Just a quick clarification needed please

Player A makes a challenge against Player B for

Player B declares numerous defenders with renown and a card is played to reduce the attacking STR to 0

My understanding is that the challenge would fizzle and no challenge takes place, as such am i correct in stating that the defending players would NOT receive renown ?

If the attacker still has at least one character in the challenge, the challenge is still active. The challenge only "fizzles" if at any point there are NO characters in the challenge.

What might be confusing is sometimes the scenario where you bring the attacker to zero and declare NO defenders - that is often called "fizzling" a challenge, but technically what happens in that case is an attacker cannot win a challenge with zero strength (even if no defenders are declared).

In the scenario you outline, the defender will win the challenge.

The key phrase there is that the challenge fizzles "if at any point there are NO characters in the challenge." A challenge will only "fizzle" if all participating characters are removed. That means that even if all the attacking characters are removed, if there is still a participating defender, the challenge will continue and resolve.

The attacker can't win (the rules say that in order to win or oppose a challenge, the player must have both a participating character and a total challenge STR of at least 1), but that doesn't stop the defender from winning - which can be important for Renown, responses, and so forth.

To mess with your scenario just a little:

1. Player A makes a challenge against Player B.

2. A card is played to remove all of Player A's attacking characters from the challenge.

3. Player B wants to declare numerous defenders with Renown.

NOW Player B cannot receive Renown - or even declare the defenders in #3 - because the challenge fizzled as soon as all the attackers were removed in #2. Because the challenge only fizzles (immediately) when all participating characters are removed, swapping the order of #2 and #3 has a huge impact on whether or not the challenge fizzles.

which is another way of stating the pirate's maxim, "always pillage before you Burn."

I appreciate that people are clarifying that for a challenge to "fizzle" there must be no characters. A challenge that goes to resolution without a winner is definitely not a "fizzled" challenge.