that reached 0 power will be checked right away (state-based effect) or if it's a damage being put on it that will "trigger" that checking.

Just now, ornithologist said:

King of the Crag is the only card in the whole game that lowers power. This isn't a consistent ruling, its the defining ruling. They rule inconsistently, in the case of this is a common sense ruling, but Biomatix backup get ruled very weirdly to how it was intended.

Intended vs printed does not mean the ruling on BB was inconsistent. They ruled as printed which, in my experience, FFG is very consistent in doing.

Printing mistakes happen, intent vs actual interaction with the printed rules is sometimes overlooked.

The only dilemma FFG faces now is is they errata BB or not. Since they can print new decks, they could correct future printings of BB with wording that will allow the card to work as intended and clear up the issue.

Just now, Mushra93 said:

It's basically a question of whether or not a creature that reached 0 power will be checked right away (state-based effect) or if it's a damage being put on it that will "trigger" that checking.

That is the most summed up statement of this whole 6 pages as to the disconnect.

1 minute ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Intended vs printed does not mean the ruling on BB was inconsistent. They ruled as printed which, in my experience, FFG is very consistent in doing.

Printing mistakes happen, intent vs actual interaction with the printed rules is sometimes overlooked.

The only dilemma FFG faces now is is they errata BB or not. Since they can print new decks, they could correct future printings of BB with wording that will allow the card to work as intended and clear up the issue.

is it a problem when every time I look into buying a game from FFG I first go and download the errata/rulings of it to see how badly they wrote the rules interactions? And a large "collectable" card game like this tends to have more than normal. Still, Feyforge has done quite well in this regard for my personal standards for FFG.

3 minutes ago, ornithologist said:

That is the most summed up statement of this whole 6 pages as to the disconnect.

Yes, and there was never anything in the rules to indicate that, because state-based effects don't exist here in writing. Now we have an unofficial RAI ruling that will tide us over until the FAQ, assuming they don't change their minds in the interim.

2 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Yes, and there was never anything in the rules to indicate that, because state-based effects don't exist here in writing. Now we have an unofficial RAI ruling that will tide us over until the FAQ, assuming they don't change their minds in the interim.

The rules for damage in the rulebook (pg 9, quoted above) are written like a state-based effect.

7 minutes ago, dbmeboy said:

The rules for damage in the rulebook (pg 9, quoted above) are written like a state-based effect.

I disagree. The language for a state-based effect would have been something approximating "if at any time a creature's power is reduced to 0 or less it is immediately destroyed." Damage is completely immaterial in this scenario. The only thing the rule book actually manages is 1) tracking damage and 2) the destroyed effect.

For what it's worth, I got a corroborating answer from Brad just now.

"This means that when a creature has 0 power, if it has 0 damage on it, it is destroyed. However, keep in mind that this does not mean that “0 damage” qualifies as an amount of damage for other cards that care about creatures being damaged (Like Save the Pack). "

I still feel like it's more than a little awkward to say "0 is an amount of damage" but "0 doesn't make a creature damaged." The means doesn't justify the end, but it's slightly more palatable if I squint my eyes and try to pretend like we have 2 or more separate rulings here.

10 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

I disagree. The language for a state-based effect would have been something approximating "if at any time a creature's power is reduced to 0 or less it is immediately destroyed." Damage is completely immaterial in this scenario. The only thing the rule book actually manages is 1) tracking damage and 2) the destroyed effect.

To me, it looks like a state-based effect comparing amount of damage to power. But again, academic debate now that there's a response.

57 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

A creature must be damaged before it can be destroyed, as I continue to illustrate with Save the Pack.

Really?

Seems odd to have these cards in the set then.

An actual state-based effect would have been comparing the amount of power to a pre-determined threshold for livelihood at any given time. There's no actual step for it like there's implied to be with tracking or distributing damage.

I'm always happy to have friendly, academic debates. Thank you for keeping it civil, even if we don't see eye-to-eye.

1 minute ago, 10Ten said:

*snip*

The Golden Rule covers that.

1 minute ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

There's no actual step for it like there's implied to be with tracking or distributing damage.

See, this is where we disagree. I don't see the damage rules implying any sort of timing. They just say:

DAMAGE

Damage a creature has taken is tracked by placing damage tokens on the creature. If a creature has an amount of damage on it equal to or greater than its power, the creature is destroyed.

Nothing in that seems to indicate a timing point for checking for destruction to me. It tells you how damage is tracked and in what state (damage>=power) a creature is destroyed.

3 minutes ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

The Golden Rule covers that.

Page 10 Rulebook

DESTROYED
When a card is destroyed, it is placed in its owner’s discard pile.

If a card has a “Destroyed:” ability, the effect resolves automatically when the card is destroyed, immediately before it leaves play.

Don't see nutin about 'A creature must be damaged before it can be destroyed'

1 minute ago, 10Ten said:

Page 10 Rulebook

DESTROYED
When a card is destroyed, it is placed in its owner’s discard pile.

If a card has a “Destroyed:” ability, the effect resolves automatically when the card is destroyed, immediately before it leaves play.

Don't see nutin about 'A creature must be damaged before it can be destroyed'

I'm not going to alter my verbiage because you feel the need to take my posts out of context. Sorry.

The point speaks for itself.