by karishi
A Stormreaver that gets hit by the explosion of a Fireball doesn't wound the caster. The explosion damage is untyped - neither melee nor ranged - so Stormreaver's bit about still wounding you for attacking it with ranged doesn't matter. Also, Fireball's wording carefully avoids saying that you're attacking any of the other monsters. You just put hit counters on them.So in practice it's even less of an issue than it appears.
The primary reason for the ruling was thematic. It just makes no sense that I go unharmed by Lord Winter just because I successfully backstabbed his underlings earlier in the round.
And that's the issue with Thieving Strike. If you can only take 1 Wound/round, a card that replaces that one Wound with a Coin is really powerful and makes it easy to load up on Strikes for huge, easy-to-maintain (because you're never taking Wounds) damage potential.
With Flanking, you often get situations where you just can't get the bonus damage because the monster is within a few points of dead anyway. If you're able to spread out your attacks with impunity, the math of getting bonus damage out of Flanking becomes a lot easier, which is unnecessary; Flanking's easily one of the most powerful cards the heroes can buy - a bonus damage card that can work several times a turn and usually works at least once, basically turning a prowess into a hit - so it doesn't need any help. Having just a few more situations where you can't wring extra hits out of it is fine by me.
Flanking and Thieving Strike in tandem under the old rules were even more powerful and even less thematically appropriate. You'd attack Monsters A and B first, let your allies mop them up with your bonus Flanking damage and lay a hit on Monster C, then you'd Thieving Strike Monster C and take a Coin instead of any damage for all of it.