Nymisis's page

This came up in a recent play through.

The mattock lets you recharge to use Strength or Melee in place of the normal skill in a check to defeat a barrier with the lock or obstacle trait. What is the "normal check" in this instance? I ask because many lock/obstacle type barriers have a strength/melee option already. Take locked passage as an example: Dexterity/Disable 8 OR Strength/Melee 16. Would recharging the mattock allow you to attempt to defeat the barrier using strength/melee with a difficulty of 8 or since it already as a strength/melee difficulty would it merely be good for the reveal power?

Is it intentional that elven chain and magic leather armor are identical? Especially considering that elven chain is more rare and more difficult to acquire I would expect it to be better than(or at least in some way different from) magic leather armor.

If I'm duplicating, I apologize but nothing came up in the search.

What is the point in the finesse trait? Is this just something that's there for future use? I would have guessed that with finesse weapons you could use Dex instead of Str for your combat check, but I can't find any mention of finesse in the rules and none of the weapons with the trait address it.

While the explanation in the FAQ leaves little room for doubt:

"No—the spell must be played as part of the current check for Blessing of Pharasma to add 2 dice."

The resolution leaves room for abuse in my opinion:

On the blessing Blessing of Pharasma, in the second power, replace "to add 2 dice to a check when playing a spell" with "to add 2 dice to a check if a spell was played during that check." (Note: This card also appears in the Character Add-On Deck.)

So character A encounters a monster that threatens to stomp him into oblivion and his draw pile is woefully short. Character B at his location decides to toss a cure his way to bolster up his deck. (The timing on this has always seemed a little odd to me but I've found nothing to indicate it isn't legal). Character A then plays a Blessing of Pharasma to add 2 dice to the check since a spell was played during the check. Obviously this isn't the intent as the explanation specifies that a spell must be played as a part of the current check and this certainly wouldn't apply but using the suggested wording it could certainly be argued could it not?