Can "Death Link" heal more life that target has?

[sean]

"Each Upkeep Phase, the controller of Death Link may heal up to 2 damage from his Mage and place it on this creature as direct damage, regardless of distance or LoS.

Say I have death link on a creature that only has 1 hit point.  Can I heal 2 and overkill the creature?

[sean]

Ack! Thought I was in rules, not general.  Sorry for the off topic post.

[pixelgeek]

You can't heal damage you don't have so if you only have the single point of damage then you can only heal one and then inflict a point of damage.

[Shad0w]

It is in the rules section now and pixel is correct.

In order to deal 2 to a creature the DL is on you would first need to have 2 damage one yourself. That being said if your Warlock had 2 + damage on it and the DLd creature only had 1 health you would first heal your damage then the enchanted creature would take 2 then you would have the option of using curseweaving to take back the DL.



I hope that helps.

[sean]

...if your Warlock had 2 + damage on it and the DLd creature only had 1 health you would first heal your damage then the enchanted creature would take 2...

That is the part I was confused about.  I know you can't heal more than you have damage, but would you get to heal 2 of your damage, even if the target (not you, the target of the spell) only had one life left?  Or in this case would you only heal 1 damage?

[pixelgeek]

You could only heal the one point.

[sean]

You could only heal the one point.

That makes thematic sense, but if that's the case it definitely needs an errata because the literal text says differently.  Taken literally, you do two separate things
(1) heal up to 2 damage
(2) place the amount of damage you heal on target creature
Healing is limited by your total life
Damage is not limited by the targets health, for example a creature can deal more damage than a target has life.  While the Vampiric trait explicitly states not to count damage exceeding the target's life total, Death Link makes no such distinction.
I could see it argued both ways because in this case the Thematic and Literal interpretations differ.

[pixelgeek]

The card says

... the controller of Death Link may heal up to two Damage from his Mage and place it on this creature as Direct Damage...

This is a single clause and the two sections of it are not exclusive of each other. The wording specifically refers to the damage that was healed being placed as Direct Damage. If there is only one point of damage to heal then there is only one point of damage to place.

[Arcanus]

Good point Pixelgeek.

Sean, First you heal the damage, and the amount you heal is not dependent on the Death Link creature's status. How much you can heal is limited by the amount of damage on yourself (not by your Life). If you only have 1 damage, you can only heal 1 damage.

After you heal this damage, place it on the DL creature. If you place more damage than they can take before being destroyed, the extra is "wasted". But this has no effect on how much you have just healed.

Hope that helps.

[sean]

So the literal interpretation, not the thematic interpretation.
Sounds like in my example, I would heal 2 points as long as I had at least 2 damage, even if the target has only one life.
I say not thematic because if the target has only one life, I shouldn't be able to get 2 life from it.

[theduke850]

I still think it is thematic, just in the opposite direction than you are thinking about it.  not that the mage is taking life from the linked creature, but that the mage is transferring his damage to the creature.  thinking about it this way allows for both a literal and a thematic interpretation and is how I suspect the designers were approaching this card.

[Arcanus]

That is exactly right!  We intended it to be a way of transferring damage, not stealing Life.

Anything that has a "stealing life" theme we give the Vampiric subtype. We did not give Vampiric to Death Link because it is not working in that manner.

The coming Necromancer will have a healthy bonus for all of these Life stealing effects!