I think I need to do a little brain check and adjustment on myself. ;)
When you build the decks characters are limited on what cards they can have. Ezren does not have any blessings, Valeros does not have any spells, an Seoni does not have any armor. That is all cut and dried and understandable.
However, what if Ezren picks up a blessing by making an acquire check when exploring. Not too big a deal... he gets it and can us it just like everyone else. At the end of that game he can trade it to someone else or send it back to the box as he is not allowed to keep blessing in his deck.
Here is where the brain adjustment from my RPG rules brain comes in. What happens if Seoni picks up half plate or Valeros pick up a spell such as cure or mass cure. Can they use those items as a one shot? Spells say to banish and armor says to banish or bury depending on damage reduced or proficiency.
All the spells say if you do not have the skill of Divine and/or Arcane then the card is banished... but that text is AFTER the spell text. So can Valeros cure himself or someone else with a spell if he manages to acquire it while on an adventure and exploring then he banishes the card? The way I was thinking it would go is he would keep it in his hand as a pitch card for when he takes damage... that would then put it in his discard to trade after the game since fighters cannot cast spells normally. (Or trade it during the game with someone in his location.) But a reading of the rules says that maybe he CAN use it... but only once.
Players may have to start forgetting the RPG rules in some cases when playing the card game if that is the case... but it could make for some fun options. :)
If I understood correctly Banishing means return to the box. Using the spell as a fighter costs you the ability to give it to the spell caster at the end of the session.
Yeah, I think on the off chance Valeros manages to acquire a spell, he can use it just like anyone else. Since he doesn't have arcane/divine, he'll banish it after using it, meaning he can't pass it on to Seoni.
It's an interesting option, but if anyone else wants the spell, it's probably best to just hold onto the spell as a damage buffer.
It wasn't so much that it bothers me that he can use a spell... it was that when I picked it up it did not even OCCUR to me to try and cast it since it was a spell and I was a fighter.
Using it as a potion or scroll with UMD or whatever is fine and I can imagine that... I just had to do a double take before it occurred to me that it was an option.
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Spells are like scrolls. One use for non-casters, and permanent for casters. I think it is an elegant design.
Chief Technical Officer
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Yep—generally, if somebody can pick up something, even if they can't keep it in their deck, they can use it during that scenario.
You've already sussed out how spells work for people lacking the appropriate Arcane or Divine skill: they're essentially single-use items, like scrolls or potions.
Let's look at armor.
Chain Mail has the Heavy Armor trait. It's lesser power is that you can recharge it from your hand to reduce combat damage to you by 2. The greater power is this: If you're proficient with heavy armors, you can instead bury it to reduce all damage dealt to you to 0... but if you're not proficient with it, you have to banish it to get that effect. So anybody can use it to save your bacon *once*, but if you are proficient with it, you can do that in scenario after scenario.
Wooden Shield lets anyone recharge it to reduce combat damage by 2 so long as you didn't use a 2-Handed weapon in that check. If you're not proficient with armors, that's the only armor card you can use on that check. But if you're proficient with armors, you can use another armor card on the check.
So yeah, you can use stuff that you can't keep, but it usually won't work as well for you as it would for someone else. So you may be better off giving it to a character who can use it to the fullest. (And don't forget that you don't need to wait until the end of the scenario to do that; at the beginning of your turn, you can give a card to another character at your location.)
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Players may have to start forgetting the RPG rules in some cases when playing the card game if that is the case... but it could make for some fun options. :)
Philosophically, I strongly recommend forgetting the RPG rules. I refer to this as the Skeleton Feet Problem.
The Skeleton Feet Problem has to do with the card Caltrops, which says:
Banish this card to evade a monster whose highest difficulty to defeat is 14 or lower.
Banish this card to defeat a monster whose highest difficulty to defeat is 9 or lower.
One of the playtesters loudly complained that this most absolutely definitely should NOT work on the Ancient Skeleton card, because skeletons don't have flesh on their feet. I indignantly responded with "I am not rewriting this card to say, '...unless it's a Skeleton, because they don't have flesh on their feet.'"
I'm sure you guys will come up with a dozen or more Skeleton Feet Problems. And I will stick my fingers in my ears and output multiple occasions of the syllable "La."
Mike
Thanks MiKe and Vic - all the above confirms my thought that I need to rewire my brain. Making RPG assumptions could cause all kinds of issues in play.
So I and other players just need to keep in mind the card game gets inspiration from the RPG but they are distinct games with very different rules. Once you set your mind to that school of thought it gets a lot easier in reading cards.
I am so glad I found this post. I have had all these questions too. But, sadly, on my first pay throughs, when I came across a spell, I just banished it rather than even trying to acquire it because we had no magic or divine characters in our party. Thank you for asking & answering and problem that has really been bothering me.
Yeah, I think on the off chance Valeros manages to acquire a spell, he can use it just like anyone else. Since he doesn't have arcane/divine, he'll banish it after using it, meaning he can't pass it on to Seoni.
I just realized my post here is a worded pretty dumb. He can pass spells to another player at the start of his turn if they're at the same location. But if he uses the card, it's banished, so he wouldn't be able to give it to another player post-game.
This post answered a *ton* of questions for me as well, regarding who could use cards when and how -- just helped me connections in a bunch of fuzzy areas. In absence of more specifics in the game instructions, we were falling back on RPG assumptions like most others here. Blargh.
A paragraph in the "Attempting a Check" section covering "Determining Whether To Acquire a Boon" might cover it. Something like:
"All characters may acquire any boon they encounter. All characters can use that boon at least once, depending on their character's traits. Use instructions on the boon and on the character's card to determine how the boon may be used with that specific character."
Like Ogee, we were banishing all the spells that came up, because we read the card as something you couldn't acquire if you didn't have the arcane trait. A paragraph like the one above might have cleared that up for us.
We are really loving the game -- even got my mom playing it, who says "I've never seen dice like these before!" She's been visiting for a week, and we've played almost every day. :)
It's good that you found this post, but I think your rulebook suggestion has already been covered with the additions now in the FAQ. In particular, look to the first question I'm just generally unclear about a lot of things. Can you help? and the one a bit further down about Encountering Cards. Less generally, there is also the question about when to apply the 'banish this spell' rule if you don't have the arcane or divine skill.
This post answered a *ton* of questions for me as well, regarding who could use cards when and how -- just helped me connections in a bunch of fuzzy areas. In absence of more specifics in the game instructions, we were falling back on RPG assumptions like most others here. Blargh.
A paragraph in the "Attempting a Check" section covering "Determining Whether To Acquire a Boon" might cover it. Something like:
"All characters may acquire any boon they encounter. All characters can use that boon at least once, depending on their character's traits. Use instructions on the boon and on the character's card to determine how the boon may be used with that specific character."
Like Ogee, we were banishing all the spells that came up, because we read the card as something you couldn't acquire if you didn't have the arcane trait. A paragraph like the one above might have cleared that up for us.
We are really loving the game -- even got my mom playing it, who says "I've never seen dice like these before!" She's been visiting for a week, and we've played almost every day. :)