Jenesis points out that this Just Doesn't Work on creatures with characteristic-defining abilities like Tarmogoyf. I really like the simplicity of the current wording, but I fear that if this card were to work, it'd have to read "and becomes an X/Y where X is its power and Y is its toughness", or something similarly horrible. I'd love to hear other suggestions from anyone who knows their Comp Rules, though.

This is the card that should become Cygnify, clearly :) But making the target into a grizzly is probably a bit too good.

Lose all activated and triggered abilities?

Maybe the rules should define "lose all abilities" to mean "lose all abilities other than characteristic defining abilities", that would often be useful.

You could add something like: X/Y/* then they become 0/1/1 ?

People always keep bringing this "issue" up:

> 107.2. If anything needs to use a number that can't be determined, either as a result or in a calculation, it uses 0 instead.

Editorial rules prohibit removing all abilities without defining new power and toughness. Just because they added a hack in to prevent the game from breaking in case it happens, doesn't mean you're supposed to go out of your way to test it. I'm not even sure if that rule applies here, since there's no ways of making a creature have an undefined P/T in real Magic.

I'm not quite sure why this card has suddenly received attention, but I would point out it's 7 years old, as is my initial comment on it. (Though yes, 107.2 has been around since before 2010; even back in 2007 the same rule existed, just as part of rule 104.2.)

Well, I think that shifting the discussion from "rules can't handle this" to "editorial rules prohibit" (whatever those are in mtg) and "you don't do this in 'real' magic" shows the truer nature of this idea. One is a fatal error while the other is something more of an opinion.

I for one would like to question as to what exactly does p/t setting serve with these effects. In cases where this might be a problem (ie. new players in standard) it's highly unlikely to occur (how many creatures per set have variable p/t?) + if you know that s are when a spell is cast without paying its mana cost (which might have around the same chance of happening as this), this too should be deduced pretty easily from that. I mean, what else could it be than 0? One might even say that adding "with base power and toughness 1/1" would confuse players more than its exclusion would and add unnecessary text (that uses a noncommon/weird phrase no less) which also is a factor for comprehension complexity.