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There are a lot of words that begin with D, E, B or T and thus could be used to form the same acronym. That doesn't mean, that they have any saying on what protection does or doesn't. DEBT is only a helpful tool to remember what protection does, but it only works in one direction: from Damage/Enchanting/Blocking/Targeting to DEBT, no matter what else you want those letter to stand for.

Also, in the very beginning, protection did make the protected permanent immune to all kinds of effects that came from a source with the stated quality. But this caused some scenarios, where you simply couldn't determine what would actually happen. Also, it is part of the game, that everything can be answered, and making protection do less then total immunity makes it possible to answer.

There are two answers to both of those questions:

1) Because that's not what the rules say it does. So you're just gonna have to remember the right answer.

2) Back in the olden days of yore, Protection used to protect from everything. Everything. This got very, very messy when Black Knight was on the field and someone was trying to resolve Balance . Because they would count the Knight for the purposes of determining the fewest stuff, but wouldn't have to sacrifice him, even if he was the only creature they had and everybody else was binning everything else they had. Unless they did have to get rid of him, because Balance isn't affecting the Knight: it's directing the player to sacrifice their own knight. So the protection shouldn't even apply, right? But, wait, Wrath of God can't touch him (everyone agreed on that) (sort of), but Balance can? Unless Balance can't. Which makes no sense, because why does protection apply to things that don't directly affect them. Also what happens when the Knight becomes white and I have a Crusade ?

This was a very bad system. So the Rules Dudes sat down and paired Protection down to the four things which would allow it to cover 90% of the ways that cards directly affect each other: damaging each other, blocking each other, enchanting each other and targeting each other. All of those things are unquestionably one card directly interacting with another card in an easily-stoppable way. Destruction was not chosen as one of those things because pinpoint-destruction effects are covered by the targeting rule, while blocking mass destruction lands us right back in the hole we just climbed out of.

Later, other things came along, like Equipment (which is just enchanting for artifacts). These were grandfathered in, because they were a very logical extension of what protection already did, so no harm would be done by adding them to the list of forbidden actions. Other things, like exiling, weren't added for the same reason that destroy wasn't put in in the first place.

Does that answer your question?

Jul 26, 2012 -- 11:58AM, Enigma256 wrote:

but protected permanents can be haunted (if you find a way around targetting)
so stuff can be attached, except the 3 mentioned

Haunt doesn't attach.  The creature or spell is in exile when it haunts a creature.