Q: Does Lonnie Ritter require a damaged asset for her ability to work? Or is this a case of "doing as much as you can", so as long as you can heal Lonnie, you can still target a non-damaged item instead? A: Lonnie Ritter’s ability states: “ Exhaust Lonnie Ritter and spend 1 resource: Choose an Item asset controlled by an investigator at your location. Heal 1 damage from that asset and 1 horror from Lonnie Ritter.” It is true that the only costs of the ability are exhausting Lonnie and spending 1 resource, and the choosing and healing of an item are effects, not costs. However, whenever you see the word “choose” in an ability, there are a few additional rules to keep in mind. These rules can be found under the Target section of the Rules Reference.

The term "choose" indicates that one or more targets must be chosen in order for an ability to resolve. The player resolving the ability must choose a game element (usually a card) that meets the targeting requirements of the ability. If an ability requires the choosing of a target, and there is no valid target (or not enough valid targets), the ability cannot be initiated.

In other words, you cannot use Lonnie’s ability if there is no Item to target with its effect. The question remains—can you choose an item with no damage on it (or even, an item with no health value at all?) simply to heal 1 horror from Lonnie. Thankfully, the Rules Reference answers this question as well, in that same section:

A card is not an eligible target for an ability if the resolution of that ability's effect could not change the target's state. (For example, an exhausted enemy could not be chosen as the target of an effect that reads, "choose and exhaust an enemy.")

So there you have it—you must choose an eligible target in order to activate Lonnie’s ability, and an item that cannot be healed is not an eligible target. This is true even though healing 1 damage from the chosen item is an effect and not a cost, because the word “choose” indicates that one or more eligible targets must be chosen in order for the ability to correctly resolve, and a target can only be chosen if the ability’s effect has the potential to change its game state.

Let’s say you drew 2 bless tokens and a +1 and wanted to use Sacred Covenant to put the unnecessary bless tokens back in the bag. It would go like this:

St. 3 — reveal bless token.

St. 4 — resolve its effect (reset back to step 3 to draw again).

St. 3 — reveal another bless token.

St. 4 — resolve its effect.

St. 3 — reveal +1.

After St. 3 — trigger Sacred Covenant to put the two bless tokens back in the chaos bag.

St. 4+ resolve as normal.

Q: At which step of the skill test do the bless and curse tokens activate their effects, for the purposes of Sacred Covenant and Paradoxical Covenant? I assume step 4 like other chaos symbols effects. In this case, how does Sacred Covenant work? [Skill Test timing] A: Some effects may cause skill test timing to jump around a bit. In particular, whenever an effect causes you to reveal a new chaos token outside of Step 3 (reveal chaos tokens), it resets the timing back down to step 3. For example, if you were to reveal a token with the effect “+2. Reveal another token,” resolving that effect during step 4 would reset the timing back to step 3. (That way you can go through the standard motions of revealing that token and applying its effects and modifier.) The same is true for bless and curse tokens.

Let’s say you drew 2 bless tokens and a +1 and wanted to use Sacred Covenant to put the unnecessary bless tokens back in the bag. It would go like this:

St. 3 — reveal bless token.

St. 4 — resolve its effect (reset back to step 3 to draw again).

St. 3 — reveal another bless token.

St. 4 — resolve its effect.

St. 3 — reveal +1.

After St. 3 — trigger Sacred Covenant to put the two bless tokens back in the chaos bag.

St. 4+ resolve as normal.

Q: If Diana Stanley has <5 cards beneath her, can she use an cancel/ignore effect on a permanent asset such as Sacred Covenant to trigger her ability to draw a card and gain a resource effectively every turn? A: Yeah, it appears so! Diana’s effect doesn’t use the word “then,” so there is no requirement that the card be placed beneath her in order to get the card and resource. And Sacred Covenant surely does ignore a game effect. However, it’s worth noting that one or more tokens must actually be returned to the bag and ignored in this way in order to trigger Diana’s response. It’s Diana’s blessed day!