Questions on irreducible damage

OK, I've played this game a lot and i camt believe this never came up before in any of our game sessions. But im confident the forum will have an answer :)

If a card says that a target deals X irreducible damage, is the end result of the damage irreducible, or only X amount?

For example, let's say there is a card that's says "Mister Fixer deals a villain target 1 irreducible damage and currently there are two active actions that increase damage dealt by Mister Fixer by 1 so his total damage output is 3, but the villain has a damage reduction of 1. Does the villain:

a) take 3 damage because the entire damage instance is irreducible?

b take 2 damage because the reduction does apply to amounts higher than 1?

Follow up question:

If the original cards says "Mister Fixer deals 1 target 1 irreducible melee damage, but there is an active card that increases damage dealt by Mister Fixer by 1 AND changes that damage type to fire, does it then lose its irreducibility since it is no longer melee damage (and therefore no longer matching what the original card said)?

Irreducible can be increased, but not decreased. No matter how much you increase it, it will never go back down, so Fixer would be dealing 3 damage.

Alternating Tiger Claw says something along the lines that all his damage is Irreducible. So no matter what type of damage it is, it will always be irreducible if he is the one dealing the damage. And if I card ever comes into existance that changes the type of damage, I would still say it would be irreducible, as it it more of a subtype.

a) and no, I believe. Irreducible damage can be increased but not reduced, so even if it had been pushed up you couldn't reduce it, and to the second point, irreductible is a seperate quality to the damage type; the latter can be changed without affecting the former.

EDIT: Gah! Ninja'd!

Cool, thanks folks. Knew you'd all come through quickly. 

On the subject of irreducible damage, I have a quick inquiry about Plague Rat, perhaps the master of irreducible damage since he does some every turn. If he's got Twist the Ether on him, this says that Visionary can choose the type and then either increase or reduce the damage by one. It says either, not may (as far as I remember, unless it does say "may" in which case ignore this whole question ;)), so if the damage is irreducible you can't choose to reduce it, right? So Twist can only increase Rat's irreducible damage? And likewise if an Infected hero has Twist on them, I suppose…

You can still choose to reduce the damage, it just wouldn't work.

How is this different from a player choosing to destroy a card when they have no cards to destroy? One of Iron Legacy’s card I think, I don’t have my decks now.

To me, choosing to destroy a card or discard a card also includes choosing the card to destroy/discard.  So if there is no card, that is not an option.

Now, one of the disturbing things about 'ruling 15' was that it called into question things like Twist the Ether choosing to reduce irreducible damage.  But I think the plan is to reword the applicable cards and we can still go with the assumption that players can choose an effect (like reduce damage) even if another effect will cancel it.

In other context, if an attack goes in the lines of "the heroe with the lowest hp loses an ongoing effect" and there are two heroes with the lowest hp, one with an ongoing effect, the other withou ongoing effects, according to rules, page 8, in case of tied hp the players chose the attacked heroe and from other post somewhere here in the forum, it was the consense that it is perfectly legal to chose the heroe without ongoing effects as the target of the attack, efectively nullying it.

The same logic should apply here, I think…