RulingHall of Heroes (rules 1.5)2024-03-15

149 – Hope you all had a great holiday! We had an interesting discussion about Tough today, and came up…

Question

149 – Hope you all had a great holiday! We had an interesting discussion about Tough today, and came up against an odd interaction of Tough with the Valid Target rules. Given rulings about choices and costs it has seemed like having a Tough status makes it impossible for a character to “take damage”, which seems like it would make them an invalid target for abilities which have taking damage as the effect. However, several forced responses have “take damage” as the only effect (such as Weakened from Kang), and since Forced abilities require a valid target, that would seem to make Tough essentially turn off such abilities. So, is a Tough character somehow a valid target for taking damage? If so, does this change anything about choice abilities such as Hydra Bomber when a hero is Tough?

Answer

Thank you for your question. We don’t believe that a character having a tough status card should prevent them from being a valid target for “take damage” effects.

When the Forced Response on Weakened instructs a tough hero to “take 1 damage,” the hero is still a valid target for that damage, and when the damage would be placed on the hero, the tough prevents the damage from being placed and is instead discarded.

With the When Revealed ability on Hydra Bomber, the player could choose to “take 2 damage” while tough, as their hero is a valid target for damage, and when the damage would be placed they’d remove tough instead.

The most important thing to note with this update is that our ruling regarding taking damage as part of a cost is still intact, that if damage must be taken as part of a cost but a tough status card prevents the damage from being taken, the cost isn’t paid and the ability can’t be initiated (e.g. Focused Rage).

— Alex