If a player attacks with Arianne Martell and his opponent defends with Eddard Stark ( from Lords of Winter), what is the claim?

Relevant card text:

Arianne Martell

While Arianne Martell is attacking, raise the Claim value on your revealed plot card by 1.

Eddard Stark

While Eddard Stark is defending, lower the attacking player's claim to 0.

There may be another, more complete way of looking at this - but I'm fairly certain the end result in this case is that claim becomes 0.

If you look at the timing flowchart in the FAQ,

Martell initiates a challenge, declares attackers by kneeling them (Framework action)
After that framework action, passives trigger - including Arianne Martell's claim modifier.
There's an opportunity for player actions
Then the use of stealth (which should *really* be used on Ned, at this point!) (Framework action)
Then declaring blockers (Framework Action)
Now Ned's passive triggers - he's defending, and he then reduces the claim to 0.

It's not a question of order. Both of these effects are constant/lasting effects, not passive effects. As such, you add them together and apply the result (rather than having the First Player, or any other method for that matter, choose an order). It's like STR. It doesn't matter what order the +/- modifiers become applicable, they don't preempt each other - you have to consider them all.

When you add these together, Arianne says "+1 to the count" while Eddard says "no matter what the count is, the end result is 0." When you put those together, Arianne ups the count, while Eddard says "the end count is 0." So effectively, Eddard wins.

Note that if Eddard looked more like Blockade (ie: the claim on the attackers plot card is reduced to 0), then he would not be lowering the final count to 0, but only affecting the contribution of the ink on the actual plot card. In that situation, Arianne would "win."

Thanks for the answer.

-Istaril said:

I totally agree with that (she could also attack in intrigue, which Eddard lacks). It's a hypothetical situation, so for the sake of argument, assume Eddard was given stealth (Devious Intentions, for instance) or Arianne lost it (hello Arya). Arianne's effect also could be replaced by Rorge's (attacker's revealed plot's claim is increased by 1 for the first challenge each round), or anything else that increases claim.

Khudzlin said: