Let's say I have a Guardian of Peace (2 damage capacity, protect character, shielding) that currently has no damage and has a shield token. How much damage can it redirect to itself with Protect? 2, or 3? Here's the full rules for Protect:

Protect [trait]
A card with the “Protect” keyword may take damage
instead of any friendly card in play with the specified trait.
In other words, if a friendly card in play with the trait
specified by a “Protect” effect would take damage, the
controller may instead place any amount of that damage
on the card with the “Protect” keyword. (Damage
beyond a protecting unit’s remaining damage capacity
may not be re-assigned to the protecting unit.)

My question comes from the last part. A shield token does not increase the unit's remaining damage capacity, so does not seem like it would allow the unit to place an extra damage token. The way out of that would be if damage was dealt one at a time and not all at once. But in the case of a single unit dealing 3+ damage (Rancor or Defense Fleet, for instance), it looks like RAW would only allow the Guardian to redirect 2 of them to itself no matter how many shield tokens were present. Thoughts?

dbmeboy said:

Hmm. From the wording I would agree, that is can assign up to 2 dmg in any instance of dmg being dealt, but can assign multiples of 2, hence the shielding would allow it to live for another engagement.

I agree with your RAW - Wording pretty clearly makes it only a max of 2

Agree with Max of 2. It's also worth pointing at that in the RAW, shield tokens can't be used to soak damage placed on your cards from the use of protect, since protect is your effect and not your opponents. So suffering that max of 2 kills the protecting character even if it has an unused shield token remaining on it.

To my way of thinking, it's the protect ability that is actually inflicting the damage. If it forced the opponent to change the target of its strike or something like that, I would agree, but the RAW clearly state that the controller of the card with protect places the damage as a result of the protect ability.

I can certainly see other interpretations, though. Another one for the FAQ, I guess.

shielding does work with protect. thats my take

shields rules

a player may discard a cards shield token to prevent one damage or focus token that would be placed on the shielded card by an attack or enemy effect ( i.e it can not prevent damage and focus tokens placed by its controllers costs and effects)

protect rules

Protect [trait]
A card with the “Protect” keyword may take damage
instead of any friendly card in play with the specified trait.
In other words, if a friendly card in play with the trait
specified by a “Protect” effect would take damage, the
controller may instead place any amount of that damage
on the card with the “Protect” keyword. (Damage
beyond a protecting unit’s remaining damage capacity
may not be re-assigned to the protecting unit.)

if you set up a situation.

the damage is from an enemy attack say 4 damage, and you have a shielded guardian not involved in the challenge.

3 damage can be assigned to the guardian and the remaining go's to the unit in the battle or another protect character.

1. the damage originates from a enemy attack/effect.

2. the guardian protect keyword re-assigned it to its self and doesnt change where it originated from (not a friendly cost or a effect that creates the damage)

3. the shield rules PREVENTS 1 damage, and then 2 get assigned. the last cant be because it is beyond the guardians damage capacity.

the only reason they added the beyond the damage capacity. is so you can just go ill put 20 damage on this character so you take 2 and ignore 18 (over exaggerated of course)

Talism said:

Your post convinces me even more that it doesn't, because it made me take another look at the rules. Both the rules text for Protect and the rules text for using shield tokens use the phrase "place damage."

Protect says the card's controller may "… place any amount of that damage on the card with the "Protect" keyword…"

And "Using Shields" says you can discard a shield token to prevent "one damage or one focus token that would be placed on the shielded card"

It's very clear to me that if a card is taking damage from my protect effect, I can't use shields to prevent that damage, as far as the RAW are concerned.

you place 3 damage on a shield guardian

you discard the shield to cancel one damage

and place the other 2, its not that hard, your not exceeding its damage capacity

Talism said:

Nowhere in the Shielding rules does it say that a Shield Token ups the units damage capacity. It prevents a damage, it does not augment capacity.

You can't just assume rules that are not actually in the rules. Not that this precludes a Shield Token from preventing a damge due to Protect, that is another issue. You simply could not assign 3 damage to a 2 health unit with a Shield, even if Protect and Shielding work together, as you can not assign more damgage then the damage capacity. Which again a Shield Token does not adjust.

Talism said:

I agree with our argumentation up to this point, saysing that the damage still comes from the enemy attack and is just re-assigned to the protecting unit, so the source of that damage is not changed. But i cant agree to your next step:

Talism said:

The wording for Protect says clearly that you can just re-assign damage up to the remaining damage capacity. Though, i would agree that the intention of that ruling may differ, in a way that you should be able to re-assign an amount of damage necessary to destroy the protecting unit. In this case, the shielded protecting unit could take more than its 2 points of damage capacity. But this is just speculation and i wouldnt play it this way before it is adressed in a FAQ.

