If i attack a player with a character with zero STR and my opponent declares no defenders can i then boost the attacking players STR to ensure the challenge does not fizzle and indeed win the challenge ?

I assume yes but want to confirm.

thanks

Yes. You can initiate a challenge with 0 strength attackers. The challenge will only fizzle once it has no participating characters.

Int he example Daenarys mentioned, I was attakcing with a Shadow Parasite and had ways of both increasing his strength or reducing the stength of any defender (which would automatically increase Shadow Parasites strenght)

Player A declared no defenders

Player B was confused by my attack with zero strength

After player A declared no defenders, So in the following player action window, I boosted the shadow parasites strength ... at which point player B decided they wanted to support player A

I insisted the framework winds back to the declare defenders / support and then I used the player action to reduce the defending players strength ... so the challenge was still effectively unopposed and I had strength

There was some dispute as to whether the player action window even existed if there are no defenders

Well, the first problem is that if Player B says "I'm not going to support," then you boosted the STR of your attacker, it is too late for Player B to say "I change my mind; I want to support." Alternatively, you cannot use an action to boost the attacker's STR between Player A declaring no defenders and Player B deciding whether or not to support. Anyway, either you jumped the gun in boosting the STR, or Player B did something illegal by trying to say it was OK for him to "change his mind about supporting."

Supporting is not a player action. It is part of the framework action for declaring defenders in a multi-player game. You cannot go back and say, "You know what, I actually do want to declare this guy to support" any more than you can go back and say "You know what, if you're going to boost the attacker's STR, I want to declare this other character as a defender, too."

The framework does not "wind back" to allow the supporting. If you are kind enough to allow the game to "go back" because a player was confused about what was going on, it has to go back for all players, not just the confused one.

The player action window between declaring defenders and resolving the challenge exists whether defending characters are declared or not. The defending player cannot make everyone skip the opportunity to take actions before resolution by declaring no defenders.

Our game is a bit loose in terms of when we allow people to decide to redirect or support - the redirect even more so that the support ... there is a bit too much "wait and see" going on before deciding on actions that should have happened earlier in the framework

In this instance I was happy to wind the action back to player B declaring support but I was not going to allow him to have it both ways .. i.e. my player action, boosting the strength, could not happen before he declared supporters

(I was definately not boosting my strength until the player action window after defenders are declared)