IMHO, nope.
Powers that are written as "When THAT happen, ..." can be use anytime THAT happens, even during the same step or check. Unless instructed otherwise as would say Not-this-Mike.
If the power was written as "Reveal... to prevent..." then indeed it would be limited to one pal. The "when" before the "reveal" changes the outcome.
The power in this case says:
"*When* a character at your location is dealt damage you may reveal an armor to reduce that damage by 1;"
As mentioned by others "When..." powers trigger every time that event happens, so yes you can protect everyone from the acid splash by revealing a single armor (even the same one) for each character.
If its more than 1 damage however, you're going to need more armors.
Since your Oloch question is addressed, I'll address the "what constitutes a step or check" question.
"Step or check" means any individual step of an encounter if you are in an encounter, or otherwise any individual check. Note that if you are performing a check while inside of an encounter, the step of the encounter and the check encompass the exact same amount of time, so there's no weird overlaps. The "or check" is mostly listed because sometimes you will need to be making checks outside of encounters, such as start of turn/end of turn checks on location cards.
Steps of an encounter:
- Apply Any Effects That Happen When You Encounter a Card
- Apply Any Evasion Effects
- Apply Any Effects That Happen Before You Act
- Attempt the Check
- Attempt the Next Check, If Needed (this step repeats for as many times as you need to make checks during the encounter, each time it repeats should be treated as a separate step)
- Apply Any Effects That Happen After You Act
- Resolve the Encounter
There are lots of other things in the rulebook that have "steps", such as steps of a turn, steps when encountering a villain, or steps of a check; those are irrelevant for the purposes of the "once per step or check" rule, only steps of an encounter matter for that purpose.
Addendum: for the Oloch thing, looking at Vic's post from Hawkmoon's link means that it works exactly as you described in your OP: For Kelizar you can reveal once per ally that takes damage however for the Brinebrood Queen you can only use your power to protect one ally (since it is only one effect causing damage). You cannot use the power multiple times on the same damage instance. Just re-clarifying that since a previous post in this thread was incorrect and I wanted to ensure there was no confusion.
Re: Vic's post - by his logic, doesn't this give Oloch mass protection against Brinebrood?
I think Vic's point isn't whether the phrase "each character" is used or not, but rather whether there is one event or separate events.
The damage done by the Brinebrood Queen is one event that effects all the characters at the location.
As Vic says, the checks to prevent Kelizar's damage "creates separate events", so each instance of damage is a different event.
Step doesn't have a formal definition, as I mentioned lots of things in the rulebook have steps. You can figure out that step in the context of "step or check" for the playing cards/using powers rule refers to steps of an encounter due to that rule appearing when going over the steps to encounter a card. It also appears in the playing cards section, and there it should probably be expanded to "step of an encounter or check" in that section since it is no longer clear by context what step it is referring to, especially since that section appears before the section about encountering a card.
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Re: Vic's post - by his logic, doesn't this give Oloch mass protection against Brinebrood?I think Vic's point isn't whether the phrase "each character" is used or not, but rather whether there is one event or separate events.
The damage done by the Brinebrood Queen is one event that effects all the characters at the location.
As Vic says, the checks to prevent Kelizar's damage "creates separate events", so each instance of damage is a different event.
Kerdak Bonefist uses the phrasing "all characters" however that's the only time I recall seeing it. I believe "all characters" is only used when the effect applies to every character regardless of location, every time it's restricted I've seen "each character at this location." I'm not actually sure what the correct answer is to this, but after flip flopping a good number of times I'm going to go with how I stated it above (and how I would play it at the table), which is that what you said is correct.
By that interpretation, would Oloch ever be able to multi-protect against mass damage if it was not split up by separate checks?
I guess my concert with Vic's response is, if you're trying to differentiate cases from one another, you should limit the difference in cases to the minimum possible to establish the required difference. "Each" always takes the singular. "All" is plural whenever it's used meaningfully. That difference alone is enough to justify the change in whether Oloch can multi-tank, if "each" and "all" are being used formally. Which is a subtle distinction, but Vic does explicitly call out the subtlety of the distinction he is drawing attention to, so that's not necessarily a disqualifying objection.
However, when parsing dense rules differences there's always that question of "when is this colloquial use and when formal?"
I think Oloch is still probably strong enough to protect the Lem/Damiel/Feiya/Ranzak/Oloch Katamari I'm hoping to build, but more is always better.
The each/all distinction does not exist in the card game. The only time "all" is used is when it actually refers to all characters. Every time there is a condition attached (such as being at the same location), "each" is used.