Council of Elrond

Ok, here's a query for the rules gurus!

Hoarmurath:

"As your Ringwraith, if at a Darkhaven, you may keep one more card than normal in your hand."

While the Yellow Face Sleeps:

"You may keep one more card than normal in your hand."

Cf to text of Book of Mazarbul:

"...increase your hand size by 1..."

Normal is 8, right? If so, can cards that state "normal" work in a cumulative manner with each other?

Edited for clarity.

There are other examples of this:

Palant’r of Elostirion -- Unique. Palant’r. Playable at The White Towers. Discard if the bearer moves. If the bearer is a sage: your hand size increases by one and the bearer is able to use this Palant’r this turn if he taps. With its bearer able to use a Palant’r, tap Palant’r of Elostirion to draw a card. Bearer then makes a corruption check

Pallando -- Unique. His controlling player may keep one more card than normal in his hand. Opponent must discard his cards face-up.

Emerald of the Mariner -- Unique. Hoard item. Bearer receives +1 to all of his corruption checks. Controlling player may keep one more card than normal in his hand. This item gives zero corruption points.

Elrond, Cirdan, Galadriel, the Lieutenants, Shifter of Hues and The Lidless Eye all say you may keep one more card than normal. That seems to be the standard phrase. However, the Palantir and the book increase hand size. [Are there other cards that say this?]

A literal reading seems to imply that multiple cards that say you may keep one more card than normal only allow you to keep 9 cards. However, that's certainly not how it is played. I haven't done a search of the digests yet, so maybe there is something in there that addresses this question.

Upon a little more looking I found this in the CRF:

Hand Size
Effects which increase your hand size or allow you to hold one more card in your hand mean that you draw up to your new hand size or discard down to it at the appropriate points during the game.
Effects which increase hand size are cumulative.

So it seems that these effects are equivalent and will add to each other.

Wacho wrote:Upon a little more looking I found this in the CRF:

Hand Size
Effects which increase your hand size or allow you to hold one more card in your hand mean that you draw up to your new hand size or discard down to it at the appropriate points during the game.
Effects which increase hand size are cumulative.

So it seems that these effects are equivalent and will add to each other.

Yeah, just noticed that myself. Strange that it distinguishes the two possibilities to increase hand size.

Reading very literally into this, does it matter that only "Effects which increase hand size" is suggested as being cumulative, and the other mechanism "...hold one more card in your hand" is not?

I would say yes, it does matter. Finer distinctions than that are often made in the rules, and it also makes sense logically -- "normal" never considers other card's effects, so each effect that allows one more card than normal can never acheive anything more than one above normal.

Effects which increase hand size without regard to "normal" would logically be cumulative.

Well, we can say goodbye to some ridiculous hand sizes, I think . . .

Interesting. The permutations of such could be staggering! That word "normal" causes a lot of discussions for a relatively straightforward word.

Cross off Hoarmurath and While the Yellow Face Sleeps.
Cross off squatting Troll leader(s) with or without The Lidless Eye.
Cross off Cirdan and Pallando.
Cross off any of Pallando or Shifter of Hues Radagast with Emerald of The Mariner.

Hello Palantir of Elostirion.
Hello Book of Mazarbul.
Hello anything else?

Bandobras Took wrote:"normal" never considers other card's effects, so each effect that allows one more card than normal can never acheive anything more than one above normal.

CRF, Rulings by Term, Normal wrote:Normal means as written on the card, not considering other card's effects. Note that
this definition only applies to effects refering to card texts.

Two or more A Short Rest are not cumulative?

I clarify: each effect which states you can hold one more card than normal in your hand can only possibly give you one more card than normal. Two such effects would still only give you one more card than normal because neither affect allows for two more cards than normal.

Also, Short Rest does not use "normal."

How is normal number of cards that player may keep in hand?
Is it fixed size - 8?
If so, why "You may keep one more card than normal in your hand" and not just "You may keep 9 cards in your hand"?

Such wording allows for a ruleset where an avatar might not have a normal hand size of 8. Simply because no alternate normal handsizes were introduced does not mean that normal hand size is not eight.

Jambo wrote:Interesting. The permutations of such could be staggering! That word "normal" causes a lot of discussions for a relatively straightforward word.

Cross off Hoarmurath and While the Yellow Face Sleeps.
Cross off squatting Troll leader(s) with or without The Lidless Eye.
Cross off Cirdan and Pallando.
Cross off any of Pallando or Shifter of Hues Radagast with Emerald of The Mariner.

Hello Palantir of Elostirion.
Hello Book of Mazarbul.
Hello anything else?

How about The Lidless Eye and The Ithil-stone?

The Ithil-stone wrote:Unique. Palantír. Playable at Barad-dûr. When a character taps to play Ithil-stone, make a roll (draw a #). If this result plus the number of scouts in his company is greater than 9, Ithil-stone is successfully played. Otherwise, the bearer is eliminated and Ithil-stone is placed in your out of play pile. Bearer makes a corruption check at the end of each of his untap phases. Bane of the Ithil-stone is discarded and cannot be played. If The Lidless Eye is in play, its player's hand size decreases by two.

The Lidless Eye wrote:Playable if your opponent is a Wizard and you have not revealed a Ringwraith. You are Sauron, not a Ringwraith. You may not reveal a Ringwraith or play Ringwraith followers. +7 to your general influence. You may keep one more card than normal in your hand. Once during each of your organization phases, you may: bring a resource or character from your sideboard into your play deck and shuffle or choose and discard a card from your hand to look up to 5 random cards at once from your opponent's hand. Cannot be duplicated.

And how about any other interaction between effects that modify hand size and effects that allows for keeping one more card than normal in hand?

P.S. Cards that that allows for "keeping one more card than normal in hand" are only cards with phrase "than normal" so no precedence and no reference.

To me Konrad, that one makes perfect sense. One more card than normal means 9, then decrease hand size by 2 = 7.

In my opinion the better question would have been what would have been the case if The Ithil-stone had stated:

If The Lidless Eye is in play, its player's may keep two less cards than normal in hand.

Essentially what I'm trying to get at, is why there are two very distinct and obviously different ways to word this?

In next turn Sauron plays Lieutenant of Angmar at Carn Dûm. Text of Lieutenant of Angmar comes into play. And what then?
Its player again may keep one more card than normal in its hand?

And don't forget Annotation 26.

Annotation 26: If at the start of a player's movement/hazard phase, there are multiple effects in play such that their net effect depends on the order they are applied, the player who is currently not taking his turn (i.e., the hazard player) decides the order in which they are to be applied. Once this interpretation is established, all further actions are applied in the order they are resolved for the rest of the turn.

Well, to me "normal" would be the default, the de facto standard or however you want to call it. So in the case of hand size, "normal" would be 8. The rules state draw 8 cards, so how can "normal" be anything else?

Since the interpretations are established before the start of the m/h phase, 26 doesn't apply.

Both Lieutenant and Eye allow for one more card in hand than normal=9.
Ithil reduces by 2.

To further illustrate, let's use prowess in a parallel example.

Two effects are in play which state "you may treat your character's prowess as one greater than normal."

This does not raise a character's prowess to two greater than normal.

An effect is also in play that reduces the character's prowess by 2.

This means that the character will have their normal prowess -2. Unless the player opts to use the "may" ability, which will raise the prowess by 1. But it is still lowered by two. There is no effect in play which nullifies the -2 to prowess.

What there would need to be is an effect which uses the phrase "in all cases."

A card which says "you may have one more card than normal in your hand in all cases" would overcome the effects of Ithil. Otherwise, you merely take the total of all effects in play on whatever value.