Sylvan Smite not adding counter
Sylvan Smite has two sections separated by a period. Effectively:
Add a counter to target creature you control. THEN do damage to target creature.
Why is the spell fizzling when the second target becomes hexproof? The primary target is my own creature.
It's buffing my creature, and then doing damage with that creature.
If it were "add a counter to target creature and do damage equal to its power to another target creature" then it would make sense to fizzle, but the card text breaks it into two distinct sections.
routergnome#42116
shared this idea
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routergnome#42116
commented
But apparently hexproof doesn't stop a crime from being committed. Whether you return a spell to a player's hand or make the target of a crime hexproof so the spell never casts, the crime is committed. Derp.
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routergnome#42116
commented
Apparently the target not existing and the target being hexproof is completely different. When it's hexproof it seems to make the spell fizzle, but if the target doesn't exist it still counts as a crime, go figure.
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routergnome#42116
commented
When I posted I thought I was the starting player, but if what you say is how it should behave, then perhaps I was mistaken and it simply didn't do anything because I wasn't.
However, I just had a similar issue the opposite way. The opponent cast Intruder's Inquisition on my King Darien XVIII and I sacrificed the target to make it invalid. The opponent had a Vadmir, New Blood which adds a counter when they commit a crime. The spell didn't do anything because my target no longer existed, making it an illegal spell, so why was a "crime" committed? Isn't that the same thing as making a target hexproof--the target becomes invalid so, in the case of Intruder's Inquisition, which only has one function, it should simply fizzle? Or is fizzling not a thing? I don't get it. Is it just that when a spell is cast, regardless of whether it does anything, that is the "crime"? I would think the "crime" would be thwarted by the fact that it doesn't do anything.
I guess I've just been having a lot of these kinds of issues where I can't seem to make sense of what triggers what or what doesn't.
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Rezzahan#77802
commented
A spell can't affect an illegal target. So it can't make your creature deal damage to the now illegal target. The spell's actual phrasing and your changed bit are functionally identical, except for what is dealing the damage. And that is why they are handled in the same way. Your spell didn't fizzle, it did as much as it could when resolving (putting the +1/+1 counter on your creature if you weren't the starting player). If it had fizzled, that part would not have happened either.
608.2b [...]Illegal targets, if any, won’t be affected by parts of a resolving spell’s effect
for which they’re illegal.[...]