Discarding items that are part of a deal

[MunchkinMan]

Originally Posted by Nerftw

Unfortunately, your original move was illegal, as you cannot steal while in battle.

Yup. Michiel, the rules are quite clear on this, and it's further covered in the FAQ.

However, if this were a legitimate discard to power an ability, I'd say yes. You're not going back on the deal. The deal was one of your items. Any number of things could cause you to lose the item promised.

This is really a questionable practice, and if you do it a lot, you're going to find no one is willing to help you since you're clearly unwilling to obey Wheaton's Law. I think it might be legal, but I also think it's reasonable for the other person to say, "Okay, since you dumped the card you were going to give me, you'll just have to give me something else," and expect to get it.

But doing it after the battle and before item distribution is both wrong and I'm pretty sure not allowed, as taking the treasure counts as part of combat in the revised rules.

Absolutely not allowed then. For those reasons.

In my mind, this is similar to someone saying "I'll help you for 1 treasure, you pick first", and then you play a card that both lowers the monster's combat level and number of treasures to 1. (Like Baby, I think) Now the player who agreed to help you isn't getting any treasure. It falls under sneaky wording of the agreement, which is allowed.

Hmmm. Your logic doesn't parse: If I said that to another player, and he reduced the Monster to 1 Treasure, I still get that one Treasure, regardless of who was supposed to pick first. The situation of who gets to pick first is predicated on the condition that more than one Treasure exists. Also, Baby reduces the Treasure by 1, not to 1 by default. Let me explain: You need help against a Monster who gives two Treasure. I offer to help for 1 of those Treasures, you get to pick first, then you play Baby, even though you didn't need to. We kill the Monster and I get 1 Treasure (since that's what we agreed to) after you pick your share (0 Treasures, because you decided to screw yourself by playing Baby). It rarely pays to try to be a jerk, and though it sometimes does when playing Munchkin, this isn't one of those times.