Times are tough for your Olivia Voldaren. She came down right on schedule on Turn 4, but your opponent immediately stabbed her with Stab Wound, reducing her to a mere 1/1. Fortunately, your opponent has a juicy 1/1 Human token, ripe for the plucking (and the vamping)!

You untap and immediately direct your vampire queen towards a tasty snack with her first ability, only to be met with…Divine Deflection for X=1, targeting your Olivia! What happens now?

Fortunately for Olivia, and unfortunately for 1/1 Human tokens everywhere, your bloodsucker will live in this situation. Even though there’s a brief moment where Olivia has lethal damage marked on her, that moment occurs during the resolution of her own ability. State-based actions, like the one that destroys creatures with lethal damage marked on them, are never performed while a spell or ability is resolving.

Here’s what happens in more detail: First, Olivia tries to deal one damage to the Human token, which is prevented by Divine Deflection and then dealt to Olivia. This results in her being a 1/1 creature with 1 damage marked on her — lethal damage! But the game doesn’t check whether creatures should die due to lethal damage while a spell or ability is resolving, so there’s still a chance for Olivia to survive.

Second, Olivia’s target becomes a Human Vampire. OK, gross, but not very relevant to this question.

Finally, Olivia gets a +1/+1 counter. Even though the damage was prevented, Olivia still gets her counter, because nothing in the ability indicates that the counter depends on the damage. As a result, Olivia becomes a 2/2 with 1 damage marked — decidedly not lethal.

Now that the ability is done resolving, the game removes the ability from the stack and performs a check for state-based actions, which shrug their metaphorical shoulders at Olivia, who’s now a relatively healthy 2/2 with 1 damage marked. Olivia survives to snack on another tasty treat.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Paul Baranay