• Name: Watchful Servant
• Expansion set: Chasing Dragons
• Type: Character
• Cost: 2
• Affiliations(s): Lannister , Martell
• Trait(s): Ally
• Text:
  Ally Challenges: Kill Watchful Servant (cannot be saved) to choose a participating character with STR 3 or higher. Remove that character from the current challenge.

Name:Bronn
Expansion set: Core Set
Type:Character
Cost: 3
Icons:
Affiliations(s): Lannister
Trait(s): Knight, Mercenary
Text:
Knight, Mercenary Deadly. No attachments. Any Phase: Pay 2 gold to choose a character. Until the end of the phase,if that character would be killed and Bronn is kneeling,stand Bronn instead of killing that character.

If the cost be replaced, will the effect triggered successfully anyway?

Or,,,, does cost can be replaced?

Uncle Joker said:

If that character is never killed, the cost is never paid. If the cost is never paid, the effect is not even initiated successfully. So the effect doesn't happen, either.

Uncle Joker said:

Replacement effects don't prevent costs from being paid. Enjoy the nasty combo.

Khudzlin said:

There are two types of replacement effect in the game:

1. The most common one (and the one Khudzlin is referring to) is the "soft" replacement, which only changes the of disposition of the card (usually the moribund state). They are constructed as "is X would happen, do Y instead ." In these situations, X is still what resolves - but instead of doing what you usually do when X resolves, you do Y instead. One of the primary examples of this (where cost is concerned) is The Darkstar, who says "If Darkstar would be discarded from your hand or deck (X), put him into play (Y) instead." Since X, the discard, is still what happens, he can still pay for effects that say "discard a card from your hand to…", even though you end up "discarding him into play" instead of the discard pile.

You can spot these effects not only by their wording, but by what happens in the overall situation. For The Darkstar, you still have one less card in your hand (even though you have one more card in play instead of the discard pile), so the discard from hand was successful. When The Kindly Man is killed and becomes an agenda, you still have one less card in play because a kill effect was triggered (even though you now have an agenda instead of one more card in your dead pile).

2. Far more rare is the "total" replacement, which actually changes the identity of the effect that resolves. They are constructed as "if X would happen, do Y instead of doing X ." (NOTE: People are going to are "but isn't the 'of doing X part' assumed from the wording on the soft replacement?", to which I answer "you should know better than to assume much of anything into card text in this game by now.") In these situations, X is no longer considered to have happened at all; Y happens. Bronn is the classic example of this type of replacement effect. If you use his effect, the replacement of the kill is complete and the only thing that happens is Bronn standing. So with Bronn, you Respond to a character standing, not a character being killed. You do not "kill character X into standing Bronn" the way that you discard The Darkstar into play - you simply stand Bronn.

You can spot these effects again, not just by the wording, but by the results of the overall situation. With Bronn, you do not have one less character on the table after the killing effect, so it is really hard to justify that the killing effect was successful in the least.

So, while Khudzlin is not incorrect from a general standpoint (eg, The Darkstar and Maester of the Sun), the fact that Bronn is one of the uncommon "total replacement" effects means that the Watchful Servant/Bronn combo doesn't work at all .

Thank you KTOM.

Here is one more question in my meta recently.

Can I play 2 Risen from the Sea to save a STR 1 character which was attached by a Dragon Skull?

I'm pretty sure that "No". Both the save and the removal of the terminal effect need to happen from one triggered effect.

You are only allowed 1 initiation. If the first Risen From the Sea isn't enough to take the card out of its terminal state (taking constant effects into account, but not passive effects or other triggered effects), you cannot play it at all.