Q: For cards like Deny Existence, "I've had worse…", Delay the Inevitable, etc, do they directly or indirectly work against effects that do not deal damage and horror directly to your investigator (e.g. Snake Bite) or deal direct damage to other things as well as your investigator (e.g. Centuries of Secrets, Ceremony Room)? A: Delay the Inevitable, I've Had Worse and Deny Existence only work when you (aka your investigator) are being dealt damage/horror. If damage or horror is being dealt directly to a card other than your investigator, you cannot use Deny Existence, Delay the Inevitable, or I've Had Worse to cancel/ignore it. This ruling has been overturned and, at the time of updating (27/07/22), we await an FAQ update to bring this ruling in line with FAQ entry 2.12, Interpreting "You" When Taking or Being Dealt Damage. The information we currently have is:

• According to our current rulings, “you” are “dealt damage” when your investigator or an asset you control is dealt damage.
• This does mean that, if you activated the ability on Beat Cop while you had Hypochondria in your threat area, “you” would have been dealt damage, and you must then take 1 direct horror.
• This also means that the previous ruling on Delay the Inevitable and similar cards has been overturned; those cards would count damage dealt to your assets as damage dealt “to you.”

Q: If you discard a Curse with Centuries of Secrets, does FAQ 2.12 (Interpreting "you" when taking or being dealt damage) mean that all of the damage, including the direct damage to your allies, counts as damage being dealt "to you"? If so, what happens if you play Deny Existence? Can you ignore the direct damage being dealt to your allies? Can you ignore all of the damage being dealt, or do you have to pick just one of the one-damage hits to ignore? If you use Deny 5 to ignore the direct damage being dealt to an ally, the healing still applies to your investigator card, right? A: We rule that if you were to play Deny Existence (5), you could ignore one of the following effects on Centuries of Secrets: dealing 1 damage to yourself, or dealing 1 damage to one of your Ally assets (not each, unfortunately). Depending on which you ignored, you could either heal 1 from your investigator, or 1 from the chosen Ally.

Q: As of recent rulings [see above], we now know Deny Existence (5) can heal damage from allies when they take direct damage from an effect such as Centuries of Secrets, because the "opposite" of an ally taking direct damage is the ally healing that damage. However, what about the case of non-direct damage? Deny Existence triggers "when...[you would]...take damage/horror", so it triggers before the damage assignment process has initiated. Typically, "you" refers to "your investigator card and assets you control", collectively, for the purposes of damage-related effects. Thus, at the time Deny Existence is played, the effect it has triggered on is "you (collectively) would take damage/horror". Then, Deny Existence performs the "opposite" of that effect - so could the "opposite" effect in this case be "you (collectively) heal damage/horror"? In other words, say I have a Beat Cop (2) in play with two damage tokens on him. An enemy with a damage value of 2 attacks me. I play Deny Existence (5); can I heal 2 damage from Beat Cop (2)? A: We rule that in that situation, Deny Existence (5) would be able to heal 2 damage from your ally.

Q: When I draw the weakness Offer You Cannot Refuse with 4 resources in my pool, when can I use Deny Existence? Before Offer resolves the upgrade of the weakness or after? If I can play deny, do I still need to upgrade the offer or not? A: If you play Deny Existence (either version) as a response to Offer You Cannot Refuse instructing you to lose 5 resources, then the “If you cannot” sentence of Offer’s ability does not apply. The sentence only applies when you have less than 5 resources at the time of resolving the Revelation and no other way to counter or respond to that effect.

Q: How does the “ for each” or “ for every” ruling (2.23) work with a card that allows me to ignore an effect, such as Deny Existence? A: Deny Existence only allows you to ignore a single effect, such as one instance of horror, or one instance of discarding cards. Whether an effect is a “single cumulative effect” or “separate effects” depends on whether the effect forces the investigator to make a choice. For example, Terrible Secret must be resolved as “separate effects”, because the investigator is choosing whether to discard or take 1 horror for each card beneath Diana Stanley. Deny Existence can only ignore discarding one card or taking one horror; it cannot ignore all horror or all cards that would be discarded, as these are separate effects. - FAQ, v.2.1, August 2023