{"id":3342,"date":"2013-05-30T07:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=3342"},"modified":"2015-02-05T15:55:09","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T23:55:09","slug":"lethal-damage-in-magic-isnt-always-what-it-means-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2013\/05\/lethal-damage-in-magic-isnt-always-what-it-means-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLethal Damage\u201d in Magic isn&#8217;t always what it means in English."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Lethal Damage&#8221; is a term you often hear in combat. It&#8217;s a term you might hear if the attacking creature has trample or when multiple creatures are blocking the same attacking creature. So in Magic term, what does &#8220;lethal damage&#8221; actually mean?<\/p>\n<p>Lethal damage is the amount of damage it would take to destroy the creature. Usually, this just means looking at the creature&#8217;s toughness, but you also take damage that&#8217;s already been dealt and currently marked on the creature into account. For instance, if you <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Shock&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Shock<\/a> a 4\/4, then it&#8217;s a 4\/4 with two damage marked on it, so two more damage would be lethal for it.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s it. You don&#8217;t take anything else into account. Things like protection, indestructibility, and damage prevention effects don&#8217;t matter when it comes to assigning lethal damage, you just look at the creature&#8217;s current toughness and damage that&#8217;s currently marked on the creature.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if I attack with a 5\/5 green trampler and you block with a 2\/2 creature with protection from green, my trampler can assign two damage to the 2\/2 (since two damage would be lethal damage), and I can assign three damage to the defending player. The damage that I assigned to the 2\/2 will be prevented, but that doesn&#8217;t matter. What matters is that the creature was assigned what would be lethal damage, so I&#8217;m allowed to start assigning damage to the defending player.<\/p>\n<p>You get the same situation if the 2\/2 had a damage prevention shield around it instead. You only need to assign two damage to the 2\/2, and you can assign the remaining three damage to the defending player. You can choose to assign more to the defending creature if you want, but it&#8217;s not required.<\/p>\n<p>So remember, when dealing with lethal damage, just look at the creature&#8217;s toughness and the damage that&#8217;s been dealt to it this turn. You don&#8217;t need to take other effects into account that might increase or decrease the damage that would be dealt to the other creature into account.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Lethal Damage&#8221; is a term you often hear in combat. It&#8217;s a term you might hear if the attacking creature has trample or when multiple creatures are blocking the same attacking creature. So in Magic term, what does &#8220;lethal damage&#8221; actually mean? Lethal damage is the amount of damage it would take to destroy the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-3342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-combatphase","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3343,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}