So here's the situation that our game faced, which leads to a couple questions:

A Thief was teleported to the Crown of Command via the end of the Dungeon where he met a Knight that was already there. The Knight had a couple strength items as well as the Mercenary (pay 1 gold before battle for +3 strength). With these items, the theif was outclassed in strength, so his plan was to use his special ability that allowed him to take items and gold until the Knight was left with no gold and no strength items, allowing for only a small advantage in strength to the Knight.

That brings the first question: Can the thief do this? We concluded that he could, and reading the forums supports this, but I want to ask it explicitly. The theif's ability allows him to steal an item or a gold from a character that he lands on. We decided that even though the thief didn't roll a dice and actually "land on" the CoC, that he could still use a "lands on" ability, and that this would count as the character encounter for his turn on the CoC.

The thief had some armor that was vexing to the Knight, but the Knight knew that if he took the armor as his combat reward, that the thief would just steal it back. He considered taking it, then dropping it on the ground, but ultimately did not, deciding that it would be pointless, as the following would occur:
Turn 1: Knight wins combat against Thief; takes Armor from Thief, but then immediately drops Armor on CoC space.
Turn 2: Thief uses special ability to steal gold (or something) from Knight as his character encounter, then he can take his Armor back from the space, effectively negating the Knight's combat.

So that's the second question: Is that the correct way to play the turns? On a player's turn on the CoC, after the forced encounter, can he then raid the stuff sitting on the space? We decided that you could grab items from the space after the encounter.

For the curious, here's how the end of the game played out:
On his first turns in the CoC, the thief took the Knight's +strength items for himself, but remained at -4 strength to the Knight because of the Mercenary, and the Knight had a lot of gold to pay that Mercenary. The Thief was losing combat, but had the Book of Lore (gain one spell at the beginning of your turn) as his Dungeon reward, so he had a couple healing spells to keep him going. The Thief realized that instead of causing the Knight to burn through gold via combat, he'd just steal the gold and only have to face combat on the Knight's turn, so that's what he did. For several turns, it went as follows: On his turn, the Thief steals a gold as his encounter. On his, the Knight combats the Thief, usually winning (being +4 on the Thief), then facing the Thief's armor. After several rounds, the Knight was finally out of gold, and down to being only +1 on the Thief. Combat then went on back and forth between the two. Both were down to one life each, and in the last combat, the Thief won, and the game was over. (The previously unmentioned third player, a Monk, died after sneaking into the CoC and attacking the Knight, despite being well below the Knight's strength and on her last life. The Knight got one more gold from the encounter, so it worked for him.)

This sounds alot like my post on the holy avenger. Both characters being on the crown of command and not actually moving can you use "land on" abilities?

So far everyone has said you can use these abilities.

Yeah, I read over that thread, which certainly bolstered my confidence that we were right. Even so, I started a new thread for the other questions, and just to be sure that the Thief's special ability would count as the encounter for the CoC space.

I feel that we came to the correct resolution, but confirmation here would be nice to solidify things.

infallible said:

One thing to remember is that the characters' encounter for their turn is the other char in this situation, so they don't encounter the space, thus can't pick up any items there, until there is only 1 char left. At least IIRC.

Good point... I hadn't considered that. So the Knight could have gone ahead and taken the Thief's Armor, dropped it, thus negating its effects for everyone because the Thief would have never had an opportunity to get it back before the Knight was killed? That makes sense.

infallible said:

indeed.

Ditch the armour, and the thief can not pick it up until he defeats your knight

the thife can not use his ability if he dosent "land" on the space, therfor he can`t steal every turn on one and the same space, makes seens, you cant steal two times from the same character on the same space, or he will be busted . Neither can any character pick up items droppe/lost on te coc. But if someone gets killed there, the remaning character can pick up everything

After lot's of discussions, the new rule is that a character still moves on the CoC ( by normal movement) ( no dice rolls)

You can pick up objects, ( cast spells before normal movement), and use land on abilities on the Crown.

( But with the Danse Macabre ending, characters cannot use their abilties, unless it's a attack ability)

@ Velhart: Is this an official answer? If yes, could you post it here?

redsimon said:

Sadly, i have only one official answer, that i get from John Goodenough, the others have been discussed on the forums somewhere..

This question is about that spells are allowed with normal movement on the crown.

Hi John Goodenough,

I have a question about the Crown of Command space, and about using some spell cards on that space.

Can you use the vortex spell or temporal warp spell at the start of your turn if you are standing on the crown of Command?

A: Yes. However, Spells that are cast "instead of rolling the die for movement" cannot be used unless you are able to roll a die for movement following the standard rules for movement. For example, a character cannot cast the Teleport Spell in the Inner Region because players do not roll a die for movement in the Inner Region.

-

so in other words, to complete the circle.. ( normal movement is allowed, ( that means that you move and land on the same space, and encounter the character.

This leads also to the fact that you can pick up objects ( that was the beginning of the whole discusion on the forums)

The thief comes in to coc and steals an object from another character already there, can the thief on his next turn steal another object? this was the question from the beginning right? what is right, beacuse the thife dosen`t "land" on that character anymore??

But the rules clearly sais that the turns on coc only consisting on attacking against eachother, and therefore No to special abilities. In the rules it sais that you must choose to use a special ability or attack the character.... this you can`t "choose" in the coc, attacks only......(some having the ability to attack whit psy.combat, but it is still an attack, the thief ability is not an attack) Im i right`?

Fredrik Winde said:

"Once two
(or more) characters are on the Crown, those characters’ turns
consist only of encountering one of the other characters." (p. 20)

(emphasis added)

Nothing about only attacking the other char. You're encountering that character as if you had landed on them, can use your special ability, attack normally or attack via psychic combat.

ok, it was "encountering" not attack, i forgot. so then it is a "go" for the thife"