porkupine's page

Mike: Regarding Point 7: Look at the Greataxe. All it says is to roll either a Melee or Strength dice. We are left to extrapolate that this changes the check type. It should say this, and should be standard.

Because if a weapon doesn't tell you this then you get to the longbow, which tells you to roll two different attribute dice. You could equally determine that combat is now a strength check, a dexterity check, or both!

The rules aren't complicated. The cards that change the type of a check just need to say specifically what they are changing the check to. There will always be ambiguities but this really doesn't have to be one.

Nathaniel: thank god, some common sense. I don't come from an RPG background. I come from a boardgame background.

Cards don't say "this changes a combat check into a Strength check", even though the rules say that this will happen. I'm left to extrapolate. So a card like "The Wand of Force Missile" tells me I can role 4d4 with the Arcane and Force traits, and I'm happy to do so. But wait, Arcane is a skill type, meaning that it changes the skill type and then can't use a weapon? Why doesn't the card say so! The check can happily acquire magic, force and fire traits. But if it acquires the Arcane trait, that stops it from acquiring the Dexterity or Strength trait? This wouldn't be a problem if the card just said exactly what it does on it.

It's painfully ambiguous. It's also painful that the intention is sometimes clear, but what is written is not. It's even more painful that playtesting demonstrates these shortcomings in terminology and presentation, but they still exist in the final product.

And the second or third printings may make stuff like this clear. But I have a first edition printing. I am SOL.

This ambiguity could all be made clear if a weapon said: this changes a combat check into a strength-based check. You roll this dice and that dice.

Yes, h4ppy, these seem like a consistent interpretation of the rules. This is my interpretation too. This is how I've been playing the game.

However, until it comes from the horse's mouth (ie is clarified in an FAQ) it is still just an interpretation.

1) Melee is a subskill of Strength. There is no melee die... instead you use your strength die and and any modifiers you get from strength and or melee. As such, YES you can play BoG to add dice to your check when using a greataxe (or any other strength/melee based weapon).

2) When using the longbow, this counts as a dexterity based check. As such the BoG would not add multiple dice to the check.

So, it seems that your guesses were correct. 1) Yes, 2) No.

Sigh. No, you're wrong. There is a melee die. It just happens that, if you have it on your character sheet, it uses your strength die. Look here. Mike acknowledges that if your Arcane die rolls your intelligence die, then it counts as an intelligence-based check. But Arcane is not a subset of the Intelligence die. Look at Seoni, for example. For her, Arcane appears under her Charisma.

Just to be clear, I am not saying a Knowledge check is an Intelligence check. I am saying that if you specifically roll your Intelligence die for a check, it's an Intelligence-based check.

Like I said, complicated wording.

Mike: this answer suggests that the longbow is a strength-based check, because you a roll a strength dice for it. I asked a question about this ambiguity here. I'm sure that's not the intention. If you want to rule out this conclusion, please make sure that when you write your clarification that it covers the longbow too.

I seek clarification on the Blesing of Gorum and the Longbow that is covered in neither the rules nor the FAQ.

1. If I use my MELEE die when using the greataxe, does that mean I can't add two dice using the Blessing of Gorum? This blessing only works on strength-based combat checks.

2. If I use the longbow, it rolls both a dexterity die and a strength die. Is this still a strength-based combat check, so that the Blessing of Gorum adds two dice? Which of the two dice (dex, str) does the blessing of the gods add? I think it's probably dex, but this situation is not covered in the rules, nor in the FAQ. Since I've used my str die, I could argue that the blessing of gorum works. It's ambiguous.

I imagine for the first question, the answer will be: yes, you can use the two additional dice for the melee check.

I imagine for the second question, the answer will be: no, it is a dex check. But that flies in the face of the answer to the first question, since the only thing that could make the melee combat check a strength based check is that you're rolling your strength die, which you're also doing with the longbow.