A non-Humility-related Layers question

[mcfarland]

Vhati il-Dal and Night of Souls' Betrayal are in play, as well as a Giant Spider with two +1/+1 counters.

If Vhati targets the Spider, choosing to set it's toughness to 1, what happens exactly?

I know Vhati applies in 7(b), Night in 7(c) and the counters in 7(d), but I'm still unsure if the spider hits the graveyard before we get to 7(d).

Thanks in advance!

[Esper3k]

Vhati il-Dal and Night of Souls' Betrayal are in play, as well as a Giant Spider with two +1/+1 counters.

If Vhati targets the Spider, choosing to set it's toughness to 1, what happens exactly?

I know Vhati applies in 7(b), Night in 7(c) and the counters in 7(d), but I'm still unsure if the spider hits the graveyard before we get to 7(d).

Thanks in advance!

Power/Toughness setting effects (Vhati Il-Dal) are applied before power/toughness modifying effects are.

So, Giant Spider's toughness gets set to 1, then it gets a net +1/+1 applied to it from the two counters + Night.

State based effects are not checked between layers (they're checked when someone gets priority), so you don't have to worry about checking every time something like that is applied.

[Valtrix]

I think you're looking at this issue in a too complex manner. Intuitively our spider shouldn't die. Why? Well, even if we make the spider's toughness 1 and Night of the Soul's Betrayal makes its toughness zero, our +1/+1 counters should always be making our spider bigger. It'd be pretty stupid if our spider died in this situation if we had counters on it making it bigger.

Now, let's look at the rules a little bit deeper to explain this, and we don't really even need to look at layers.


704.3. Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 116, "Timing and Priority"), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions simultaneously as a single event.

704.5f If a creature has toughness 0 or less, it's put into its owner's graveyard. Regeneration can't replace this event. (This is one of the state-based effects)

Now, we use layers to tell us in which order to apply affects to calculate power/toughness; however, we still have to go through every layer in order to get the final power/toughness for the creature. Even if during one of the layers we find our creature has 0 or less toughness, a state-based effect won't be checked at that point in time, so we still need to make it through every layer to figure out the final power/toughness.

So, I lied just a little bit in the above. We should also be careful to check layers to make sure the toughness setting ability of Vhati-Il-Dhal doesn't override our counters (for whatever reason). Just to be thorough we have this:


613.3a Layer 7a: Effects from characteristic-defining abilities that define power and/or toughness are applied. See rule 604.3.

613.3b Layer 7b: Effects that set power and/or toughness to a specific number or value are applied.

613.3c Layer 7c: Effects that modify power and/or toughness (but don't set power and/or toughness to a specific number or value) are applied.

613.3d Layer 7d: Power and/or toughness changes from counters are applied. See rule 121, "Counters."

So the Vhati sets the toughness to 1 in Layer b, then Soul's Betrayal sets it to 0 in layer c, but then the counters set it to 2 in layer 7d.

[cdr]

You're not interested in layers, but rather when SBAs are checked:

704.3. (http://yawgatog.com/resources/magic-rules/#R7043) Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 116, “Timing and Priority”), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions simultaneously as a single event. If any state-based actions are performed as a result of a check, the check is repeated; otherwise all triggered abilities that are waiting to be put on the stack are put on the stack, then the check is repeated. Once no more state-based actions have been performed as the result of a check and no triggered abilities are waiting to be put on the stack, the appropriate player gets priority. This process also occurs during the cleanup step (see rule 514), except that if no state-based actions are performed as the result of the step’s first check and no triggered abilities are waiting to be put on the stack, then no player gets priority and the step ends.

SBAs are checked when someone would get priority (and in the cleanup step) and at no other time.

[mcfarland]

Awesome, fellas. Clears it up. Thanks.