Bewitching Leechcraft
Most tap-down Auras hold a creature still and stop there; this one negotiates. The prohibition on untapping looks absolute, but it carries a self-administered escape hatch: during the controller's untap step, if it has a +1/+1 counter, its controller doesn't get a choice. Untapping is mandatory, so the replacement effect fires on its own, stripping one counter to pry the creature loose for a single turn. That mandatory clause is what splits the card into two behaviors depending on the target. On a creature with no counters, it is a flat lock indistinguishable from a permanent tap: the thing never comes back. On a counter-fattened threat, it converts into an involuntary decay, shaving a point of power each time it must untap as the creature claws its way to an untap it can't refuse and can't decline. The quiet asymmetry is that the same resource making a creature dangerous is the resource it is forced to burn to act, and it burns whether or not the controller wants to preserve those counters. That last point matters against decks where +1/+1 counters carry riders or thresholds: this Aura doesn't just stall the body, it erodes the counter count each time the creature would untap. Priced like a Pacifism variant and vulnerable to enchantment removal like one, its distinction is entirely in how it treats what it enchants, not what it costs.
