MTGNexus

Activated and triggered abilities, when they go on the stack, are colorless objects, correct?

Right now, the wording to reference the "color" of an ability is fairly lengthy -- "Activated and triggered abilities of a blue permanent...."

I'd like to condense that wording to just "blue abilities." Would that make sense? I think it's pretty comprehensible that it means the source of the ability is blue, and not worry about mis-understandings (such as an ability of a non-blue permanent that requires blue mana to activate).

Are there weird corner cases I should worry about?

The issue with condensing it to just 'abilities' is that there are abilities that aren't activate or triggered, such as static abilities ('creatures you control get +1/+1') and characteristic-defining abilities ('this creature's power is the number of creatures you control'). That's why activated and triggered abilities are generally called out explicitly on cards like Disallow, since countering a static ability doesn't really make sense (you usually need to make a permanent lose all abilities to deal with those).

Also, activated and triggered abilities do have a color - namely, the same color as the source permanent / card. Hence why you can give a creature protection to stop a triggered ability. (edit: looks like I was incorrect with this point)

That said, I don't see an obvious problem with condensing 'activated and triggered abilities of a blue permanent' to 'blue activated and triggered abilities'.

Abilities are always colorless, since there's nothing that actually gives them a color — they have no mana cost, color indicator, etc, giving them color. Triggered and activated abilities exist independently of their source, and do not inherit any characteristics. That source, however, generally has the characteristics that something is looking for. Thus things that would interact with an ability and care about color will always reference its source to check for that color.

IE: Protection from a color's actually says "...can't be targeted by spells with the specified color, or by abilities from sources of that color".

Thus, it wouldn't work to say "blue abilities" because the ability itself isn't blue.

(Random deep dive sidenote: An ability actually can have a color if there was something that gave it to the ability, but it's never been done.)

I guess my thought process is that, while abilities are currently defined as being colorless, they're still linked back to their source and can be addressed by that source's color. So it makes sense just to describe the ability itself as having that color. (And that color being exactly the color of its source.)

The weirdness comes with color-changing effects. If my Prodigal Pyromancer Tims you, and then gets turned blue, is the ability on the stack a blue ability or a red ability? Current logic has it being "an ability from a blue permanent." I don't know if I'm complicating matters by allowing the ability to be a different color than it's source.

Also, I really thought when I originally posted this, I was posted in Custom Card Rulings, not Custom Card Sets. Mod move pls?

OneAndOnly wrote: ↑

3 years ago

The weirdness comes with color-changing effects. If my Prodigal Pyromancer Tims you, and then gets turned blue, is the ability on the stack a blue ability or a red ability? Current logic has it being "an ability from a blue permanent." I don't know if I'm complicating matters by allowing the ability to be a different color than it's source.

If you want to detach abilities from their sources, then tracking is probably the main obstacle. Spells on the stack have a card to tell us what they are, and it's very rare to change the characteristics of a spell. Abilities don't have anything on the stack to remind us what they are, and we much more frequently alter the characteristics of the source (granting/removing types and abilities, and changing power).

Changing color isn't very common nowadays though and is more relevant to e.g. oldschool or premodern where color hate is still a major part of the game.

That said, you could have the "counter target blue ability" text and the current behaviour by just maintaining backwards compatibility: abilities always have the characteristics of their source, even as the source's characteristics change.

@spacemonaut -- Yes! Thanks, I think that would work best.

EDIT: Though, as pointed out above, it would be "counter target blue activated or triggered ability."