NoPoke
Active Member
Q. The wording on Darkness Energy from the EX:Ruby/Sapphire expansion says, "if the Pokemon Darkness Energy is attached to attacks, the attack does 10 more damage to the Active Pokemon." Does this mean that you get to add +10 even if an attack does no damage at all to the Defending Pokemon (i.e. EX:Sandstorm Murkrow's "Surprise" attack)?
A. No, it still applies only if there was initial damage to add to. So in other words, you still have to do some damage in order to have "10 more" done. (Sep 18, 2003 PUI Rules Team Meeting)
So what of the folowing:
The attack is designed to do damage but you flip tails and end up with zero damage? The card text would have me believe that the attack would still get the +10 from the darkness energy card but the rulling says otherwise.
A pokemon power on the defending pokemon reduces the attack to zero? Is the +10 then lost even though its addition would be sufficient to get past the barrier pokemon power.
Resistance reduces the attack to zero. So again the +10 from the card is no longer added?
All of these hinge around the fact that you can start with a card that could do potential damage, flips may reduce that to zero (initial damage???) and then powers or resistance could reduce the actual damage to zero.
Actually doing damage is quite different to having an attack that can potentially do damage.