So Caleb ruled, in an interesting case, that the loyal hound can essentially take 4 archery damage, broken down as:
2 assigned to the hound,
2 assigned to the hero
And then trigger the loyal hound's ability to cancel the damage assigned to the hero. The two assigned to the hound... fizzles?
Anyway, I was wondering if this sort of effect works for other allies that have discard effects. Beorning Beekeeper comes to mind. Could he play the game as a damage soaker, and then when the time comes for him to chump, you could defend, assign damage and trigger his ability BEFORE damage is placed? Or does this become undefended attack? Or rather, is there not an action window between assigning damage and placing damage (loyal hound sneaks in because it's a response)?
Let me know what you guys think. Here is the verbage caleb used:
" You cannot over-assign archery damage. You can only ever assign archery damage to a character equal to its remaining hit points. In the case of the Loyal Hound, you assign the archery damage before resolving it. Once it is assigned, you can use the Hound’s Response to discard it and cancel 2 damage that would be dealt to your hero. So if you assign 2 to the Hound and 2 to your hero, the Loyal Hound can essentially absorb 4 archery damage."