So, playing MoW during an encounter to get a +1 on your relevant skill is pretty clear-cut case; when we get to using it to acquire powers things get a bit more muddled:
- Imrijka encounters a Barrier and wants to get her Perception: Wisdom+2 power. This seem straightforward as well, as she can just say she's using untrained d4 Perception, and then she boosts it with MoW. However, cases like that leave the impression she's able to use MoW mid-encounter wholesale (as long as the player want to use it for something relevant), and we had to argue the following cases:
- Imrijka encounters a Barrier, and wants to MoW her power to "You may evade a barrier you encounter". Is this allowed? "You may" leads me to believe she has to "do something else" in order for the MoW to have effect, so maybe disallowed?
-Let's assume Imrijka has the above power ("You may evade a barrier") and wants to upgrade it with its extension "and you may put it on the bottom of the location deck". A player argued that since Imrijka already chose to evade and activated this particular power, the extension is only expanding the options of what to do with the evaded barrier, and does not constitute "doing something else" in order for the MoW play to be meaningful. Yes or no?
- Perhaps similar to the above (the discussion was purely hypothetical at this point): Pack Leader Adowyn takes damage and has the power "you may bury ([ ]or discard) an Animal to reduce all damage to 0". If Adowyin has already 'buried' her Animal to negate the damage, can she play MoW to discarded it instead? There's a sound-sounding argument that not dissimilar to playing cards, the Animal is "set aside" until the card's fate is resolved and the MoW play directly effects the resolution
We discussed like a dozen interesting cases, but those are off the top of my head. What do you guys think? Can you come up with interesting MoW play mid-encounter examples that illustrate 'yay or nay'?
Good question altogether. More generaly - for future issues - we know we can play a card/character power during encounter if it directly affects the encounter (usualy a check, but may also be evasion and others). But in this case the power "win a power feat" will only affect the encounter depending on the one you select (i. e. it isn't direct, you have a decision to make...). Does it disqualify the manual altogether to be played during encounters?