Marvel Champions Codex

ErrataHall of Heroes (rules 1.6)2025-01-24

I wanted to follow up on this again, as it came up with Starhawk, his interrupt ability is: When Starhawk…

⚠ This errata is from an older rules version (Hall of Heroes (rules 1.6)) and might be outdated. Errata from older versions are generally folded into the current Rules Reference 1.7.

Question

I wanted to follow up on this again, as it came up with Starhawk, his interrupt ability is: When Starhawk takes damage exactly equal to his remaining hit points, return him to your hand. It seems to me that if a character can only take damage up to their remaining hit points, he would always return to hand. Similarly for SP//dr: Add SP//dr to your hand if she was defeated by taking excess consequential damage. would seem impossible. It seems like that at least some cards are designed around taking more damage than their remaining hit points, so do these cards need errata? Or is there a desire to distinguish between a character taking damage and that damage being tracked/counted. (Also, if characters cannot take damage beyond their hit points, it would seem that Iron Man’s War Machine ally could not use his ability when he has 1 HP remaining…which I believe was clarified to be possible very early on.) Anyways, those are the cases that I’ve come across that seem to go against the ruling, so I hope it will help in getting a better final rule.

Erratum

Thank you for following up. The previous ruling resulted from a misunderstanding among the team, and we apologize for the resulting confusion.

The revised ruling is, cards can take damage beyond their remaining hit points; as you pointed out, the abilities on Starhawk and SP//dr are clearly intended to reward player planning in regards to taking damage. Part of the confusion had come from rules surrounding taking damage in regards to paying costs, damage prevention, and indirect damage assignment, none of which are relevant to the Horsemen or aforementioned allies.

So yes, a Horseman villain that is dealt damage beyond its remaining hit points is considered to take that damage; however, their hit points cannot be reduced below 0. You are allowed to target them with attacks and abilities even when they have 0 hit points, and they do take that damage, but their hit point dials default to 0 and never go negative. This makes it so their treacheries can work as intended and heal them when revealed.

— Alex