Planeswalkers use the toughness stat for their loyalty. But if a user enters power as well as toughness on a planeswalker, I do display it at the moment.

However, it seems most likely that if a user has a planeswalker with power as well as toughness, it's user error, as on Chandra, the Red Priestess. It's quite easy to enter a creature, with P+T, and then change it to a planeswalker - at which point the toughness box turns into the loyalty box, and the power box hides.

So do people think that if the database contains a planeswalker with not just loyalty/toughness, but also power, I should not display the power at all?

it's not user error. if a user is making a pw, theres no reason to assume he started with a creature. even so, after it becomes a pw, the user cannot fix it by staying in the pw frame and has no idea why it still shows p/t.

In general users don't start with creatures and turn them into planeswalkers, certainly. But in general planeswalkers created on here come out with just one figure in the loyalty box. The bug you and wlframe experience seems to be pretty unusual.

But yes, the user can't fix it while staying in the planeswalker frame, which is why I created this discussion topic for the proposed enhancement to hide power on planeswalkers. I'm planning to make this fix unless anyone can suggest reasons why it's a bad idea.

well, if a user would type in a number before changing frames, they would usually first type it in the power box, not the toughness. so the whole situation is unintuitive. 1) sharing loyalty box with toughness or power. 2) worse, choosing toughness over power to be shared.

­Jeska, Mending Medium is a thing.

Seems a good compromise to me. Toughness/Loyalty accepts things like 'X' and '*', so presumably the solution for Jeska would be to also permit '/'.

Note: Also important to be consistent in handling this field in other forms of output - card export, plain view etc.

I've been bearing Jeska, Mending Medium in mind throughout this discussion, but, well, there's a reason SadisticMystic commented on her "A lot of players would have problems handling innate creature planeswalkers no matter how you phrase them, so I wouldn't worry about seeing a card like this pop up in a booster pack near you". And SM is both the card's creator and the person who knows the rules best out of anyone I've interacted with.

­Gideon Jura-style planeswalkers are fairly frequent, but inherently creature-plus-planeswalker cards? Ideally they'd want a custom frame to show both the P/T box and the loyalty, but, well, let's say writing a custom frame for a niche case like that isn't my highest priority. I'm fairly sure the toughness box does accept "/" (and I think even " ", space) so she'd be able to work as well as she currently does even under this new proposal.

(amuseum's comments continue to puzzle me. Are you saying you think that of the two creature stats, power is more like loyalty than toughness is?)

i think you still don't completely understand why the bug appears, how the user interacts with the unintuitive interface, and why sharing fields in a database is a bad idea. as vitenka brought up, now you have to remember these exceptions for every type of output that could ge generated.

Do I gather from the tone of your comment that you think you do understand why the bug appears? Could you have a go at explaining precisely under what circumstances a planeswalker can acquire a nonblank power?

I think the point is that a "new card" form comes up with two blank boxes, down in the bottom right.

It's not at all obvious which one you should fill in, if you want to make a planeswalker. Nor is there any prompting that you should fill out the type first, to make the frame change.

So people are as likely to pick one as the other. (Obviously, if someone is actually making a creature, having two is right and it's obvious what they're for)

it's exactly as Vitenka stated. it's easily replicated. make a new card, type in a value for power, then type in Planeswalker, then preview. you can see power value, no slash or toughness. at this point, the edit frame only shows one box for loyalty. so type in a value, then preview. now you see P/T. now delete the loyalty, then preview. you see just power value. so by this point, the user is confused since he doesn't know what happens behind the scenes nor what to do to get the loyalty to show up correctly.

...Oh. Okay, I guess I hadn't considered someone designing a planeswalker typing a detail like initial loyalty before setting the big-picture things like type="Planeswalker". I would have thought the way it looks like a P/T box rather than a loyalty shield would dissuade you from doing that. But yes, what you propose is a plausible means for occasional users to submit planeswalker cards with nonblank power.

If someone submits a planeswalker with power as well as toughness (that isn't Jeska, Mending Medium), do you think I should actually ignore and blank the power, since I have no way to display it anyway?

The most resilient I can see is:

When type becomes planeswalker:

• If only one box is filled; move that to loyalty.
• If both boxes are filled; pick one, doesn't matter which.
• When a planeswalker becomes a creature - if there was no P/T fill one out (doesn't matter which) with the loyalty.
• If it does have P/T, replace whichever you picked with the loyalty.

If you're not willing to add a third field; then blanking the one you didn't pick is the second best option, I think.

Another equally less-good option would be to present a thid box for loyalty; label it as such, and flip to the planeswalker frame if the use puts something there.

Type is usually the last field I fill out. I'm not making a planes-walker; I'm making a card. Sometimes it turns out to be a planes-walker.