| Ratticus |
I have to say I dislike the damage is part of the check ruling but that's what house rules are for.
It's unintuitive. This is evidenced by the number of people doing it the other way and even the rule book wording frequently treats the check as the role of the dice. "If you fail a check to defeat a monster it deals damage to you. Subtract the check result from the difficulty" Here the check is the number you get on the dice not the entire process. Check=dice result is just engrained and while there's nothing wrong mechanics wise with the new rule check needed a different label like "encounter" so check could be the dice rolled and encounter could be dice+result.
Since spells are being errated were talking rare cases.
Finally I don't see how the examples apply. Archer>guard because winning a check is better than avoiding the damage from losing the check. Sure but isn't that true (or false) whether or not you can play both cards? Same for the amulet of mighty fists vs bracers. The decision on which to take is the same under either rule because it is 100% based on weapons. Amulet>bracers if your don't use weapons bracers>amulet if you use weapons is true under either rule. Sure Sajan wouldn't want both amulet & bracers but that doesn't determine which item is better. Ring of Protection is strictly better than bracers of protection because under either rule because you could play ring+bracers but not bracers+bracers. The new rule increases the distance between ring and bracers but if I'm taking the ring vs. bracers it's because it's a reveal not a recharge and damage instead of combat damage. In all 3 cases the card quality comparison stays the same under either rule. The new rule doesn't change whether 1 card is better than another but rather makes certain cards nombo's (ccg term for the opposite of combo ie cards that work against each other) so you wouldn't want to include them both in your deck.
Confusing wording for something that rarely comes up and doesn't significantly impact individual card evaluation seems like giving up to much to gain too little.