Motley
Attach to an opponent's character.
Attached character's controller must give you 1 gold token from his or her gold pool each time he or she wishes to declare attached character as an attacker or defender, or trigger attached character's ability.

This came up in a game this evening:

Baratheon plays Motley on opposing character

Later, Baratheon takes control of said character

How does Motley affect the character?

Two possibilities:

1) Baratheon player must pay himself 1 gold in order to declare character as attacker or defender. i.e. character cannot attack if Baratheon player does not have any gold.

2) No effect.

Has there been a ruling on this?

I'll say answer 1 but not really sure. It seems the more logical to me.

I think Motley is discarded, (No longer meets requirement "opponent's character") but I'll wait for ktom's answer.

Rogue30 said:

My rules-fu is kinda rusty but this would be my answer as well...

Correct. Attachment restrictions must be true at all times.

When a character changes control, the attachments on it do not (unless the effect specifically says so). So the Baratheon player in the scenario controls both the character and the attachment. The attachment is no longer on "an opponent's character," so it is an illegal attachment and is discarded immediately. ~ So you see, it's just rules, not a ruling.

If the attachment did NOT fall off, then yes, the Baratheon player would need to pay himself 1 gold each time he attacked, etc. because of the attachment. It just ends up not being an issue because of the attachment restriction.

Hmm, I didn't think about it earlier, but we have two definitions used in game:

attached card's owner AND attached card's controller

So shouldn't "attach to an opponent's character" mean character owned by opponent?

Rogue30 said:

No. The default frame for reading cards in this game is always "control."

I mean, even the rules talk about declaring attackers and defenders with "your" characters. If we read everything from the reference of "own" instead of "control," wouldn't that mean there'd be no reason to take control of a character because your opponent could still use "his" characters to attack or defend?

If the frame of reference is "own," a card will say so. So "attach to an opponent's character" always means a character controlled by your opponent.