Let's say I lose a military challenge (initiated by an opponent) and my opponent has a claim value of 2 on his revealed plot card. I have a single character in play plus its attached duplicate.

Would I be right in thinking that I choose my one and only character, discard the duplicate (triggered response effect), leave the 'original' character alive and then say I've paid the claim?

Only it came up in a game today and the counter argument that the claim can affect the character and his duplicate was put forward, i.e. the kills are resolved one at a time. That doesn't sit right with me so I thought I'd get it cleared up once and for all.

Laban Shrewsbury said:

You are correct, the kills are all resolved at the same time, and each character can only be chosen for claim once.

To back up jmccarthy's answer, you can point people to the Core Rule booklet. There is a section about "high military claim" explaining that each character can only be chosen once (and thus only needs to be saved once).

How would deadly interact with that? Say you have one charecter and his duplicate attached. Your opponent attacks with a deadly charecter. If you block would you lose the duplicate to claim and the charecter to deadly?

Yes, you would lose both the duplicate (to claim) and the character (to Deadly).

More to the point, a character can only be chosen once for each effect. Claim, not matter how high, is one effect, so each character can only be chosen once. Deadly is a second effect, so that one character you chose for claim can be chosen (and might have to be...) once for the completely separate kill effect of Deadly.

So, to further clarify, if you have your character+duplicate and another character in play, then you would remove the duplicate and kill the other character? I'm assuming in the original poster's example, that he was able to get out of killing the character since discarding the duplicate was one kill, but since there was no other valid character and you already affected the one character by removing it's duplicate, you couldn't affect it again. Right?

Right, if the claim is 2 and you have 2 characters, you have to design both of them for the claim, even if one can be saved.

From a Timeframe point of view, does the Claim Satisfaction comes first and the Deadly effect second?

Yes, when a challenge resolved, you do the claim first thing (well if the attacker wins).

michel3105 said:

When resolving a challenge, the order is always:

1. Determine the winner

2. Settle claim (regardless of the type of challenge)

3. Award "Unopposed" if it has been earned

4. Award "Renown" if it has been earned

5. Settle any passives (including Deadly)

6. Take turns triggering appropriate Response effects.