@AphidOfDeath wrote:
Let me offer up these foods for thoughts...
Wow, there's a lot to reply to here, I hope I can keep this simple.
Explaining the Jester is easy. His ability is “When hurt: Do 2 damage to the Plant Hero.” Hurting comes before death, so that’s why he activates even when you do 5+ damage to him at the onset or retaliates twice when Pair of Pears kills him though he initially sat at 1 health. Destroy him instead though, and no retaliation. Imp-Throwing Gargantuar works in a similar fashion.
Perfect! That's exactly how it works, and I'll get back to that.
To address the Punish-Room situation, we must first witness Zombot Drone Engineer (aka Zed) whose ability is “Whenever a Science Zombie does damage, that Zombie gets +1(strength).” Let’s imagine that Ice Pirate*, who belongs to the tribe Science Pirate Zombie, completes his attack and does damage, but also dies to death during the attack. Does Zed increase Ice Pirates’ strength since Ice Pirate met the prerequisites (i.e. science zombie does damage)? That answer is No as many who have seen the Science tribe in action can attest.
This is where you are wrong. The Drone Engineer actually does power up the other Science Zombies - even though they die. The animation used to show this, but they have since thankfully shortened most of the pointless animations. Long time players will remember before the worldwide release that animations showed everything happening. Turns took forever. But at least, we could see how everything worked.
The Punish-Room has the ability “When a Mushroom is destroyed, do 2 damage to a random Zombie or Zombie Hero.” I will now presume that Punish-Room uses the same code to trigger his ability as Zed does his. If it were used exactly the same, then when a Mushroom died Punish-Room’s ability would not activate (i.e. Zed’s ability did not activate when Ice Pirate died, therefore Punish-Room’s ability does not activate when arbitrary Mushroom dies). As such, I further propose that there is likely a parameter/passed variable that allows the ability to activate post-mortem. Since this ability is applicable to all those of the tribe Mushroom and Punish-Room is a card-carrying member of said tribe, he is able to activate his own ability, a physically destructive death rattle if you will.
Close. Punish-Shroom works just like everyone else;
<He takes damage >
<He is marked for death if enough damage occured (This happens so plants like Black-Eyed-Pea and Vimpire can't come back to life) >
<He does his ability >
<Then dies >
You can actually see this happening when a Weed Spray or Chickening is played. Every mushroom in front (to the left) of Punish -Shroom triggers the two damage. He then does 2 damage for his own death and then nothing for any mushrooms after him.
And so, circling back to the original topic, Sportacus does not pass the parameter “ok to use this ability at death” when killed via a trick, but instead uses his ability in the same way as Zed and the discussed-in-a-prior-post Black-Eyed Pea.
I think my explanation shows how Sportacus does not work like any other fighter/creature. Which is fine if that's what the developers want. It's just not consistent, and I think it should be noted in game somewhere (on Spartacus' card maybe?).
Hopefully there're only a few TL;DRs out there. 😃
*Yes, Ice Pirates are from space, and thus sciencey.