Talism said:

The shield does not change the damage capacity of the unit. And protect says:

protect [trait]
A card with the “Protect” keyword may take damage
instead of any friendly card in play with the specified trait.
In other words, if a friendly card in play with the trait
specified by a “Protect” effect would take damage, the
controller may instead place any amount of that damage
on the card with the “Protect” keyword. ( Damage
beyond a protecting unit’s remaining damage capacity
may not be re-assigned to the protecting unit. )
For example, the card “Guardian of Peace” has the
keyword “Protect Character.” If a friendly Character
would be damaged, the player who controls these
two cards may instead choose to place the damage
on the “Guardian of Peace.”

When you guys keep quoting and going back and forth about the "remaining damage capacity," you are leaving out the simple process of the damage.

Even though they are technically applied at the same time to the original target of the damage, when you reassign "any number of the damage," you are technically placing them one at a time, checking that you haven't reached the unit's "remaining" damage capacity after each damage.

When you place the first damage on a shielded guardian, the shield prevents the damage ever taking place… you check the damage capacity vs the number of damage on the unit (2 capacity vs 0 damage = 2 remaining damage capacity). Then you place 2 more, and the unit is destroyed.

dbmeboy said:

We have been playing that shields DO work with protect, but I am willing to change my mind, so I am really trying to understand.

Why shouldn't the three different icons on the Rancor be applied one at the time?

Best

Geki

geki said:

Why do you think they are applied one at a time?

Here's the relevant info from the rules, pg 21:

"Unit Damage: The striking player chooses one participating enemy unit and deals an amount of damage to that unit equal to the [unit damage] strength of the striking unit."

and:

"Damage
When a card receives damage, place a number of damage tokens on it, with total value equal to the amount of damage received."

So when you resolve the Rancor's Unit Damage icons, you'll do damage equal to its Unit Damage Strength (3 or 4, depending on whether you won the edge battle… Let's say 3 for this example) to a participating enemy unit. To deal 3 damage to the enemy unit, you place 3 damage tokens on it. There's no reason to believe that the damage is anything but all-at-once from the rules.

And now a couple of specific reasons to believe that it is not one damage at a time:

1. The limit on Protect to not redirecting more damage than the remaining damage capacity. If damage is dealt one at a time, this limit is meaningless as the protecting unit would be destroyed before it could redirect more damage to itself

2. This paragraph from the rules: "When a card has a number of damage tokens with value equal to or greater than its damage capacity, it is immediately destroyed. Damage in excess of its damage capacity is ignored." Once again, if damage was being dealt one-at-a-time, the card would be destroyed before it could ever have damage in excess of its capacity (excepting Mandalorian armor or Defense Upgrades being present and then destroyed… which is why my first point is a bit better of a reason).

dbmeboy said:

All of this makes absolutely a great deal of sense. Do you think this is what was meant to be? The guardian of Peace, in particular, seems to be built in order to gain a shield and use that to protect.

best

Geki

geki said:

I'm actually pretty suspicious that this is not how it was supposed to be, which is why I started the thread… hoping that I missed something. Doesn't look like it though. I'm hoping that the FAQ will change the Protect wording slightly so that Protect and Shielding work together in a more intuitive way (especially with Guardian of Peace and the Defense Fleet making it look like they should work together). Still, my speculation on what the designers meant to work can't trump how the rules actually work :-(

dbmeboy said:

Of course, until the FAQ, RAW trump interpretation.

Thank you and best

Geki

geki said:

Firstly, I would keep playing the shield with protect the way you are now. There's really not a definitive answer at this point based on the only evidence we have before us, the rules and the card text. I'm not convinced that the text in the rulebook changes the source of the damage. The terminology is vague at best, with the initial explanation " may take damage instead of any friendly card in play with the specified trait" seeming pretty straightforward, but then getting murky with the explanation of exactly how the damage would be dispersed. I personally think the rules team will decide that damage from protect is just redirected damage, and the source is still considered the original source. But that's just my estimation of "designers' intent," so it's hardly a valid point for sustaining an argument. By the same token, I disagree that the RAW supports the opposite determination.

Regarding resolution of damage/icons and damage capacity of shielded units, dbmeboy and others have covered those adequately.

So let me see if I'm getting this straight. If we say dbmeboy's interpretation is correct, and 3 damage from (whatever) were to be dealt, that we would "assign" only 2 to Guardian (because of reasons discussed above) and 1 to the protected character. Then damage would be dealt all at once - the shield would absorb 1 of the 2 assigned to the Guardian, resulting ultimately in 1 damage token to Guardian and 1 to the protected character. Does that sound right?

ziggy2000 said:

This is my understanding as well, though it could be argued that using Protect changes the source of the damage, so the shield would not absorb any damage reassigned with Protect. However, I believe that regardless of Protect, the source of the damage is still from the card that inflicted damage instead.

Concur, at least preliminarily, that the damage is applied at once. The rules do not specify that the damage is dealt one point at a time, but rather uses the words "with a total value equal to the amount of damage received". It does not seem to me that the total value is one, then one more, and so on until the "actual total" is reached.

dbmeboy said:

This is the best way I have read it described. I think that it matches both intent and documentation.