I've been wondering about this since knocking on the door for the inner ring for awhile now, when knocking on the door do you use your base strength\craft or the one with all of the buffs? Also does this apply to other areas on the board as well? Meaning; lets say i'm playing the sprite (first one that comes to mind) she has a Craft of 5 and Strength of 1. Lets say I have a sword and some amulet that raises craft 1 so my stats are Craft of 6 and Strength of 2. What stats would I use? I'm assuming the base and not the modified; also is there any other areas in the game were this would happen also?

Many thanks in advance!

You can use buffs that are general buffs, that is, work all the time. Weapons are a no-no, as they only buff in combat (battle or psychic combat).

First of all, welcome to the forum

About strength/craft and its related values, I understand that you're wondering because it wasn't at all clear to me when I started playing either. I do however suggest reading up on it in the beginning of the rule book, you'll want to get familiar with that booklet anyways since it is far more capable of answering questions (read everything literally) that you'd might think from when you first read it through.

There are three values you need to keep track of for strength/craft respectively.

Strength/Craft value

This is what is printed on the character sheet. It rarely changes, however some Warlock quest rewards and Woodland destinies and a few other cards.

It is used by for example spells ( Brainwave - double your craft value ), the warhorse (add your craft value to your strength in battle) and several other cards.

The keyword to look for in strength/craft value .

Strength/Craft

This is your strength/craft plus any cones, objects, followers etc that say they add to your strength or craft.
Used all the time, when trying to make it through the inner region for example.
It just says use your strength or craft when you are to use this.

Strength in battle / Craft in psychic combat

This is your Strength/Craft plus one weapon and any other stuff that says they add in battle or in psychic combat .
Used against creatures (..which includes enemies, look it up) and characters.

Good luck

Dam and Nioreh made good summaries. If you understand the difference between "Strength" and "Strength value," I think you're ahead of most people!

The difference between "Strength", "Strength Value," and "Strength in Battle" gets extremely confusing sometimes, especially when using effects like Brainwave and/or Warhorse.

For instance, assume a character with strength value 3, craft value 3, but current strength (in terms of the number of cones) of 5 and current craft of 7. The character has a ring, a sword, and a warhorse, and casts brainwave just prior to a battle.

I believe the correct calculation for total strength in battle is as follows:

5 (current strength) + 6 (warhorse + brainwave, which doubled craft value) + 1 (ring) + 1 (sword) = 13 strength in battle.

And even just casting brainwave prior to a psychic combat is difficult to get your head around. Assuming craft value of 3, current craft of 6, I believe brainwave gets you to a craft in psychic combat of 9. But this requires you to double the craft value of 3 to get to 6, and then add the 3 "non-craft value" tokens to get to 9.

The awkwardness in these situations comes from the fact that the tokens do not differentiate between the value stats and the current stats. One potentially clunky solution is to keep the "value" tokens separately (perhaps on the character card itself) or just use 1d6 for the values as opposed to the tokens.

Alternatively, you could use tokens only for craft/strength gained during the course of the game, and not for the initial value. So when calculating total strength you would start with the number printed on the card and add any tokens. The only complication with this alternative is the cards (especially in the Woodland) that add to craft or strength values.

...

5 (current strength) + 6 (warhorse + brainwave, which doubled craft value) + 1 (ring) + 1 (sword) = 13 strength in battle.

...

Yep, that's correct.

Well.. according to the rules you shouldn't use cones for your craft/strength values, just for the craft/strength you gain later on in the game.

(Not for objects or followers either!)

We do however but I don't find it difficult to wrap my head around what to multiply or not anyways.

We've been on the topic before (extremely confusing combinations of multiple brainwave, horses and stuff..)

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/137676-the-monk-using-a-warhorse/?hl=earth#entry1490678