Event

Spell. Paradox.

Cost: 0. XP: 5.

Mystic

Fast. Play when an encounter card or enemy attack would cause you to do one of the following (choose one): Discard cards from hand, lose resources, lose actions, take damage, or take horror.

You ignore that aspect of the effect. Then, perform the opposite of that aspect (draw cards, gain resources, gain additional actions, heal damage, or heal horror, respectively).

Ilich Henriquez
In the Clutches of Chaos #280.
Deny Existence

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Q: For cards like Deny Existence, "I've had worse…", Delay the Inevitable, etc, do they directly or indirectly work against effects that do not deal damage and horror directly to your investigator (e.g. Snake Bite) or deal direct damage to other things as well as your investigator (e.g. Centuries of Secrets, Ceremony Room)? A: Delay the Inevitable, I've Had Worse and Deny Existence only work when you (aka your investigator) are being dealt damage/horror. If damage or horror is being dealt directly to a card other than your investigator, you cannot use Deny Existence, Delay the Inevitable, or I've Had Worse to cancel/ignore it. This ruling has been overturned and, at the time of updating (27/07/22), we await an FAQ update to bring this ruling in line with FAQ entry 2.12, Interpreting "You" When Taking or Being Dealt Damage. The information we currently have is:

    • According to our current rulings, “you” are “dealt damage” when your investigator or an asset you control is dealt damage.
    • This does mean that, if you activated the ability on Beat Cop while you had Hypochondria in your threat area, “you” would have been dealt damage, and you must then take 1 direct horror.
    • This also means that the previous ruling on Delay the Inevitable and similar cards has been overturned; those cards would count damage dealt to your assets as damage dealt “to you.”
  • Q: If you discard a Curse with Centuries of Secrets, does FAQ 2.12 (Interpreting "you" when taking or being dealt damage) mean that all of the damage, including the direct damage to your allies, counts as damage being dealt "to you"? If so, what happens if you play Deny Existence? Can you ignore the direct damage being dealt to your allies? Can you ignore all of the damage being dealt, or do you have to pick just one of the one-damage hits to ignore? If you use Deny 5 to ignore the direct damage being dealt to an ally, the healing still applies to your investigator card, right? A: We rule that if you were to play Deny Existence (5), you could ignore one of the following effects on Centuries of Secrets: dealing 1 damage to yourself, or dealing 1 damage to one of your Ally assets (not each, unfortunately). Depending on which you ignored, you could either heal 1 from your investigator, or 1 from the chosen Ally.

  • Q: As of recent rulings [see above], we now know Deny Existence (5) can heal damage from allies when they take direct damage from an effect such as Centuries of Secrets, because the "opposite" of an ally taking direct damage is the ally healing that damage. However, what about the case of non-direct damage? Deny Existence triggers "when...[you would]...take damage/horror", so it triggers before the damage assignment process has initiated. Typically, "you" refers to "your investigator card and assets you control", collectively, for the purposes of damage-related effects. Thus, at the time Deny Existence is played, the effect it has triggered on is "you (collectively) would take damage/horror". Then, Deny Existence performs the "opposite" of that effect - so could the "opposite" effect in this case be "you (collectively) heal damage/horror"? In other words, say I have a Beat Cop (2) in play with two damage tokens on him. An enemy with a damage value of 2 attacks me. I play Deny Existence (5); can I heal 2 damage from Beat Cop (2)? A: We rule that in that situation, Deny Existence (5) would be able to heal 2 damage from your ally.

  • Q: When I draw the weakness Offer You Cannot Refuse with 4 resources in my pool, when can I use Deny Existence? Before Offer resolves the upgrade of the weakness or after? If I can play deny, do I still need to upgrade the offer or not? A: If you play Deny Existence (either version) as a response to Offer You Cannot Refuse instructing you to lose 5 resources, then the “If you cannot” sentence of Offer’s ability does not apply. The sentence only applies when you have less than 5 resources at the time of resolving the Revelation and no other way to counter or respond to that effect.

  • Q: How does the “ for each” or “ for every” ruling (2.23) work with a card that allows me to ignore an effect, such as Deny Existence? A: Deny Existence only allows you to ignore a single effect, such as one instance of horror, or one instance of discarding cards. Whether an effect is a “single cumulative effect” or “separate effects” depends on whether the effect forces the investigator to make a choice. For example, Terrible Secret must be resolved as “separate effects”, because the investigator is choosing whether to discard or take 1 horror for each card beneath Diana Stanley. Deny Existence can only ignore discarding one card or taking one horror; it cannot ignore all horror or all cards that would be discarded, as these are separate effects. - FAQ, v.2.1, August 2023

Last updated

Reviews

Outright the most insane defense card in the game. Very good. If your deck didn't have space for Deny Existence at 0xp then absolutely grab Deny Existence if at any point you're overflowing XP.

