So, in previous editions of the ACG, when a check was made, every player was allowed to play a blessing on that check, so for example in a party of 4 the check could get 4 blessings on it.
With the new rules, the party is only allowed to collectively play one card of each type on a check, unless a card can be played freely. This seems to mean, though, that only one blessing can be played on each check, since, as far as I can determine, blessings aren't played freely.
That seems like a significant rules change and could dramatically alter the difficulty of the game, I think.
Do I get that right?
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Absolutely. This has been discussed in a previous blog. On the other hand, there are now many other cards than blessings that you can play to help someone else's check.
Thanks for the link, I seem to have missed that blog. I'm curious how different this plays now.
There are lots of cards that can be played freely though! You will still be able to get triple digit rolls on a check, it will just be less common.
It changes the difficulty primarily by normalizing it. In non-core it was hard to design for because the designers didn't know whether you could throw 2 blessings at a boss or 6, depending on the player count. That makes it really hard to design a difficulty number that is right in any scenario (even someone using d4s has a expected result of 7.5 for two characters blessing up to 18 for 6, and that gets worse with actually skilled characters.) EDIT: even worse actually because with 6 blessing if they happened to be the +2 dice versions you could have upto +12 dice.
Because of this we will hopefully see less wildly swingy difficulties, and that groups can then combine the game length/difficulty sliders that suit them with some expected degree of consistency between scenarios.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
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I also really need to stress that Core enables you to use various card types to assist with checks way more easily.
For example, the new Alchemist, Fumbus, is almost certain to be able to play a weapon, discard an Attack spell to buff his combat check with a secondary power on it, then discard/recharge a 'grenade-like' item to buff his combat check with a secondary power on it. Or even throw a grenade and recharge a weapon and discard an attack spell for a buff, or some other combination. Most basic Attack Spells and Alchemical Items (which he's themed to, as well as Ranged Weapons) can absolutely provide support like this.
Combining weapons, items, allies and spells for various benefits on various checks is far more commonplace and capable, which both lets item and ally-centric characters show off unique support that pure blessings won't be able to provide alone, but it also means that stacking support effects still works well... you just need to have a diverse range of cards, rather than "blessings beat everything else", which was a bit of a problem pre-Core.