Forethought Amulet

Five mana to install, three mana every upkeep to maintain, and the payoff is that instants and sorceries dealing three or more damage to you are scaled down to two. The math tells the whole story of mid-90s damage prevention design: Wizards was still pricing protection as if a burn deck killing you through an Amulet was a serious threat model, and the rent clause exists because even a clunky damage-cap was treated as something the controller had to keep earning. The narrow trigger (only instants and sorceries, only damage to you, only the source-level reduction rather than total) is the giveaway. This is a card built against a specific imagined opponent: a red mage casting Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Disintegrate. It does nothing about creature damage, nothing about Hypnotic Specter, nothing about the combat step that was actually killing people in 1994. The reduction is also per-source rather than per-turn, so a doubled-up burn turn still gets through at two apiece. The early game's instinct around hate cards is laid bare here: expensive to cast, expensive to keep, and pointed at a threat narrow enough that the cost structure assumed you already knew which matchup you were boarding for. The Circle of Protection cycle did the same job for one mana; this tried to sell a partial, universal version, and the rate never made the trade worth it.