The thing that makes this card so good is that it is such an end-all solution to so much pain. Scenarios tend to throw a limited amount of pain your way (a scenario is only going to last so long, you'll only draw so many treacheries and face so many enemies), cards that single-handedly solve a defensive problem are very strong, for the reason that they are very effective for their slot. First Aid for example (probably) completely negates your risk of death from damage or horror (or both), although it will cost you 4 actions and 2 resources. Hallowed Mirror does the same with some slot restrictions and the need to draw the cards, but completely solves either damage or horror as a problem for that investigator or a friend.

Deny Existence not only saves you pain, it removes it! An effect that deals you 2 horror, heals 2 horror instead. This is a swing of 4 horror! Often enough to get you out of the risk-zone for the rest of the scenario. Also this is just a fairly average scenario, the crazy crap that starts to happen when you're negating the loss of resources, instances of 3 horror or damage ETC it can get brutally good. Also note that those other cards are generally doing this in 3-4 actions, Deny Existence is free to play and "fast".

This is the very best emergency button card in the game, barring perhaps only Ward of Protection in the instance where it discards a big enemy.

Tsuruki23 · 2469
Ward of Protection cannot discard enemy cards, only non-weakness Treachery cards. — Ezhaeu · 47
I think he meant to link to Ward 5, not Ward 2 — StyxTBeuford · 12917
Yup :P — Tsuruki23 · 2469

Not a review per say, just a pre-emptive question...

What if you draw a treachery where it is "Lose all resources"

What is the opposite of "all" in this instance, for the purposes of this card technically reversing the effect

Easy if it is something like, lose 3 resources, because it becomes gain 3 resources

Might need a FAQ on this one ASAP

Kire · 5
Adding to this: What about "discarding all but X cards from your hand"? — trazoM · 9
My assumption would be, if it asks you to lose all resources, then "all" = the number of resources you have. So, if you have 5, and it asks you to discard all, it's asking you to discard 5. So, in this case you would gain 5 instead. — Eschaton1 · 1
The opposite would be to gain ALL THE RESOURCES, so you should take every available token. — Azriel · 1
Crap, that previous comment was a joke, and I wanted to skip a like and ended up posting it. In all seriousness though, I think it's best to not overthink it: if it says to lose all resources, just count how much you would have lost. If it says to discard every card except one, just count how many cards you would have actually discarded. I can't see any other way to make this card work with these wordings, so it kinda has to be this. — Azriel · 1
Carolyn is able to play this card, right (but not the 0 xp version)? — Django · 4859
@Django I'm not sure. The looser interpretation is that yes, this card heals horror (even if it's unlikely to do so), so she can take it. A tighter interpretation would say that this card doesn't specifically have the "heals horror" wording mentioned in Carolyn's deckbuilding requirements. Personally, I interpret Carolyn as, "if it heals horror, she can use it," so I'd say yes. — SGPrometheus · 745
But it DOES specifically say " — CSerpent · 119
(fat fingered) it DOES specifically say "heal horror". But I agree anyway -- it can heal horror, she can take it. — CSerpent · 119
@Django Carolyn can take the level 0xp because she can take 0-1 Mystic card. — Cyiel · 1
What happens if you are supposed to lose say, five resources, but you only have one and you play this. Do you gain five resources? Or just the one resource you would have lost? — The1Aaron · 1
I emailed Matt Newman and he confirmed Carolyn can take Deny Existence lvl 5. — Cyggie · 7
@The1Aaron: The effect allows you to perform the opposite of what the encounter card asks you to do. So if the encounter card asks you to discard 5 resources, you do the opposite: gain 5 resources, regardless of how many resources you have in your resource pool. — rednar · 22
How would you rule this card interacting with Realm of Madness and someone having... say... 5 horror? Would they draw cards from their deck until they have a combined printed resource cost of 5? Only keeping cards that have a cost? — Sleffie · 1
I would say you draw until you draw a total of five cost and keep ALL cards, even the zero cost — PanicMoon · 2
Sorry, yeah... the distinction I tried to make was keeping cards that have a cost (even if it is 0), but not keeping skill cards. Or would you say keep those as well? — Sleffie · 1
For future reference: the correct way to resolve it is to pick the cards that you would discard from hand as a result of the effect: 5 resources worth of cards (including as many 0s as you want, but no skills). Then instead of discarding these cards, draw a number of cards equal to the number of cards you would have discarded. If you don't have enough cards in hand to reach the threshold, you still need to discard from play; Deny (5) will not help against that. — suika · 9247