Discarding Cards Question

[anthooony]

I am sure this has been addressed in some way, but I'm really not looking forward on going through tons of pages worth of posts to find the answer.

My question is: When a player is done Fighting a Monster/Looting The Room and they have 6+ cards, can they just discard cards to get down to 5 or do they have to go through the Charity Phase and pass cards down to the lowest-level? I know the rule is "You cannot discard cards just because" but in this case, you are discarding cause you have too many cards so that counts, right?

Any insight is helpful, thanks!

[Clipper]

The only time you have to discard cards is when you are ready to end your turn. Your turn doesn't immediately end after combat, either. Thus, you can play the cards you received from the combat, such as playing some Items you want to start carrying to the table, in order to reduce your hand size before the end of your turn.

Once you are done playing cards, you end your turn by going to Charity. This is the only time you are forced to reduce your hand size and you do so by giving excess cards to the lowest level player/s or discarding them instead if you are already lowest-Level.

[MunchkinMan]

If charity could be avoided because you just wanted to discard cards in the middle of your turn, then it wouldn't have to exist. The whole point of the hand limit is this: At the end of your turn, you must have 5 cards or less. It's not that at any given time you must have 5 cards or less. This means that, during your turn, you can play any cards, legally of course, until you've run out of things you can (or want) to do. At that point, if you're over 5 cards, you must give the excess away unless you're lowest (or tied for lowest) level, at which point you can discard the excess. So, no, you can't just discard cards with the excuse that you have to get your hand size down because it doesn't matter until you've decided that your turn is over, at which point you enter the Charity phase.

[anthooony]

Awesome! Thanks so much guys!!!

[anthooony]

One more thing...

During the Charity Phase, cards that must be passed on to the lowest-level are Monsters/GUAL/Curses/Class/Race/Super Munchkin/Half-Breed cards, correct? And not items that are carried/turned sideways? Thank you for the great replies so far!

[Mister Ed]

Originally Posted by anthooony

One more thing...

During the Charity Phase, cards that must be passed on to the lowest-level are Monsters/GUAL/Curses/Class/Race/Super Munchkin/Half-Breed cards, correct? And not items that are carried/"in the backpack"? Thank you for the great replies so far!

Any card at all that is in your hand. You are getting your HAND down to size. The excess cards that you pass along can be anything at all that is still in your hand when you reach the Charity phase.

[MunchkinMan]

Originally Posted by anthooony

One more thing...

During the Charity Phase, cards that must be passed on to the lowest-level are Monsters/GUAL/Curses/Class/Race/Super Munchkin/Half-Breed cards, correct? And not items that are carried/"in the backpack"? Thank you for the great replies so far!

There is no "backpack" in Munchkin, and we ask everyone to not use that term here since everyone else seems to have some different interpretation of the term. If you could edit your post to say exactly what you meant, in game terms, that would be extremely helpful.

[anthooony]

Originally Posted by MunchkinMan

There is no "backpack" in Munchkin, and we ask everyone to not use that term here since everyone else seems to have some different interpretation of the term. If you could edit your post to say exactly what you meant, in game terms, that would be extremely helpful.

Sorry about that. Updated!

[anthooony]

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

Any card at all that is in your hand. You are getting your HAND down to size. The excess cards that you pass along can be anything at all that is still in your hand when you reach the Charity phase.

Oh ok. Cool! Thanks for the heads up!