No flying?

I like the concept of using haunt this way. I have a suspicion that you want the instant/sorcery card to inherently gain some benefit even if it doesn't have haunt.

> It gains "When haunted creature dies, you may cast this card."

Something like this? Or was this actually meant for a dedicated haunt/self-mill deck?

Anyway, subtypes get to be capitalized, so "a Specter you control". And "combat damage to a player" seems right.

I see, this can stack itself with haunting cards. Nothing wrong with that, but something to consider. May not be your intent.

This is strongest with custom cards that use haunt to grant Aura-like benefits like Voiceless Ghost. Funnily enough though these all seem to be permanent cards - specifically creatures, and no such instant or sorcery cards have been made on magicmultiverse.net yet. The best positive effect planesculptors.net suggests is Favor the Meek, but there are plenty of nasty effects and removal options like Hopeless Arrows.

Oh, definitely supposed to have flying.

And I tried to understand the rules on Haunt. I believe that 'Haunt' as an ability, simply changes what happens when the creature dies/spell resolves.

The act of triggering the haunt when the creature dies is just tacked onto the fact that that spell is haunting that creature. So when it says that it haunts a creature, I believe that when that creature dies, it'll work as expected without giving haunt to that spell.

> And I tried to understand the rules on Haunt. I believe that 'Haunt' as an ability, simply changes what happens when the creature dies/spell resolves.

Correct.

> The act of triggering the haunt when the creature dies is just tacked onto the fact that that spell is haunting that creature.

The phrase "just tacked onto the fact" is both correct and incorrect, since that is the part that actually does something other than exile your card.

> So when it says that it haunts a creature, I believe that when that creature dies, it'll work as expected without giving haunt to that spell.

This is the crux. If you don't say what "as expected" is, its hard to say whether this acts "as expected". I cannot read your mind, but I can tell you that a lot of people will think this card does more than it says at first glance.

My point is not that you ought to give haunt to the exiled card, but that you didn't give it any triggered ability, so there is effectively no benefit in exiling the card... unless it already has an ability that triggers on a haunted creature dying (which happens to be all the cards that already have haunt) (or for custom cards an ability that otherwise gets use out of haunting).

Look at it this way: Have you ever considered why all cards with haunt have a triggered ability like that? What do you think would be the value of haunt if they didn't have it?

All haunt means is "When this spell card is put into a graveyard after resolving, exile it haunting target creature." It does nothing else. You need to also grant the triggered ability to cast the card

Isn't saying "This spell is now haunting this creature" giving it the delayed triggered ability?

The fact that a card is haunting an object does not do anything by itself except that the card haunting it is now in the exile zone (and I am not sure why you would expect it to do anything else by itself). In order to do anything else, it must explicitly say so. See rule 702.55.

The way it is now does nothing except that the card is exiled, unless something cares that it is being haunted, or if that card already has an ability that does something to whatever it is haunting.

> Isn't saying "This spell is now haunting this creature" giving it the delayed triggered ability?

What delayed triggered ability? The thing that happens when a creature that is haunted dies isn't even the same from one card to another.

As you can read up on every single card with haunt, the have actual written out triggered abilities that trigger "when the creature ~ haunts dies". If e. g. Benediction of Moons had only the first two abilities, nothing would happen upon the creature dying.

The triggered ability is not delayed and an inherent part of haunt, as you can tell since it would be written as part of the reminder text otherwise.

Oh okay. I had to go look at the cards with Haunt to understand how Haunt works. Can't just look up the wikipage for the rule to get that information.

I would love for this to have some Tibalt-esk "When you cast this spell, get an emblem that says "You may cast a spell from exile if a creature it is haunting dies"" just to have Haunt work elegantly like I thought it did already but here we go. More words.

You managed to find the absolute worst way to template this XD

> Whenever a Specter you control deals combat damage to an opponent, you may exile target instant or sorcery card from your graveyard haunting that creature. It gains "When this creature dies, you may cast each card haunting it."

What is the point of putting a keyword counter on that creature?

Why not use the original wording that declared the exiled card haunting? Literally all you had to do is add the sentence from the third paragraph of my first post (or use the slightly more correct "When the creature this card haunts"-wording).

The triggered ability doesn't even make sense, because the verb "choose" is used nowhere else on the card. And the exiled card is not a spell.

The counter I guess marks the card as having the haunt on it - but having the sorcery tucked away does that pretty well anyway.

Ignoring the difficulty of templating a two-stage effect like this... I do like this. You'd not even really have to build around it much, it'll work with any spells you've got - though obviously it works best if most of your creatures are spectres.
And it lets you try to set up some kind of bizarre rube-goldburg mechanism where killing this creature casts this which kills that creature and... which is definitely a thing some players want to do.

So yeah, I like this idea. And of course, good catch making sure it lords itself.

The reason for the useless counter is the same reason that the Book of Exalted Deeds puts a useless counter on it's target. It's for memory issues.

At this stage we're in territory where new rules are going to have to be written if you want it phrased much better because I don't know how easily you can refer to "the haunted creature" or "each card haunting" while having it function as intended.

You don't need a memory aid because you physically have the haunting card to stick under the creature

Look again at Benediction of Moons. "When the creature ~ haunts dies" is literally the trigger condition of all the orginal cards with haunt. Hence you know it works once you coerce the card into haunting a creature.