Are multiple instances of an ability like shroud or double strike ever not redundant?

@Rainbolt What do you mean by 'like' those abilities?

By "like shroud and double strike", I mean "abilities for which multiple instances are redundant under normal circumstances". For example, multiple instances of shroud and double strike are redundant normally.

I don't think so, since all of the abilities that are redundant (at least that I was from a quick glance at the CR) are either static or evasion abilities that essentially changes how the rules of the game work for that object and once they've been changed trying to change them again won't do anything

That makes sense

In some ways, the "Multiple instances of this ability are redundant" rule is itself redundant

You can always tell by reading the rules whether an additional instance of an ability will do anything

@murgatroid99 That's not necessarily true, because tomorrow they could print a card that says "{T}: Remove an ability from target creature. Foo gains that ability."

I don't see how that's relevant

You said you can tell my reading the rules if multiple instances of an ability are redundant, but you really need more information than that

I don't understand. Why does that possible ability that you mentioned imply that you need more information?

An ability is not redundant if having an two of that ability could affect the board state in any way.

So you need to know if a card like that has ever been printed in order to know if it is redundant

In addition to reading the rules

@Rainbolt that's not what it means

What do you think it means?

"redundant" means that two instances of the ability have no different effect than one instance

It doesn't mean that you don't still have two instances of the ability

Or anything else that I can imagine being relevant to that activated ability

If there is a card that can steal a single instance of an ability, then having two instances DOES have a different effect in some situations.

"If you lose one instance, you don't actually lose anything" is literally the common English definition of "redundant"

(paraphrased)

You mean like Phyrexian Splicer?

Never mind that removes all instances of the given keyword

Also you can't remove just one instance of a keyword 407.3. Effects that remove an ability remove all instances of it.

I would bet that the only abilities that ever actually get removed are keyword abilities that are redundant in multiples

Except when all abilities are removed, but then 407.3 doesn't really come into play

@murgatroid99 I did a quick search and it looks like that is an accurate statement (other than Licids, but they are weird)

Multiple copies of a single activated ability are basically redundant anyway

@murgatroid99 Kind of, except for the case we are talking about where if one of the Licid abilities gets removed (because you activated it) you still have the other one available to activate (so you could move it to another creature for example)

So, I guess that's the case where 407.3 matters

Hmm, it looks like the rules have been renumbered since where I quoted that rule from was written. 4073 is now about Ante, the correct rule is not 112.9

112.10, actually

It looks like Licid abilities are effected by 112.10 because it is referring to a specific instance of an ability and not just referring to it by name, at least according to a L2 and L3 judge (It's the last few posts in the thread)

I guess that a functionally identical ability doesn't necessarily count as the same ability

@murgatroid99 Okay fine. Through cherry picking definitions of English words, you broke my example. So I'll just change my example: "This creature gets +1/+1 for each ability that it has."

What is that example supposed to demonstrate?

@murgatroid99 I am making the exact same point with a different example, and I don't intend to repeat my earlier explanation.

OK, I think there's some misunderstanding here. The intention of my original assertion was: for any keyword ability with a rule that says "Multiple instances of this ability are redundant", that fact can be inferred without that rule, based on what kind of ability you're looking at.

And, similarly, for any ability that does not have that rule, the fact that it should not have that rule can also be inferred

If you thought I meant something else, then I am sorry that I did not communicate clearly.

@murgatroid99 Thanks for clearing that up - I understand now. Earlier you said that you could tell, using the rules, that an ability was redundant. I wanted to point out that a card could change the rules, and so you would need more than just the rules.