Hello!

If I attack with a character with zero STR and no defender is assigned, do I lose the challange, or is it a "stand-off" without any winner?

For example, if I attack with a STR 1 character and my opponent has Joffrey out (my characters get -1 STR), and I have Darkstar on the table, do I get to draw one card if no defender is assigned? (those are all CCG cards as far as I know...).

You did not win nor did you lose. We use the term fizzles.

The challenge resolves but there's no winner/loser.

I suppose keywords and abilities still apply. Why I am asking this:

1. if I attack with 0 STR I may have some buffs to raise strenght and win the challenge. So my opponent chooses to defend in order to prevent this. if i play an event which grants deadly (like I'm you Writ small) i still do not win the challenge but i have deadly so after the challenge finishes my opp has to kill his character

2. I want to use a 0 STR character together with other characters in a challenge in order to use his keywords/abilities/responses

I am looking forward for this clalrifications to be included in next FAQ (and many many others, of course )

appologies for this already being possible answered but forum search in all FFG...you know...

cacamaca said:

Yes. Remember that the game does not care what a character's STR is until the challenge is actually being resolved. Nor do the rules create any sort of STR threshold for a keyword to work. The instructions for resolving Stealth, Deadly, Renown, etc. don't say anything about character STR, so if a character has 0 STR, it does not "turn off" any of its keywords, text, etc. (Well, Intimidate gets pretty stupid on a 0 STR character, but other than that....)

cacamaca said:

Correct. Resolving Deadly doesn't care anything about winning or losing the challenge, or about character STR. The challenge just has to resolve (which it does). In fact, with this move, if you do it right, "I'm You Writ Small" is the buff for the 0 STR character.

cacamaca said:

Sure. Happens all the time when an opponent's Carrion Birds are at 0 STR because of the Winds of Winter plot. Use them anyway to get the Stealth and the "shuffle into deck" ability, even if they have no STR to contribute to the total attacking STR.

cacamaca said:

I am looking forward for this clalrifications to be included in next FAQ (and many many others, of course )

Don't bet on it. They don't often put in clarifications for things that can be reasoned from the rules - even if you have to hunt up three or four rules and put them together. It might become a "Frequently Asked Question" at the end, but that's about all I see this particular question getting in an FAQ.

I beg your pardon but i really cannot reason from the rules "A player can attack with 0 STR". It says only you cannot win a challenge with less than 1STR.

Common sense tells me it should not be allowed to use a 0 STR character in a challenge. I mean this character it's dead, crippled, drunk, whatever. So you should not be allowed to initiate an attack or choose a defender with 0 STR.

Following this logic:

1. You should not be able to use the attackers keywords and abilities if their STR was lowered to 0 before Framework action 3 (stealth targets and defenders). If your stealth attackers have 0 STR right before you use stealth and I choose my defenders i suppose you are crippled and cannot participate in the challenge so you cannot stealth me. Probably only Jackie Chan can stealth with crippled legs but this is AGoT so..

2. If you can buff your 0 lowered characters before Framework 4 (declare winner) it makes sense you get back all your keywords/abilities you were not able to use before framework 3 (stealth being obsolete and probaly others).

btw: if I stand Renly Baratheon (core) during a challenge he is still participating in that challenge? Because if i want to use him in dominance my last chance to stand him is before framework 4 "determine winner".

The only thing required for declaring an attacker/defender is to be standing and to have the right icon for the challenge. STR is only used to Resolve the challenge not to check for partcipation. So the rules are clear in that STR is not a consideration for being able to attack.

cacamaca said:

Why indicate that you cannot win a challenge with less than 1 STR if you cannot attack/defend with less than 1 STR? Why print characters with 0 STR and icons if they cannot be declared as attacker/defender (since so many pumps only work on characters that are already participating)?

The logic comes in that since the only limitations the rules put on a character declared as an attacker or defender is the challenge icon and that it must be standing at the time of declaration, there is nothing illegal in declaring a 0 STR character as an attacker or defender. The reasoning comes in that the only place in the entire challenge flow that a character's STR is referenced is when you determine the winner/loser of the challenge. And because that STR can change quite a bit before you get there, you'll start running into "retroactive" situations if you try to impose limitations on 0 STR characters that are not specified in the rules or as part of card effects..

cacamaca said:

Common sense or no, it is an assumption. If 0 STR shut down the character completely, that should be printed in the rules somewhere, and should have come up long before now.

cacamaca said:

Depends on how you look at it. 0 STR does not automatically kill a character in this game. You need card effects to specifically say "if a character has STR 0, kill/discard it." So 0 STR does not necessarily mean "completely ineffectual." If you look at the STR characteristic as a measure of challenge effectiveness instead of physical fitness, you go a lot further with this. I may be totally ineffectual as a fighter, but that doesn't stop me from picking fights. I get my butt handed to me when I do, but it doesn't stop me. Heck, the source material (GRRM's books) are full of situations where people who think they are clever, but in fact have no real understanding of what they are doing, participate in political maneuvering, power plays and even physical battles. They could be said to have 0 STR. Heck, Doran Martell can barely move, but does he have 0 STR when it comes to intrigue pr power plays? He is a master maneuverer in the Game of Thrones. Physical fitness does not necessarily equate to "challenge STR."

cacamaca said:

Why? Where in the rules for Stealth does it say that the character must have STR greater than 0 to use the keyword? Again, looking at STR in terms of effectiveness instead of physical fitness, an ineffectual person can stealth by, or be ignored, by a defender just fine, but still have no idea what to do once they get to their destination.

cacamaca said:

Again, where in the rules does it say that if a character has STR of 0, all of their keywords/abilities are turned off? And if this were true, what is the point of printing characters with 0 STR and abilities in their text box (Jeyne Poole for example)? I have to buff her before I can use her?

That's where this logic falls apart; it relies on the assumption that when a character has 0 STR, it becomes effectively blank. But this is not supported anywhere in the rules, and is actually contradicted by a number of cards.

This is a very nuanced game. One of the most important things in getting through it is that common sense assumptions that are not supported by the rules do not carry the same weight as the rules, so imposing additional, undocumented restrictions usually doesn't work.

cacamaca said:

First, no. He is not. Once a character is participating in a challenge, it can only be removed by an effect that specifically removes it - or by removing it from play before the challenge resolution. While you must kneel a character to declare it as an attacker/defender (barring card effects), the instructions for challenge resolution say to count the total STR of the participating characters, creating no restriction on whether those participating characters have to be knelt or not.

Second, during the challenge is not your last chance to stand him before challenge resolution. You are no doubt looking at the flowchart and seeing challenge resolution flow right into switching Active Players, which goes right into ending the phase if every player has been the active player. However, from the framework for resolving the challenge, there is a line back to the Player Action WIndow before initiating the challenge labeled something like "Active Player's next challenge opportunity." You always follow this line back up to the Player Action Window, even if the last Active Player has initiated all 3 of his/her standard challenges. There is always the possibility for a card effect, so the Active Player isn't out of "challenge opportunities" until they actually do not/cannot legally initiate a challenge in that "initiate challenge" window. It is not particularly well drawn on the chart, but there will always be another Player Action Window between the end of (what ends up being) the last challenge and continuing to the end of the phase.

as always ktom is very detailed .

Thanks for the answer and sorry if I was misunderstood. I did not want to start a fight.

I didn't mean to say that 0 STR att/def is illegal (poor wording from me, sorry), i just wanted to say that for me it makes more sense if the Game rules would've been designed like this: to consider a 0 STR character as "crippled" (not dead).

ktom said:

So...which is the answer: "First, no. He is not (still participarting)"??? or

He is participating, because it wasn'r removed by a specific effect. (i suppose is this one)

ktom said:

aaaa...makes more sense now. thank you

cacamaca said:

I apologize if I was too vehement in my reply. Ultimately, I was simply trying to say that assuming additional limitations that are not detailed in the rules will ultimately cause difficulties in a game like this where there are so many dynamic situations.

cacamaca said:

And I'm not sure I agree with this. It might make more sense for the military challenge, where we picture armies or sword fights, but not necessarily for the intrigue or power challenges when the source material is taken into account. Doran Martell, Tyrion Lannister and Varys are not what we would call the most fit of characters. At least one of them is indeed "crippled" in one way or another. But they are more effective at the political maneuvering and exercise of power than many of the most physically fit characters. So across all challenge types, I think "effectiveness" at imposing their plans is a better design for the STR characteristic than a pure physical correlation.

cacamaca said:

Sorry. Poor wording in relation to the original question on my part. "No, he is not removed from the challenge just because he stands" was my intention. The idea is to draw a distinction between an effect that "stands" a character and one that "removes" it from a challenge.