Warrior's unnecessary berserking - legal play?

[Gospel X]

A player was a Warrior in combat against a monster he was solidly defeating. No one played any bonuses to the monster. The player decides that he doesn't want to do charity at the end of his turn and so decided to play three cards to his Berserking ability before he declared the end of combat. He drew his treasure cards, had no more than five cards in his hand, and that was that.

Question: Was this a legal play? It was argued on the one hand that the player could not activate this ability due to its not actually do anything, but on the other hand there's nothing we could find saying that this is not a valid way to get rid of cards. The owner of the game determined it legal to move the game along. What's the official ruling on this?

I tried to find something about this in the forums, but I just couldn't. I apologize if this is somewhere I missed.

[PK]

Sure it's legal. There's no rule that says you can't play a bonus if you're winning, just like there's no rule against some playing a monster enhancer into a combat where the munchkin is already losing. You can always make things better or worse.

[njals]

Sure can, in fact it is an extremely munchkinly thing to do, specifically if you good cards in your hand that you do not want to give to charity.

[Gospel X]

Thanks for the input, and those are valid arguments. The Warrior already seemed to have plenty of advantages, but the ability to discard so freely will make it a preferred class when we play with Fast Rules.

[snarky]

In general, discarding just to power an ability tends to not be as powerful an ability as it seems on first blush, at least in my experience.

[MunchkinMan]

Originally Posted by Gospel X

Thanks for the input, and those are valid arguments. The Warrior already seemed to have plenty of advantages, but the ability to discard so freely will make it a preferred class when we play with Fast Rules.

The ability is to discard up to 3 cards per combat for +1 per card. The Warrior can not discard any number of cards he wants. The Classes and Races are fairly well balanced, and though some might have seemingly better advantages, it really depends on where you are in the game which abilities are more advantageous.

[Bampop]

I would argue that the warrior is discarding 3 cards for +1 each just to up his level enough that nobody is tempted to play a monster enhancer. Preemptive defense. Not only legal, but pretty smart.

[Gospel X]

MunchkinMan, sorry if you misunderstood, but I'm not implying that the Warrior can discard all the cards he wants. I'm just saying it's advantageous during a game using fast rules to be able to drop three cards so easily during an easily won combat. It's a clever way to dodge the charity phase, especially since fast rules can definitely lead to loads of charity - at least in my group.

And Bampop, it's a nice argument, but the player literally said that the cards were being discarded just to get out of charity. Everyone had already told the player that the victory was his, then the cards were thrown out to avoid charity. When called on it, he said, "Oh, it's a just-in-case thing." Regardless, it's a legal move.