Rules baggage

Rules baggage is a design term for when some aspect of a card requires remembering additional rules that aren't clear from its card type, aren't stated in its abilities, or are particularly complex or unusual. Designers try to reduce this when possible, although sometimes it's simply the way a rule works.

Examples

• The Wall creature type was formerly unable to attack due to its subtype, but the defender ability was created to represent the mechanic instead. Similarly, the Legend creature type was replaced with the Legendary supertype to avoid having any creature types with rules baggage.
• Mono, Poly and Continuous were artifact "subtypes" that dictated their use, and all of them could be "turned off" when tapped by an external source. This was quickly abandoned in the first few years as articulating what this meant in the rules was more trouble than having each card define its own usage.
• Adventures and Sagas inherently have additional behavior beyond what their card types usually do, but R&D considers them worth the rules baggage for what they bring to the game. Sieges have a large amount of rules baggage, but resemble planeswalker combat enough to be acceptable.
• Deathtouch has rules baggage because it has some non-obvious interactions, such as changing the definition of lethal damage with trample.
• Batching and predefined token terminology requires players to know definitions that aren't explicit on the card, although usually reminder text prevents this from being a problem.
• Banding and "loses all abilities" were considered by R&D to carry too much rules baggage to be worth bringing back to the game. "Loses all abilities" was revisited later and returns occasionally, and banding got a rules revamp in Magic 2010 for simplicity, though without much chance of returning.