The layer system
General forum
Posted on Nov. 2, 2017, 2:27 p.m. by chosenone124
The rules of MTG have changed in the past to fix massive unwieldy rules systems.
For example, the "damage on the stack" and the "interrupts, mana sources, and instants" rules have been massively changed to not be a rat maze to navigate. While these changes have taken away some control from the players (no more weird pump shenanigans) they have ultimately proven positive for the game.
I personally feel the layer system is the most unwieldy part of magic rules now. The way the layers interact, and the way sublayers interact, is extremely convoluted and could certainly be expressed in a maze fashion (entrance: a CDA, 7 paths representing layers, each path leading to a timestamp box, then each timestamp leading to a fused path of overriding effects).
How would you rework the layer system to be more intuitive?
chosenone124 says... #3
Rhadamanthus My main issue is with ability removal effects that still affect the board even after the ability source is removed (the classic Humility multiple Opalescence conundrum). Blood Moon also says hello.
The second worst part is dependency type effects, which can cause the entire layer system to literally flip backwards (since you apply in reverse order)
Control effects interact strangely within the layer as layers shift in and out of existence.
The problem is especially bad in formats like commander where people start dropping and removing random artifacts/enchantments that affect characteristics in strange ways.
November 2, 2017 3:33 p.m. Edited.
Rhadamanthus says... #4
I agree that having ability granting/removing effects near the end of the list of layers makes for some odd situations. Moving it closer to the front of the list will stop a lot of that from happening. I haven't gone through and thought about any unintended consequences it might cause with respect to other rules or the design of certain mechanics.
Dependencies don't cause anything to apply in reverse order (except I guess for the timestamps they ignore) and they don't cross over between layers. I think you're really talking about situations where an effect applies in multiple layers but the ability gets removed by an effect applied somewhere in the middle, which is really just another layer-ordering problem. For dependencies specifically: I think getting rid of the concept of dependency would cause a lot of memory issues. It would also cause certain cards to stop interacting with each other in a consistent way if the game only went by timestamp.
I'm not following what you say about control effects causing problems. Something like that has to be near the front of the list of whatever you're evaluating, otherwise you'll get situations where an effect that says it only applies to things "you control" will somehow still be applying to an object that someone else has stolen control of.
Rhadamanthus says... #2
The Rules Q&A section is intended to be for specific questions with definitive answers. I think this would be better off as a forum topic.
The layers are arranged in a very particular order, so I don't feel like there's all that much of a "maze" aspect to it. I agree that the current system is complicated and the details aren't as widely understood as other parts of the rules but I don't know if it's necessarily overly complicated for what it needs to do. What are some of the unintuitive results you'd like to avoid with an improved system?
November 2, 2017 3:05 p.m. Edited.