There's been some confusion over at agotcards.org on how these effects play out:

The Last River

Challenges: Kneel The Last River to give each participating character without a <military> icon -1 STR until the end of the challenge.

Would this affect characters that become participating characters after the event has been played?

And a similar question:

Dragon Support

Challenges: Choose a participating character you control. Until the end of the challenge, that character gains melee. Then, each participating character controlled by an opponent gets -1 STR until the end of the phase.

I was pretty sure the effects create a lasting effect "on" the character participating at the moment the event resolves, so that future participating characters will not be affected, but people have confused me with various statements and I need clarification.

maybe its "each characters participating in this challenge control by opponent gets-1........"

db is correct. The difference is between the "each participating character" verbiage - which only has meaning in a triggered effect when the effect is triggered - and simply "participating characters" - which would create a global lasting effect.

ktom said:

So both cards in my post only affect the characters participating when the effect is triggered.

What if Dragon Support read "Then, participating characters controlled by an opponent get -1 Str until the end of the phase"? Would any opponent's character, for the rest of the phase, get -1 Str whenever they participated in a challenge (and no reduction while not participating in one)?

Yes. Within the context of a triggered effect, "each" limits the effect to those characters with the appropriate status at the time of resolution. Without "each," the general lasting effect would be created as you have just described.

And what's the difference between those cards and Robb LoW?

The condition based on status ("participating") rather than characteristic ("with that trait").

ktom said:

But does it work differently? It also says "each".

Rogue30 said:

1. When the effect is triggered and figuring out which characters belong in the "each character" category is based on the status at the time the triggered effect is resolved, the lasting effect will only apply to those characters with the appropriate status at the time the effect resolves. This is because a status carries with it a connotation of transience, and therefore time dependency.

2. When the effect is triggered and figuring out which characters belong in the "each character" is based on a characteristic of the character, the lasting effect will apply to anything with that characteristic over its entire duration. This is because a characteristic does not carry the same connotation of transience and is therefore not time dependent.

3. When the effect is triggered and there is no "each," a more general application is appropriate because there is no implication of limitation through the use of the word "each." (Granted, since this has the same practical result as #2, it is tempting to drop #1 out of consideration altogether out of a sense of consistency.)

Passive effects, of course, are different because the timing context of passive effects are themselves different from triggered effects.

This is more about English reading and language-in-context than it is about the rules of the game. Feel free to send it to Nate. He may disagree with the way I have differentiated and explained things here.

Ok, so every native speaker player will tell me exactly the same, right?

You've read these boards long enough to know that that's a ridiculous notion. Everyone? AGREE? Surely not.

However, I do concur with ktom's explanation.

Rogue30 said:

Given what's said above, is anything stopping me from paying 10 gold for The Lion's Cunning if I only have 2 participating HL characters?

"Challenges: Pay X gold from your gold pool to give X participating HL characters +X STR until the end of the challenge."

Rogue30 said:

Great question.

Pretend the event was written like this:

"Challenges: Pay X gold from your gold pool to give +X STR to X participating HL characters until the end of the challenge."

It's logically the same thing I believe, so I'm thinking the effects do not depend on each other and only on the Pay X gold.

Rogue30 said:

The effect cannot be global because it has a set number of participating characters that it is allowed to work on (X). And because those X characters are determined at the time of initiation/resolution of this triggered effect, you cannot, say, pay 3 gold for +3 to your 2 participating characters, then jump Greatjon in and make him your third character. So in line with the earlier parts of this thread, the X characters affected by this card are determined when the card is initiated/resolved, so the effect is specific and can only apply to characters participating at that time.

The larger question comes from overpaying or, more exactly, how X is determined. If X is determined solely by how much gold you pay, then yes, you could over pay, give 2 participating characters +10, and let the other 8 characters that are supposed to be affected go un-defined (ie, "fizzle"). However, if X is determined as much by the number of participating characters it is intended to be applied, to, there would be a maximum of the number of participating characters at the time the event is triggered.

I'm going to say that X is defined as much by the number of characters it will be applied to as by the number of gold paid. I come to that conclusion because of the following scenario: Let's say you only have 2 participating characters - attacking. Your opponent has 2 participating characters - defending, and also HL. You pay 10 gold for The Lion's Cunning to give your 2 participating HL characters +10 STR. But since there are at least 8 other participating characters who are supposed to get the benefit, wouldn't you HAVE to give your opponent's 2 defending HL characters the +10 as well? Conversely, with your 2 participating HL characters, couldn't you still pay just 1 gold to give just one of them +1 STR?

So it appears to me that the X gold and the X participating characters are not independent. X applies to both, and both are considered in establishing the number for the variable. So you couldn't pay more gold than there are participating characters just to make the "+X STR" number bigger, too because X applies to all when you are determining the variable, not just when you are applying it.

Granted, this conclusion would be a hell of a lot easier to see/defend if the wording on the card was "pay X gold to choose X participating characters..."

ktom said:

This sentence confused me a bit. Wouldn't this be something I could do? The rest of the paragraph is outlining ways the event probably won't work, and then this sentences' phrasing reads like it might be pointing to another way the event can't be played.

alpha5099 said:

Sorry. You are correct that this is a way the event should work. I was acknowledging that and trying to get the point across that it seems "X" can be anything up to the total number of participating HL characters, but not more than that. Or, more to the point, that X is defined at initiation in part by looking at the practical (as opposed to potential) number of characters it will apply to.

I used the word "conversely" at the front of the sentence to try to indicate the transition from "not sure it works" to "pretty sure it does work" for this part. It obviously sounded clearer in my head than on the screen.

A similar ability is on the Abandoned Forge:

"Response: After Abandoned Forge comes out of Shadows,pay X gold to search your deck for X Weapon attachments,and attach them to Abandoned Forge."

Now I know there is not a clear benefit from paying, say 7 gold here if you only have 6 weapons in your deck, but let's say you do because you forgot you only had 6 in your deck... is there some "cannot do this" behind it? So if I paid 7 gold, does that mean if I don't have at least 7 weapons in my deck, I don't get any weapons because it didn't meet the requirement of X?

I am just trying to play the devil's advocate and making sure the way the text is written is consistent when played.

The way the Lion's Cunning is written, I am finding it difficult to see the dependency on the number of HL characters. The explanation makes sense to me, but I just don't see the dependency. If there was some ability in effect like "This character's STR cannot be raised.", would the ability to raise character STR also be a dependency based on the way it's written?

What do you think?

Bomb said:

I agree. I think the omission of "choose X participating characters" means that you can overpay. If that means that your opponent ends up getting extra STR on his HL cards, well, that is how the card is worded.

The difference between the two cards that creates dependency in Lion's Cunning but not in Abandoned Forge is the aspect of hidden information. You cannot use an unknown quantity (the number of Weapon attachments available in your deck) to define a variable. You can (and probably should) use a known quantity (the number of currently participating HL characters) to define a variable.

If a HL character's STR "cannot be raised," it would be removed from any and all parts of consideration for Lion's Cunning because of the age-old "'cannot' means 'don't even try'" reasoning.

I agree it could be worded better and that interpretation here is ambiguous. Send it in to FFG to be sure.