Three situations:

1) Beric Dondarrion cannot be killed. He has a dupe. Can my opponent choose Beric, and use the dupe for claim soak?

2) Beric Dondarrion cannot be killed. My opponent plays House Umber Berserkers (When House Umber Berserkers comes into play,each player must choose a character he or she controls. Kill each chosen character.) Can Beric be chosen?

3) I have Stannis Baratheon (Lord, Noble crest) and Cersei Lannister (Lord, Noble crest). No other characters in play. My opponent plays Red Wedding (When revealed,the opponent to your left chooses 1 Lord and 1 Lady character,if able. Then,you must choose and kill 1 of those characters. The other claims 2 power.) I reveal The Power of Blood (Nobles can't be killed). What result?

Edit: Cersei is a lady.

~depending on the definition. ;-)

jmccarthy said:

1. No. He must choose a different character to die for claim. You cannot choose a character to die if he can't die.

2. Not 100% sure about this one. I would say yes because you choose Beric to satisfy the first part of the effect, then trying to kill him via the second part of the effect (which fizzles).

3. Both Stannis and Cersei are chosen but none can die. Since you didn't kill "one" character, no one claims power because there's no "other" character.

I wonder if I got everything right

From the FAQ:

(4.3) The word "cannot"
...
A character that cannot be killed/saved/etc.
may not be chosen for that effect.

1. So it doesn't matter that you want to use the dupe to save him. He cannot be killed, so he cannot be chosen to be killed. As we've said many times on the board, "cannot" means "don't even try." Not only can Beric not be killed, nothing can even try to kill him.

2. There is no difference between "Choose and kill a character." and "Choose a character. Kill that character." The Berserkers are trying to kill the character. Beric is an ineligible choice for kill effects. "Cannot" means "don't even try."

3.After the Lord and Lady are chosen by the opponent, you are not able to choose either one of them to die. So the "other" one cannot claim power. Effect fizzles.

Thanks for the answers

ktom said:

From the FAQ:

Target

The target identifies what card or cards the
(event or) character ability's effect is applied to. The
word choose is always used to denote a
target. If a character ability does not have the
word "choose," then it does not have a target.
Viserion's ability has a target in "choose (and
kill) a kneeling character." If the ability read
"Stand all characters," then it would not be
considered to have a target (because it does
not include the word "choose.")

So while there may be a linguistic difference, there is not a difference as far as targeting in the game is concerned. When you choose a target for an effect, you are choosing to apply the effect to that card. The effect of the Berserkers is to kill the (chosen) characters. Therefore, you are choosing the character to die - something that "cannot be killed" prevents you from doing - not choosing the character and, "oh, btw, incidentally, it dies."

@ktom: I understand your reasoning behind 1 and 2, but not 3. The Red Wedding (When revealed,the opponent to your left chooses 1 Lord and 1 Lady character,if able. Then,you must choose and kill 1 of those characters. The other claims 2 power.) is one of these cards that makes use of the word "then."

So, in order to get to the killing part, you have to choose a lord and a lady. Then stuff happens.

But the second part of the card effectively reads:

1) One person dies.

2) The other person gets power.

The card doesn't read:

1) One person dies, then the other person gets power.

It seems to me to be two unrelated consequences of the choosing. I know you are pointing to the word "other," but I don't see that as being a synonym for "then". To me it seems to only be a way of differentiating between the two chosen characters.

jmccarthy said:

THAT'S the problem I'm pointing to here. I'm not saying "other" is being used as a synonym for "then" in this ability. What I'm saying is that since "other" effectively means "the one not chosen" in this ability, if you are unable to define which character dies by choice, you are unable to define which one gets power as the one not chosen, too.

While I was initially skeptical of the House Umber wording (thank you ktom for the targeting info, by the way!), I agree with Ktom entirely on the Red Wedding - there's no linguistic ambiguity here. If you can't choose one to die, there can't be an "other" to claim power.

So is there an effective difference between these two sentences?

Choose a character you control. Kill the chosen character.

Choose a character you control. Then, kill the chosen character.

Bomb said:

So for "You Killed the Wrong Dwarf":

"Any phase: Choose and kneel a non-
noble character, Then, that character claims 1
power."

You cannot select a character who has been chosen by, say, Shireen Baratheon's ability since they can't claim power?

Bomb said:

So if the character is "cannot be knelt," then it is an illegal target because kneeling is the direct purpose of the choice. Claiming the power is incidental to the kneeling. That part of the effect will fizzle, but since it is not the direct application of the effect/choice, it does not prohibit the choice for the kneeling effect.

ktom said:

If claiming power is not the direct purpose of that choice, could you choose a character that had written: "cannot claim power" ?

sandokas said:

The difference here is that claiming the power is contingent upon the character successfully kneeling, whereas in the "Choose a character. Then, kill that character" example, the kill is not contingent upon anything (other than the choice). Note that in the "You Killed the Wrong Dwarf" example, the kneeling is not contingent upon anything other than the choice.

"Cost: If you cannot pay the cost of a character ability, you may not triger its effect. NOT ALL CHARACTER ABILITIES HAVE A COST"

"Target: The word choose is always used to denote a target. (...) If you do not have a valid target for the character ability, you may not trigger its effect."

In my view kneeling is part of the cost, choose is a keyword in the text meaning that a character that cannot claim power would not be elligible for YKtWD.

Do you have maybe a easier for me to understand example on why this is not so?

Thanks,

Costs are always in the form "do X to do Y" (see pp. 11-12 of the FAQ) like "Kneel a character to choose and kill another character." Here kneeling a character is the cost and killing a character is the effect. Contrast this form with the wording of You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! Abilities with the word "Then" have a second effect that is only resolved if the first effect resolves successfully, but that first effect is not considered a cost.

How do we know that "You Killed the Wrong Dwarf" is a cost for effect event? What if I want to use it to simply kneel an opponents character even though that character will claim one power? You are not allowed to use opponents cards to pay for a cost of an effect, but one could argue the effect of the event is to kneel an opponents character even with the power claim.

Yes, usually You've Killed the Wrong Dwarf! is used to kneel an opponent's character with the "cost" of giving that opponent a temporary power (usually you plan on killing that character later in the game so that the power goes away). Occasionally, you kneel your own character, usually when you have 14 power already, to "steal" a win. It is a flexible card.

sandokas said:

Cost is the pre-requisite for initiating the effect. The kneeling in You Killed... is not a pre-requisite for initiating the effect. You can initiate the effect without kneeling anything (by choosing a character that is already kneeling, for example - even though that would be a pretty dumb play). So kneeling the character is not a cost.

Don't confuse the "pre-then" part of an effect with a cost for the "post-then" part of an effect just because the "pre-then" part must be successful before the "post-then" can be, too. Effect B being contingent upon effect A does not make effect A a cost.

You are right, if it was a cost you wouldn't be able to target enemy characters either.

Even in the faq i found a reference to the card where they explain that kneeling is an effect of the card, not the cost of it.

Thank you!

ktom said:

I'm resurrecting this thread because I was telling my friend the only reason HUB can't choose Beric as the target of their effect is because they lack the "then," proviso that would otherwise make it a ridiculously good combo. I found this thread to show him why HUB can't kill Beric, but you also seem to think I am wrong regarding the "then," stipulation.

I think you are wrong in this, and I believe this can be demonstrated by a contradiction in this thread. You say that, to satisfy The Red Wedding plot, two noble characters can be chosen by the player to your left, even if the Power of Blood is revealed. All that it asks of them is a choice. The "then," effect fizzles because of PoB, but you would agree that the choosing, at least, still happens.

This means the choosing is its own effect, and thus Beric is a legitimate target of Bomb's second scenario: "Choose a character. Then, kill that character". To argue otherwise is to argue that there is a manifest difference between "Then, kill that character" and "Then, you must choose and kill one of those characters. The other claims 2 power" on the basis that the "direct purpose" of the two scenarios is slightly different. Since the rules don't contain any proviso for the "direct purpose" of card effects, I think this argument is spurious at best.

Circadia said:

Choosing is not its own effect. It is part of the initiation of the effect. So there is no difference between "Choose a character. Kill that character" and "Choose and kill a character" because in both constructions, there is one intiation, one resolution, and one effect. The only way that "choose" can be "its own effect" is if there is a separate initiation between the effects.

Thing is, the "then" part of an effect does have a separate initiation from the part before the "then." We know this because the costs associated with a "then" effect are not paid until after the part before the "then" is confirmed successful (like the 2-influence with Maester Wendamyr), the absence of a target required by the part after the "then" does not prevent you from triggering the part before the "then" (eg, you could still bring Meera out of Shadows with her effect, even if there were no other cards that could be chosen to be blanked), and there is a separate, special opportunity to save from the "then" effect (as outlined in the FAQ). So, anything that says "then" is considered to have a separate initiation. Therefore, there is a difference between "Choose a character. Then kill that character." and "Choose and kill a character" because the "then" construction has, by definition, two separate initiations - one for choosing and one for killing the character - while the construction without the "then" has only one initiation.

The rules for "cannot" say that an the card is an ineligible target for what it "cannot" and, whether targeted or not, ignores the application of what it "cannot." We are dealing, here, with the choice of target, which happens at the point of initiation. If there are two separate initiations, it is possible for the "cannot" card to be a legal target for one initiation, but not for the second.

House Umber Berserkers has a single initiation. There is no "then" construction. It doesn't matter that it could have had the word "then" on the card - it doesn't. So you are not allowed to choose Beric, or any other "cannot be killed" character as a target for that passive ability. The word "then" makes a difference in comparison to "cannot" because it creates a separate initiation within the resolution of the overall effect - changing what the card is being directly targeted for by each part of the effect.

ktom said:

That is not what you said to Bomb: you said there is no difference:

ktom said:

Just to clarify: were you wrong when you said this?

Also, from this:

ktom said:

Am I to understand that, yes, Beric can be chosen by an effect which reads "Choose a character you control. Then, kill the chosen character"?