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The Poison Pill

"Add 2 to your checks to acquire allies."

Strength Spell
"... add 3 to that character's checks..."

All cards the improve your roll have the "add X to ... checks" form.

Approach to Thistletop

"The difficulty to defeat monsters with the Goblin trait is increased by 1d4"

Add 1d4 to the difficulty.

Wrathful Sinspawn
"Before the encounter, succeed at a Wisdom 6 check or the difficulty of your checks is increased by 1 for the rest of the turn"

All cards which make checks harder all use the "difficulty ... s increased by X"

it is pretty easy to distinguish between the two.

As said above:

From Rulebook (p. 18)

"If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location: You do not need to fulfill the “When Closing” requirement. Examine the location deck; if there are no additional villains in it, banish all of the cards and flip the location card over. The location is permanently closed, and the location’s “When Permanently Closed” effect is triggered. If there are villains remaining in the deck, banish everything except the remaining villains and shuffle the deck if needed; the location is not permanently closed, but it is temporarily closed, and the defeated villain cannot escape to it."

This is very clear. Defeat a villain and you close the villain's location.

Let me try again.

Important point.

There are two kinds of powers.

Card power listed on cards like, spells, allies, weapons, armor, and items.

And

Character Powers, listed on the character sheet.
(For Lini: her ability to change her strength and dexterity die to a d10, or her ability to add d4 to any check)

From the rules:

during a check you can play card powers one of each type of boon, (p11)

and use each character power once each. (P11)

When you play a card, (not a character power) you are revealing, displaying, discarding, burying, or banishing the card. (P10).

So for example:

When Lini Reveals her longsword for a fight this DOES count as playing a weapon since she played a card power on her card. She may not play another weapon.

When Lini Discards her blessing to become a bear this DOES NOT count as playing a blessing because it is a character power on her character sheet. She may play another blessing.

When Lini Reveals her Animal Ally to add the d4 this DOES NOT count as playing an ally because it is a character power on her character sheet. She may play another or even the same ally for its effect.

This is actually something that is not clear in the rules, but has been confirmed by Mike in many posts. I hope you found this helpful. If not I will stop.

Spells are like scrolls. One use for non-casters, and permanent for casters. I think it is an elegant design.