I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

I'm afraid that would be countably infinite damage.

Technically, this doesn't specify; it could be any infinity. However, the art and flavour text implies recursive infinity, which is necessarily countable.

(And as far as I'm aware, even the silver sets have never printed a creature with power or toughness outside the rational numbers, which would allow us to infer countable infinity. Even if they snuck in a root 2 or something, algebraic numbers are also countable - though maybe WotC has printed a pi/pi creature since I last played Magic.)

While the card itself doesn't specify, MTG's backend rulings come to the rescue.

Specifically, the statement says "Infinity Elemental has the greatest power among creatures on the battlefield (and off the battlefield for that matter), although it will tie with other Infinity Elementals."

By the axiom of countable choice, the supremum of the reals is ℵ0. Thus, Infinity Elemental is countable unless Magic prints a creature with power ℵ0.

Uncountably infinite damage? I've got you fam.

This is countably infinite tokens copies of Doubling Season; after this, all you need is a card that puts a single +1/+1 counter on an attacking creature, which will result in a creature with 2^ℵ0 power and toughness.

(Credit to Reddit user u/lucariomaster2 on r/BadMtgCombos)

The problem here is how to resolve the countably infinite number of Doubling Season activations and proceed to a board state that allows anything else to happen. By RAW, this wouldn't work, as order must be chosen for replacement effects that modify the same event. This would essentially just "crash the game", with the activating player processing Doubling Season forever.

But if you allowed players to "skip" ordering events where every possible ordering would result in the same outcome, then yeah, this checks out. (This is something that any sensible group would do - but violates Turing machine rules.)

I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

I'm afraid that would be countably infinite damage.

Technically, this doesn't specify; it could be any infinity. However, the art and flavour text implies recursive infinity, which is necessarily countable.

(And as far as I'm aware, even the silver sets have never printed a creature with power or toughness outside the rational numbers, which would allow us to infer countable infinity. Even if they snuck in a root 2 or something, algebraic numbers are also countable - though maybe WotC has printed a pi/pi creature since I last played Magic.)

While the card itself doesn't specify, MTG's backend rulings come to the rescue.

Specifically, the statement says "Infinity Elemental has the greatest power among creatures on the battlefield (and off the battlefield for that matter), although it will tie with other Infinity Elementals."

By the axiom of countable choice, the supremum of the reals is ℵ0. Thus, Infinity Elemental is countable unless Magic prints a creature with power ℵ0.

Uncountably infinite damage? I've got you fam.

This is countably infinite tokens copies of Doubling Season; after this, all you need is a card that puts a single +1/+1 counter on an attacking creature, which will result in a creature with 2^ℵ0 power and toughness.

(Credit to Reddit user u/lucariomaster2 on r/BadMtgCombos)

I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

I'm afraid that would be countably infinite damage.

Technically, this doesn't specify; it could be any infinity. However, the art and flavour text implies recursive infinity, which is necessarily countable.

(And as far as I'm aware, even the silver sets have never printed a creature with power or toughness outside the rational numbers, which would allow us to infer countable infinity. Even if they snuck in a root 2 or something, algebraic numbers are also countable - though maybe WotC has printed a pi/pi creature since I last played Magic.)

While the card itself doesn't specify, MTG's backend rulings come to the rescue.

Specifically, the statement says "Infinity Elemental has the greatest power among creatures on the battlefield (and off the battlefield for that matter), although it will tie with other Infinity Elementals."

By the axiom of countable choice, the supremum of the reals is ℵ0. Thus, Infinity Elemental is countable unless Magic prints a creature with power ℵ0.

I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

Most combos in MTG are infinite but require some form of human action (e.g. declaring an ability's activation), so they're only as infinite as the human playing the game is. Even if a combo were to be set up that indefinitely created new state changes without human input, it's impossible to go uncountable because of the stack - even simultaneous objects must be declared to enter the stack in some order, which establishes a bijection between the naturals and your MTG board state no matter how many iterations are completed.

I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

I'm afraid that would be countably infinite damage.

I know Exalted 3rd Edition is just using "uncountable" as a game-mechanical term of art because saying "infinite" would clash tonally, but I kind of love the idea that some baddies can punch you so hard that they inflict a non-countably infinite number of levels of damage. I'm not sure what inflicting non-countably infinite damage would look like in practice, but I'd like to see it.

...This implies that there theoretically bigger combos that might potentially be possible in MTG than going infinite.

Well, yes, non-countable infinities are by definition "bigger" than countable infinities (infinitely so, in fact!). However, I'm not aware of any Magic: the Gathering combo which inflicts a non-countably infinite amount of damage, and knowing what I do of the game's rules I'm pretty sure it can't happen. I'd love to be corrected, though!

Falling to my knees as I realize "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is an Abyssal name

We joke about the absurdly literal names for spells and magic items and such in Dungeons & Dragons, but let me tell you, after playing a game like, say, Exalted 3rd Edition and finding yourself squinting at a character sheet that's just a block list of thirty different fancifully named special abilities trying to remember whether "Finding the Needle's Eye" or "Hunter's Eye Precision" is the dingus you're thinking of, you start to gain an appreciation for the prosaically descriptive.

In this vein, I especially enjoy the existence of the spell Chill Touch, which is not touch range, and does not do cold damage.

To be fair, the odd ones out are almost always due to the fact that D&D's authors are obsessed with legacy and refuse to change the names of things even when the actual effect has drifted over time; in this case, chill touch was touch range in its earlier iterations, and having the word "chill" in the name of a spell that actually inflicts Strength drain didn't create any ambiguity because the game didn't yet have a formal taxonomy of damage types.

(Well, that last bit isn't 100% accurate; early iterations of D&D had a formal taxonomy of damage types for damage resistances, but not for damage sources. You were expected to just eyeball whether a given resistance was applicable based on how the damage source was described, which occasionally let to friendship-ruining arguments over, say, whether a monster with immunity to fire damage should take damage from a sword strike if the sword happens to be on fire.)

exalted’s intimacy system facilitates dynamic roleplay.

It’s a good thing that we don’t do the “coming up with snappy portmanteaus for conspicuously popular intersections of fandoms” thing these days, because otherwise we’d have to figure out how to mash together the names of Infinity Train, Owl House, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

@godzillasflyingpizza replied:

Well, yes – and likewise, Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock weren’t the only pieces of media that defined the Superwholock complex, merely three of the most prominent ones.

I picked Infinity Train, Owl House and She-Ra as representative examples mostly because:

a. they happened to be prominent at the time of posting;

b. their respective fandoms have a tighter overlap than some of the other cited examples (the greater portion of the Adventure Time fandom isn’t part of this particular fandom complex, for example); and

c. every possible portmanteau of those three particular titles is objectively hilarious.

Infinite Owl Princess has the feel of an Exalted name.

You think it’s a cool metaphorical epithet for like a Night Caste Solar, but it’s actually a completely literal epithet for a Lunar who’s developed a novel upgrade to Locust-and-Starling Legion to shapeshift into an arbitrary number of owls.