What causes card targeting allowing invalid targets in a card game?

The targeting prompt accepts any clicked entity without checking the ability's target restrictions, and it never re-validates if the board changes before resolution.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Card Targeting Allowing Invalid Targets in a Card Game

Quick answer: Compute the legal target set from the ability's restrictions, only accept clicks within that set, and re-check legality when the effect resolves.

If a heal spell can target an enemy or a dead unit, your targeting has no filter. Restricting selectable targets and re-checking at resolution fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Build the legal target set

When targeting begins, evaluate the ability's restrictions (faction, type, zone, alive/dead, untargetable status) and highlight only the entities that qualify.

2. Reject illegal clicks

Ignore or refuse clicks on entities outside the legal set rather than accepting them and erroring later. Give clear feedback that the target is invalid.

3. Re-validate at resolution

Between declaration and resolution the board can change, so re-check the chosen target's legality when the effect resolves and fizzle or retarget per your rules if it is no longer valid.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Construct 3 error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.