After a character's STR is lowered, return the Hound to his owner's hand.

This appears to model his fear of fire, but since the wording of the card does not care what the cause of the lowered STR is (i.e. lowered by an effect), one could argue that his return to hand effect applies when a character's STR returns to normal after being raised. Say you have The Hound and the Guard at Riverrun in play, and you just defended a challenge with the Guard. Does The Hound go back to your hand after the Guard's STR returns to normal at the end of the challenge?

sabrefox said:

sabrefox said:

Said another way, since you always start from scratch when determining a character's STR, what its STR was the last time you checked is a non-factor.

So, the loss of a +X modifier is not considered to be lowering the character's STR, even though its STR is less than it was in the previous action window. That doesn't matter. Only the application of a (new) -X modifier counts as lowering the character's STR.

By the "losing a +X modifier is the same as lowering the character's STR" reasoning, if a character cannot have its STR lowered (there are cards that do that), are we to assume that all "until the end of the phase" STR bumps stay forever?

What if I use my Lead Link to give -X STR to a character and THEN jumps in The Hound using Pale Steel Link : does his passive ability triggers or is it too late because during Step 5) passives can only trigger only if they result directly from the preceeding Response?

If you use Lead Link in Step 3, the only opportunity for passives to it comes in Step 4.

Any passive effect that comes into play during that window, but after Step 4, cannot "go backwards" to the point where such passives would have been initiated in that window. So, when The Hound enters play in Step 5, all the passives that are going to be initiated by lowering a character's STR in Step 3 are done.

Response "windows" or "opportunities" stay open through the entire action window, but there are no passive "windows" or "opportunities." There is only the place in the window where you check for the initiation of passive effects.

Thanks for your answer!