Can someone point me to the whole how effects fizzle thing in the FAQ? I'm having trouble finding it as I don't remember the words they use for it.

Under the "Effect" part of both the "Event Cards" and "Character Abilities" sections of the FAQ (pp.14-15), it reads: "All (event cards/character abilities) have an effect, and may be (played/triggered) whether or not the effect has any result."

The "fizzles" terminology is something the community came up with to describe an effect that is played/triggered but has no result.

Sorry it's been a while. And not sure if you know, but "fizzle" is actually from MtG. Did you play MtG?

Anyway, I think I'm asking because of the Much and More argument we had a while back. I know we successfully got that ruled on, so I'm going to make up a card here and I was wondering if there was anything official that could help me.

Random Card

Any Phase: Kill a character. Draw 2 cards. Choose a card in your opponents hand and discard it.

This is a single effect (as far as I'm aware). Therefore, the whole effect should fizzle if any effect is unable to be met (besides the Draw portion) as I understand it.

What happens if...

...there are no characters on the board that can be killed

...my opponent has no cards in hand (and therefore no valid target)

I believe convention says do as much as you can, but I don't know that anything in the rules meshes with the convention.

I am not sure if that would be the final wording of that effect, but the only way that effect shouldn't be possible to trigger is if your opponent does not have cards in their hand. The only play restriction that I see is that you must choose a card in the opponent's hand as that is the only target of the effect. If that can be successful, the remainder of the effect should be "do as much as you can".

The effect probably should read "Any Phase: Choose a card in any opponents hand and discard it. Kill a character. Draw 2 cards.".

If you want to have parts of the effect depend on the discarding of that card successfully then "... discard it. Then, kill a character and draw 2 cards.".

Random Card

Any Phase: Kill a character. Draw 2 cards. Choose a card in your opponents hand and discard it.

This is a single effect (as far as I'm aware). Therefore, the whole effect should fizzle if any effect is unable to be met (besides the Draw portion) as I understand it.

Nope. You would resolve what you can resolve and ignore what you cannot resolve because of FAQ entry 4.9. In pertinent part:

(4.9) The word "then"

If a card has multiple effects, all effects on the card are resolved, if possible, independently of whether any other effects of the card are successful , with the following important exception:

(The rest of the entry goes on to detail how anything after the word "then" is dependent on the successful resolution of preceding the word "then.")

So your basic assumption of "all or nothing" is incorrect. Each sentence in your hypothetical effect is would be resolved independently of each other sentence. You could use it to kill a character, even if your deck war empty, or to draw 2 cards, even if your opponent had no cards in hand.

Actually, I think the killed character would be chosen on a real card (or made into a cost).

Random Card

Any Phase: Kill a character. Draw 2 cards. Choose a card in your opponents hand and discard it.

This is a single effect (as far as I'm aware). Therefore, the whole effect should fizzle if any effect is unable to be met (besides the Draw portion) as I understand it.

Nope. You would resolve what you can resolve and ignore what you cannot resolve because of FAQ entry 4.9. In pertinent part:

(4.9) The word "then"

If a card has multiple effects, all effects on the card are resolved, if possible, independently of whether any other effects of the card are successful , with the following important exception:

(The rest of the entry goes on to detail how anything after the word "then" is dependent on the successful resolution of preceding the word "then.")

So your basic assumption of "all or nothing" is incorrect. Each sentence in your hypothetical effect is would be resolved independently of each other sentence. You could use it to kill a character, even if your deck war empty, or to draw 2 cards, even if your opponent had no cards in hand.

So are we saying that this theoretical card is (and you're right Khudzlin, it probably should be kill all Stark characters or something, but I'm going to leave it for now as I can't think of a substitute):

Effect 1 - Kill a character

Effect 2 - Draw 2 cards

Effect 3 - Choose a card in your opponent's hand and discard it.

And then let's add...

Effect 4 - Then, return a character in your dead pile to play.

Is this correct in being 4 separate effects that will fizzle independently?

Also, for the "then" part, let's say it's written as:

Kill a character. Draw 2 cards. Choose a card in your opponent's hand and discard it. Then, return a character in your dead pile to play.

What is the prerequisite for the "Then" effect? Effects 1, 2, and 3?

The answer to this seems straight enough to me from the FAQ :

First we know this:

If a card uses the word "then," then the
preceding effect must have been resolved
successfully for the subsequent dependent
effect to be resolved.

Second, we know the definition of "the preceding effect" from the same entry:

" Dominance: Kneel Cersei Lannister and
pay 2 gold to choose a character. Kneel that
character if it is standing. That character
does not stand during the standing phase this
round."
In this case, the two effects (kneeling the
character and preventing it from standing) are
considered separately: The chosen character
will be prevented from standing if it was knelt
by Cersei's effect, or if it was knelt previously
in the round.

So the preceding effect in your example is Effect 3: Choose a card in your opponent's hand and discard it.

Note however that you must choose a card, so this effect has a target which legality is checked at the initiation step of the card effect. If your opponent has no card in hand, you would not be able to trigger any of these effects.

I'm not sure how the Cersei example is relevant to determining that only #3 in the hypothetical must be successful since there is no "then" in Cersei's ability. She's specifically put in as an example for how cards without the word "then" work.

mcd: The answer to your question is not known "for a certainty" because I don't believe that we have ever seen a compound effect before a "then." However, my guess would be that everything preceding the "then" must be successful, not just the sentence immediately before the word "then."