Hi guys,

we played Respected Citizen last night and and had a rules issue.

The quest state that "[bertram] can only be targeted by a hero attacking with his bare hands. [...] He cannot suffer damage from any other source [...]". The rules for bare hands state that you don't really "equip" them and so you keep your normal weapons equipped.

This results in the availability of the Dual Strike ability of the Skirmisher (which activates on any attack) who can now do up to 4 damage (with a +2 damage on a surge).

After a rather heated discussion about this, i decided that while this is technically allowed according to the rules, its a loophole and totally breaks the quest.

Is there any way to confirm/deny this? Without some kind of ruling on this i see my group whine for the rest of the campaign

An similiar issue arrises with the fire flask, which also is an "attack" and could be combined with the dual strike ability. While this is not as big an issue, it would be nice to get some kind of ruling on this.

Thanks for any help on this

The quest states that he can only be attacked with bare hands. To me, that forbids the use of weapons. However, since the ability states "when you perform an attack" and is only conditioned by having two 1-handed melee weapons equipped, it doesn't seem to violate the wording on the card.

The fire flask is not melee , nor is it one of your equipped weapons with a single hand - that's definitely, absolutely out for use of surge abilities (unless you mean attacking with the fire flask, which RAW, would work.)

A ruling would be good- my personal opinion is that the intention is clearly to have the attack be performed with one of the melee weapons to which the card refers- it is a "Dual Strike," after all- you're wielding two weapons, and use both during the attack- it makes sense. Combining your dagger and a fire flask doesn't make sense.

Thanks for the reply. I did mean attacking with the fire flask, not using the blast from it.

I followed your advice and sent a question to ffg. I will post any reply here

Based on the rules as written, here's my interpretation:

Since you can always attack with your bare hands (even if you have other weapons equipped), Dual Strike would still work on Bertram. So while he might get the damage boosts / utility from the weapons, he's still not getting the extra dice out of them, so probably not that powerful. (That said, I don't have the full quest rules in front of me, so I might be missing something.)

And yes, according to RAW, it does look like a Skirmisher with Dual Strike could add surge abilities from his melee weapons to the attack made with the Fire Flask (since it doesn't need to be equipped, meaning his normal melee weapons are still equipped). I would not be surprised to eventually see Dual Strike erratad to say "when you perform a melee attack" instead of just "when you perform an attack" or possibly even "when you perform a(n/ melee) attack with one of your equipped weapons".

Hrmm... though as a side note, looking at the text on Dual Strike, it looks like Dual Strike could be used with a crossbow, and you'd gain the ability to move targets / add 2 wounds, but you wouldn't get the extra surge. Not something that seems intuitive, but would work based on how the card is written.