Life Drain (found in WotR and the Witch CD, perhaps among others), says the following (this is the Witch CD wording): "For your combat check, discard this card to use your Arcane or Divine skill + 2d4. Shuffle a random card from your discard pile into your deck."
Should this not be worded "For your combat check, reveal this card to use your Arcane or Divine skill + 2d4. Shuffle a random card from your discard pile into your deck, then discard this card." ?
Right now you would assume it could heal itself, which is not the case (due to the "set aside" rule, the card is set aside until you attempt the recharge check so it is not present in your discard when you need to heal a card). However, this is not obvious and is inconsistent with the wording of other healing spells.
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Yes, since there's a possibility of recharging it instead of discarding, I believe you're correct and the wording SHOULD preclude it being healed back by its own power. This is in contrast to the Potion of Healing, which definitely CAN be healed back by its own healing power.
You discard the spell after you have dryed to recharge it. And the healing happens before that. So no need to reword because the card is not in the discard pile when the healing happens.
You discard the spell after you have dryed to recharge it. And the healing happens before that. So no need to reword because the card is not in the discard pile when the healing happens.
Unless you choose not to attempt the recharge check. The card is only set aside while it is still unknown where it will end up. If you have the Arcane or Divine skill and choose to not attempt the recharge check, you discard it right away and THEN heal.
If you DO attempt the recharge check, then you heal before you attempt that check, so it cannot heal itself in that instance.
You discard the spell after you have dryed to recharge it. And the healing happens before that. So no need to reword because the card is not in the discard pile when the healing happens.Unless you choose not to attempt the recharge check. The card is only set aside while it is still unknown where it will end up. If you have the Arcane or Divine skill and choose to not attempt the recharge check, you discard it right away and THEN heal.
If you DO attempt the recharge check, then you heal before you attempt that check, so it cannot heal itself in that instance.
My understanding is that you don't even decide whether to attempt to recharge the card until after the heal effect, so it should never be able to heal itself.
In general you may wish to make the decision later. Hard to find a really compelling example, but for instance imagine I'm playing Lem, and playing the last combat spell in my hand on the last monster at a location (maybe the henchmen are barriers in this scenario). If I fail the combat check, I might want to discard the spell so I can swap it back into my hand, whereas if I pass I'm happy to just recharge it away. I feel like I ought to be able to delay the decision in this case. I also feel you can't have it both ways and delay sometimes but "decide early" other times as you see fit.
The whole situation reminded me of S&S Damiel + Healing Potion, which I searched for and only found this thread, which is also yours and never got an official response. The whole issue feels very unclear and unresolved to me.
A PbP table I'm on has noted an irregularity here. The FAQ means that Life Drain now heals you after the recharge check (in order to avoid the undesirable side-effect of the spell being functionally different depending on whether you 'set it aside' with the intent to recharge or just discard it straight-up). Later printings of Life Drain, such as in Hell's Vengeance 2 and Ultimate Magic, have also clarified this in text, with the 'shuffle a card' being put into the recharge paragraph of text.
However, Life Leech, despite providing an identical situation, has not been FAQed or changed in text. In Hell's Vengeance 2, you can see both Life Leech and Life Drain side by side with a seemingly unnecessary mechanical difference between them.
As an aside, my table also expressed the opinion that it seems counter-intuitive that Life Drain shuffles your deck (and potentially heals itself) after the recharge check, which also means that the spell explicitly works badly with Crowe (the Bloodrager that can put the bottom card of his deck on top, in order to best utilise spells) and Zarlova (the Cleric that can put Attack cards on top of her deck when recharging them), whilst Life Leech works fine with both.
A more elegant solution seems to be the same solution that's used for almost every other healing effect; displaying it until the heal is finished.
"For your combat check, display this card to use your Arcane or Divine skill + 2d4. Shuffle a random card from your discard pile into your deck.
After the encounter, if you do not have the Arcane... (etc)."
Whether it's changed to that or not is an aside; right now it's simply inconsistent with Life Leech, even in the same class deck, which I think may be a concern.
The FAQ upgrades Life Drain, which I like; I don't see it as a problem that now Life Drain doesn't function well with certain characters that break the normal rules (and neither Life Drain nor Life Leech are in the Cleric Deck, for one thing.)
I haven't looked at Life Leech, but off the top of my head it seems it should work like Life Drain.
The FAQ upgrades Life Drain, which I like; I don't see it as a problem that now Life Drain doesn't function well with certain characters that break the normal rules (and neither Life Drain nor Life Leech are in the Cleric Deck, for one thing.)
I haven't looked at Life Leech, but off the top of my head it seems it should work like Life Drain.
To clarify, I'd be fine if Life Leech was changed the same way. I still find it inelegant; particularly since Life Drain was introduced in the same base set as the Bloodrager Crowe, where it all but cancels out one of his powers. It's also in Ultimate Magic, hence the comparison to Zarlova (in Organised Play, I doubt a Zarlova player would ever use a different Ultimate deck, so I'd consider it almost equivalent to being in the Cleric Class deck).
But currently, in the printed version of Life Drain in HV2 and Ultimate Magic, it has the "Shuffle a card from your discard pile into your deck" at the end of the recharge information. Life Leech in HV2, however, is formatted clearly differently, and has not changed since its original printing in the Wizard Class Deck, nor has it been FAQed. Rules as written, it acts in a different way, and this is even reflected in the templates used in the very same class deck.
It's also in Ultimate Magic, hence the comparison to Zarlova (in Organised Play, I doubt a Zarlova player would ever use a different Ultimate deck, so I'd consider it almost equivalent to being in the Cleric Class deck).
For diehard PACG players, I see what you're saying; but since part of the point of OP is to make the entrance to PACG just require an investment of $20 (maybe $15 on discount), not every Zarlova player is going to up that to $30.
(DING DING DING:
Looking up that price I see that rollforcrit is closing its online store this month and so is selling existing inventory at half-price -- worth a look.)
I would be inclined to play Life Leech the same as Life Drain. It depends whether the wording change in the FAQ and newer versions was a change in functionality or a clarification of existing functionality. Personally I think reality is somewhere in between - it was a change in wording to avoid having to sort out how the card should have worked with the original wording in the first place.
Even if it was a change in functionality, I strongly suspect the same change in functionality would be on the way for Life Leech as soon as anyone with the power to do so takes notice of it.
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(DING DING DING:
Looking up that price I see that rollforcrit is closing its online store this month and so is selling existing inventory at half-price -- worth a look.)
Thanks for the heads up. Just grabbed another couple of class decks :-)