Greetings!
I wanted to ask some clarification regarding his ability to discard cards to get a discount and how that effect may or may not be used at will.
During a game, i really needed to get an Intrigue challenge through, and had no standing icons. So, i used Hizdhar ability to discard a begging brother, in order to put it into play with Flea Bottom, and initiate the Intrigue challenge. That is where my opponent stopped me, telling me that i was not able to do that if i don't have a card to play with the discount, because then the effect wouldn't be able to successfully resolve and thus the whole play was invalid, and complained that otherwise Hizdhar would be a Flea Bottom fodder. He compared his ability to that of Obara Sand (SoD), saying that is a similar situation: you can't return a sand snake to hand if you don't put a character with her ability afterwards.
On the other hand, i compare Hizdahr ability with the reducer location or characters: You can pay the cost but if you don't marshal anything that is able to use that discount, then nothing happens, you just paid a cost and that's it. I even looked at the rules reference and found this: 'When a non-targeting effect attempts to engage a number of entities (such as “draw 3 cards” or “search the top 10 cards of your deck”) that exceeds the number of entities that currently exist in the specified game area, the effect engages as many entities as possible', If such rule is applicable for this situation, then the number of entities would be zero, and would make the aforementioned play legal.
Any insight would be welcome, i'll await for your response!
Thanks in advance.