Here is something we are debating on French board:

Player A kneels a Maester to trigger Lead Link and gives -X STR to a character.

As a response to his Maester kneeling, Player A triggers Pale Steel Link to put The Hound into play.

Question 1) : Does The Hound goest back to his owner's hand?

Question 2) : Why ?

The Hound Text:
Ally No attachments except weapon. After a character's STR is lowered,return The Hound to his owner's hand.

Pale Steel Link Text:
Item, Chain Setup. Maester character only. Response: After attached character kneels, put a character or attachment card of printed cost 1 or lower into play from your hand. (Limit once per phase.)

Lead Link Text:
Item, Chain Setup. Maester character only. Any Phase: Kneel attached character to choose a character. Until the end of the phase, that character gets -X STR. X is the number of Chain attachments on attached character (Limit once per phase).

In my opinion, The Hound should return passively to its owner's hand.

Don't passives come before responses? Putting the Hound into play via the Pale Steel Link is a response, so passives to everything that happened when the Maester knelt (triggered by his kneeling or a character's strength being lowered, for example) have already passed by the time the Hound hits the table, right? That's how I would interpet it as happening in any case…

Yes, but the Hound's passive would be a Response to the Response of the Lead Link. Each Response opens up a new window where passives that apply to the condition that a Response creates can then fire. The Lead Link creates the lowered strength condition and if you follow the flow chart, there is another step for passives AFTER the Response is executed.

I don't know specifically about Bolzano's question, but I'm pretty sure the Passive window that could apply to the Hound happens AFTER the Lead Link lowers STR.

That first sentence should read: "Yes, but the Hound's passive applies to the Response of the Lead Link."

"Response to the Response" is a completely incorrect way of putting that (and confusing).

Think of Banner for the Storm . When you trigger that Response to winning a power challenge, attaching it and giving a character Vigilant, it is too late to use that newfound Vigilant to be used to (passively) stand that character for winning the exact same challenge, even though you are still in the action window for resolving passives/Responses for winning that challenge.

This scenario is no different.

Map it out. It's actually pretty straight forward.

• Step 1: Initiate Lead Link (Maester kneels)
• Step 2: Save/cancel against Lead Link
• Step 3: Resolve Lead Link (target character gets -X STR)
• Step 4: Passives (to anything that happened in Steps 1-3)
• Step 5: Responses (to anything that happended in Steps 1-4)
• Step 5.I: Initiate Pale Steel Link
• Step 5.II: Save/cancel against Pale Steel Link
• Step 5.III: Resolve Pale Steel Link (The Hound enters play)
• Step 5.IV: Passives (to anything that happened in Steps 5.I - 5.III )
• Step 6: End

See? No real mystery here.

In case it isn't clear, Step 4 is the only opportunity for passives initiated by stuff that happens in Steps 1-3. The Hound enters play too late (Step 5) for his passive to be initiated by Lead Link lowering the target character's STR in Step 3.

If, however, The Hound was somehow put into play during Step 4, he would not be too late, his ability would initiate, and he would immediately become moribund

The point is to know how to read this :

5) Responses (in clockwise order until all
players consecutively pass) are resolved. For
each response:
a) Initiate response
b) Save/cancel responses (only for
the preceding response)
c) Execute response
d) Initiate passive abilities triggered
by the response (follow I through IV above)

What does "'triggered by the response" is supposed to mean? The Hound passive ability triggers when a character STR is lowered, not by the Pale Steel Link response. But anyway its conditions are met since a STR has been lowered within this action window.

ktom said:

This is clear. But, where is it defined in the rules? The FAQ also say that a passive MUST initiate when applicable.

So I guess I missread the "when applicable" part. As you see it, it does not mean "when it can initiates" but "when it can initiate" + we are still in stuff that happened during Steps 1-3.

And the confirmation to this would be the FAQ passage I quoted before about the passive ability triggered by the preceding response : meaning, triggered directly.

Bolzano said:

It means "passives triggered in the course of initiating and resolving this one particular Response effect ." That is, "5D" only lets you resolve passives that would have been activated by things that happened in "5A - 5C," not anything that had happened up to that point in the action window.

Bolzano said:

Which is why his passive ability does not trigger for the "passives to this response" step when he is put into play by Pale Steel Link.

Bolzano said:

No. This is where you are making your mistake. You are trying to treat passive initiation the same as Response opportunities, but they are very different.

It is true that the response opportunity for "after a character's STR is lowered" is still open when The Hound comes into play. That's because the rules specifically tell us that all Response opportunities stay open through the entire window. But passives only get one chance at initiation. Unlike Responses, which just need to come into play sometime during the window, passives must be in play at the first "resolve passives" step after the conditions are created - otherwise, they are too late.

Bolzano: We know that you cannot attach Banner for the Storm to a kneeling character and then stand the character with Vigilant for winning the same power challenge, correct? And we know this is true because the character gains the keyword after it would initiate (passively) in Step 4. But aren't the conditions for Vigilant still met after the Banner's Response resolved since you won a challenge as the attacker within the same action window?

So how is this Lead/Pale Steel/Hound situation different from the Banner for the Storm situation?