Hi to all the veterans. Just started to read the new rules and all seems clear (or at least I suppose until proven guilty that I got it right), except for one point:
If a card tells you that you may treat it as if it has the same powers as another boon, include only powers that require you to play the card.
I don't think I understand that sentence (especially as for me "including" a power isn't a thing and because a power "required" to play a card isn't much more clear either). Can someone explain and give a precise example?
Pretty sure if Mike and others added that sentence it's because it's important at some point, but it's fuzzy for me (but it's maybe my limited use of English).
... but not the "if this card matches the hour recharge it instead of discarding" powers of many blessings, because the latter power doesn't require playing the card.
Well, technically, this (just as magic armors's "recharge at end turn") was NOT considered power in pre-Core, but a nebulous "instruction". Unless that has changed in Core, Frencois's quote must be targeting something else.
For example, if we have a hypothetical ally that says "Discard to treat this card as if has the powers of an ally in any character's discrads." and you use it to target Daji (Feiya's pet fox), you would copy its "recharge to" and "discard to" powers, but not the "you may treat this card as if its level is #+1" *instruction*. This is as much true in the old rules as in the new ones, however, so I feel Frencois's quoted rule just obfuscates things rather than making them more clear.
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I think that it may in fact be different in Core - the new rulebook seems to indicate that everything in the power box is a power. In fact, based on how I see the revised rules, using armors that let you recharge at end of turn would even count as playing them for their power.
OK I get it. Indeed BotG comes to mind.
Well, technically, this (just as magic armors's "recharge at end turn") was NOT considered power in pre-Core, but a nebulous "instruction". Unless that has changed in Core, Frencois's quote must be targeting something else.
According to a forum I previously raised regarding some Hell's Vengeance characters and ignoring powers on Corrupted boons, the general agreement on these forums was that sentences such as those you are mentioning are still powers (in fact, every textbox listing them is titled the "Powers" section). However, using those particular lines of text is not counted as playing the card, which requires you to in some way manipulate the card (Reveal/recharge/discard/etc) for some explicit effect.
When I read the rulebook at the time, I couldn't find anything to contradict that assessment, so I accepted that explanation. These lines of text are still 'powers', it's just that using them isn't 'playing' the card.
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Yewstance has it right.
This has a long and confusing history going back years. In the beginning, we were somewhat vague about what powers were, but it really didn't matter, because there wasn't much that cared.
The first thing we found that cares was Blessing of the Gods' copying effect, which was not intended to copy recharge rules like Blessing of the Savored Sting's "After you play this card, if the top card of the blessings discard pile has the Calistria trait, recharge this card instead of discarding it." The fix to that was to rule that those sort of things weren't powers—they were mandatory effects.
But eventually, more things came to care. When a character was unable to use powers, what exactly did that turn off? Hand size? Proficiencies?
After much discussion, we came to a pretty simple answer: a power is a paragraph on a card or in the storybook that affects the game in some way. Hand size and proficiencies aren't paragraphs, so they're not powers. Flavor text comes in paragraphs, but it doesn't affect the game, so they're not powers.
The only problem with that is undid our fix for Blessing of the Gods, and the many other copying effects that have appeared since, like Seoni's Corruptor role in Wrath: "You may treat a card in your hand that has the Corrupted trait as if it has the same powers as the top card in the blessings discard pile." It turns out that the sentence Frencois quoted re-fixes all of them, as far as we can tell.
.. It turns out that the sentence Frencois quoted re-fixes all of them, as far as we can tell.
Thanks A LOT Vic for taking the time to clarify. That helps a lot.