hondo516 said:

Whether Deadly happens before or after claim, people will always have the option to "side-step" it by not declaring defenders. That's part of what Deadly is - making someone choose between defending a challenge or killing a character. So changing the timing of it will not change that basic characteristic or the tactical choices it imposes on the defending player.

Further, I don't have a problem with it being a stronger factor in intrigue and power challenges than it is in military challenges. In fact, because Deadly can kill characters, it is going to work differently in military challenges - where it mimics the claim effect - than in the other types. If you change Deadly to happening before claim, you are effectively turning Deadly into a de-facto "increase your claim by 1" effect during military challenges, a role it will not play in intrigue or power challenges. The three challenge types are not meant to have perfect parity in the game, and are therefore not going to be equally as strong in all situations. The fact that, in practice, Deadly means less in military than in other types of challenges is really not a deficiency in either the game or the mechanic. It's part of what makes the game dynamic and "living."

I actually think keeping Deadly as is does a number of positive things for the game:

1. It encourages players, especially new players, to focus on the other challenge types and not make the whole game about military challenges and killing character. By giving people more to think about in intrigue and power challenges, Deadly gets people thinking about how effective those challenges truly are. It is very common for new players to focus most of their efforts on military challenges, so giving Deadly a stronger role in non-military challenges encourages the learning curve.
2. It encourages players to think about the strategy of when to defend and when not to. So much of the art in this game is knowing when to win on defense, when to defend just to oppose, and when to intentionally lose a challenge (so your characters are around to attack, etc.). That decision is different for each challenge type. Having Deadly end up behaving differently in different challenge types accentuates the different factors and the decisions about defending that you have to make.
3. It also encourages people to think about the strategy of when to attack, even though they cannot win the challenge. Again, a lot of the art of the game is knowing when to attack with a weak character to force your opponent to either let you have the challenge result or to kneel out a defender. Here is a place where Deadly on a military character actually helps. If I do a military challenge with a Deadly weenie, your choice is often to either win on defense (and kill that character) or lose on defense (and kill some character). So the "inequity" of Deadly across the challenge types helps accentuate the fact that a weak position can be made strong with a bold move - even if Deadly doesn't help make a strong position stronger.

So there are benefits. There may be benefits the other way, too, though. 

 no i think your right it does make it a bit more chalenging and thinking about what to do is what the whole game is about thats why its so fun to me very challenging