Static, Triggered, and Activated abilities

Home Submit A Combo Deck Builder Forums Picture Guess Help

You are not logged in [click to login] - [Join For Free!]

Forum Overview >> General Chat

Title: Static, Triggered, and Activated abilities

Date Posted: Thu Mar/25/10 at 9:13pm

Skybreak22

Posts: 327
Joined: 01-Feb-10

I've noticed in many posts, some people have trouble discerning between certain abilities and how some abilities are classified, and thought this would be a good topic to address. This may be helpful to newcomers and for those who haven't played the game in a while.

In Magic the Gathering, you have static effects, triggered abilities, and activated abilities.

Static Effects - Effects which are always present. These effects or abilities are those such as Flying, Trample, Lifelink, Indestructible, Shadow....etc. which are almost always written on the cards. Also, effects such as "...can't be blocked by less than 3 creatures." and "...No more than one creature may attack or block each turn." would fall into this category.

Triggered Abilities - Abilities which require one or more conditions that must be met in order to "trigger" the desired effect. These abilities would include those like "Come into play" effects, "Leaves play" effects, etc. IF "X" happens, THEN "Y" is triggered.

Activated Abilities - These are abilities which require that some cost be paid to take effect. The "TAP" symbol and "UNTAP" symbol are the most obvious examples. The cost being paid is that creature being tapped or untapped. Other examples would be a mana cost that must be paid such as Pay 2B: Destroy target creature. Some costs would include the loss of life..... Pay 1 life: Target creature gets -1/-1. Some costs, such as Heritage Druid, say... Tap three untapped elves you control: Add GGG to your mana pool. As you may have noticed, these costs usually are indicated by the colon symbol : or by the Tap and Untap symbols.

Also, as a side note....some people are unaware that effects such as Cycling and Forecast are in fact "activated" abilities. They are activated from your hand rather than from a permanent in play. Either of these can be countered by cards such as Stifle, Voidslime, or Azorius Guildmage.

There are also a few cards which have triggered abilities which happen from your hand. A good example would be Dodecapod. If an oppenent would force you to discard Dodecapod, you may put it into play instead. X condition was met, therefore Y was triggered. These can also be countered by anything targeting a triggered ability.

There may be some points that I have missed, but this was meant to be a generally basic description of how these effects differ from one another. I hope this helps someone out there. Cheers.

Forum Overview >> General Chat