I've accumulated an assortment of questions to post all at once so i didn't have to pester you all with them one at a time:

1) Are bonuses granted by attachments or locations like Alchemist's Shop considered "character abilities," or are character abilities only in the character card's text box?

2) Areo Hotah knelt with the banner attached to make him vengeful could stand due to a lost challenge, and kneel to activate his ability in response to that same challenge, correct? Without the vengeful attachment, i could not use distinct mastery after the loss to stand him and then use his ability, since i would lose the chance to make responses by the time i could play Distinct Mastery, right?

3) Am i right that standing a character that is participating in a challenge does not, in itself, remove that character from the challenge? For instance, if i use Distinct Mastery on Areo Hotah after he is declared as a defender but before the challenge resolves, does he still count his strength as a defender and is then available to use his ability after (assuming i still lost by 4 or more)? Or if i use it on Osmund Kettleblack to kneel him again to make himself a 7 on defense?

4) If the last attacking character is killed or returned to someone's hand, does that end the challenge without winners and losers, or is the attacker attacking with 0 strength?

5) If i let a challenge go unopposed, am i still the "defender" for purposes of card effects?

Thanks!

thejibboo said:

2. Yeah...Ktom (and others) can break down the timing structure better than I can, but you have the right of it. Basically, keywords initiate before normal responses, with the exception that "save" and "cancel" responses happen first. All responses have to happen as part of the same action window...once you start using "Any Phase" or "Challenges" triggered effects, the opportunity to trigger "responses" has already passed.

3. Exactly right...once a character is in a challenge, that character cannot be removed from the challenge unless a card explicitly allows it. There are cards that say "stand and remove this character from the challenge," but if the effect doesn't include the "and remove," then merely standing the character doesn't take him out of the challenge. You can then use other effects to stand/kneel all you want while the challenge is still in progress.

4. If there are no attackers or defenders at the end of the challenge, then nobody wins, assuming card effects don't say otherwise. If, however, someone is attacking me, and I decide to block and then kill their attacking character (for example with Flame-Kissed), my own character that is still participating will win the challenge. Usually it isn't worth kneeling a character to defend if you know you're going to kill an opponent's character anyway, but it's something to remember in case you want to win for the renown or to trigger a "response" effect (for example, Support of the Kingdom). Note that in order to win a challenge, you have to have a character with STR participating in the challenge (in other words, STR can't be 0). So if someone attacks with a 1-STR and I play Forever Burning, the Forever Burning doesn't kill or remove the character from the challenge (having 0 STR does not automatically kill a character in this game), but if at the end of the challenge that character's STR hasn't been somehow increased above 0, the attacker can't win (either nobody wins or the defender wins, depending on whether or not a character with STR defended).

5. Yes...so you'll be able to trigger those Martell effects that say "after you lose as a defender." The "as defender" is, of course, included just to make sure you don't trigger the effect after you attacked.

Thanks a lot for going out of your way to give such extra-clear answers Twn2dn, as it hadn't even crossed my mind to question the assumption that keywords were character abilities. We've definitely been playing been under the impression that immune to character abilities protected from stealth and deadly!

Keep in mind that it is only effects that grant a character text (like Lost Oasis or The Dragon's Fire) that is considered a character ability. Everything else is just an effect that works on the character.

For example, an attachment that says "attached character gets +2 STR;" that +2 STR is not considered a character ability. It is simply an attachment ability that is working on the character.