Negative Strength

[Mighty Jim 83 2]

A few bits of confusion that I've been encountering around this topic.

First up, just to clarify (beacuse if I've been playing this wrong, it'll have a massive knock-on to everything else) are the following statements true.

• Having Strength 0 does not lead to automatic death - (otherwise why have a card with printed strength 0, it would be unplayable - i.e Hoster Tully.)
• Having Negative Strength (i.e. because of attachments) does not lead to automatic death
• Characters with 0 or negative strength can still participate in challenges - example: Aggo, with his bow attached has been made stinking drunk, giving him strength minus 1. He can still attack, alongside another character, in order to use his bow on a defender, he just takes one away from the other attacking chracter's total.

That's how I've been playing it thus far, this is where things get hazy...

If someone plays threat from the North in the above scenario, Aggo's strength is now -2. The wording of the card simply says characters are discarded "if their strength is zero" his is not zero, it is minus 2 - is he discarded? (similarly with flame-kissed, flaming pitch tower, drogon and other characters who for whatever reason were surviving happily at strength 0 or minus something, but have now been lowered even further.)

[ktom 598]

Mighty Jim said:

Having Strength 0 does not lead to automatic death - (otherwise why have a card with printed strength 0, it would be unplayable - i.e Hoster Tully.)

Correct. The rules do not set a minimum STR threshold for character to stay in play. You need a card effect for that

Mighty Jim said:

Having Negative Strength (i.e. because of attachments) does not lead to automatic death

This is where you start to go astray. Characters never technically have "negative STR." When you check a character's STR, if all the various modifiers would take it to negative numbers, you treat the STR as 0.

Mighty Jim said:

Characters with 0 or negative strength can still participate in challenges - example: Aggo, with his bow attached has been made stinking drunk, giving him strength minus 1. He can still attack, alongside another character, in order to use his bow on a defender, he just takes one away from the other attacking chracter's total.

Characters with 0 STR can be declared as attackers or defenders. But they count their STR in challenge resolution as 0, not as whatever negative number. So if you are attacking with 2 characters, 1 with a STR of 3, the other with modifiers that, when added together, say the character has a STR of -1, your total challenge STR is 3 (0+3), not 2 (-1+3).

 

Mighty Jim said:

If someone plays threat from the North in the above scenario, Aggo's strength is now -2. The wording of the card simply says characters are discarded "if their strength is zero" his is not zero, it is minus 2 - is he discarded? (similarly with flame-kissed, flaming pitch tower, drogon and other characters who for whatever reason were surviving happily at strength 0 or minus something, but have now been lowered even further.)

Are you kidding me? You're going to argue that "kill or discard at 0" wouldn't kick in unless a characters STR is exactly 0? Really?

But the point is moot because the game rules don't allow a character's effective STR to be less than 0. If the STR check would yield a negative number, the character is treated as if it has 0 STR. Done. The character cannot be so "inept" as to actually lower the effectiveness of other characters it is attacking/defending with. (Note, of course, that when the next modifier is added in, you still add all the applicable modifiers together and apply the result from scratch; you do not start from 0 and just look at the new modifier.)

[Mighty Jim 83 2]

ktom said:

 

Mighty Jim said:

Having Negative Strength (i.e. because of attachments) does not lead to automatic death

This is where you start to go astray. Characters never technically have "negative STR." When you check a character's STR, if all the various modifiers would take it to negative numbers, you treat the STR as 0.

 

Thanks, that point basically clears up all the other confusion.

[Integrity 0]

ktom said:

Are you kidding me? You're going to argue that "kill or discard at 0" wouldn't kick in unless a characters STR is exactly 0? Really?

Best. Statement. Ever.