The Skill Card "Tough - Your Maximum wounds are increased by 4" How does a hero apply this card. Reading this card & trying to figure exactly how it is to be played brought up confusion.

What was the confusion? Just treat your wounds as having 4 more than they currently have. For example, if you were Lord Hawthorne, your wounds would be 20 instead of 16.

The reason they state "maximum" is that you can increase your wounds through upgrades (in RtL for example) or other effects that might affect your "maximum" wounds. These all stack, and most affects that allow you to recover wounds go up to the character's "maximum".

Help?

-shnar

Thanks

The Confusion was this: First, the player was saying he could add 4 to his wounds every turn when he used the card, so in 5 turns he would be able to add 20 more wounds to his character 4 points each turn. As the OL quickly dismissed that thought.

Second, if you do use this card each turn so if your hero is lets say down to 3 wounds left & he uses this card on his turn. Is it like giving him 4 more that turn making his total 7. If that is true this card is like a healing item giving back 4 wounds each turn?

So my question should have been Do you add four to your current wounds each turn or does this skill just make your maximum wounds be 4 more than what is on the characters card?

There is no "using the skill." It just sits there and increases your maximum wounds.

That answers the question then Thanks.

Skill cards aren't kept in hand and played at a specific point, like overlord cards or feat cards (from Tomb of Ice). As soon as you get one, you immediately set it out face-up in front of you, and it is constantly in play.

Some skills are still have instantaneous effects at specific times (generally those that say "whenever..." or "exhaust to..."), but +4 max wounds just means that you have +4 max wounds.

Antistone said:

Yes. Unless the skill card specifically states can only be used once per turn (or some other limiting factor, like the new cards in Sea of Blood that say can only be used once until the hero activates a glyph), then *every* triggering event causes the skill card to "go off". If the triggering event is any time a hero performs a melee attack, this can be twice with a Battle Action, during the Invader's turn through a Guard order, or even more through other skill cards (such as Cleaving). The triggering event is that the attack must be a Melee attack, that's all.

So yes, each melee attack gets the bonus, attacking a beastman twice (or two different beastmen), each attack would receive the bonus.

-shnar

Thanks for the answers. We played for the first time last night & I was the OL. It seems that these skill cards makes the Hero's too powerful.

Skill cards are supposed to be powerful; that's why it's so incredibly expensive to get more than you start with. The skills you draw can significantly change how the game plays out. The skills also vary wildly in power, which is problematic. But saying that "skills make the heroes too powerful" implies that the game is supposed to be played without skills and/or that the game would be balanced if you ripped skills out and left everything else the same, and neither of those is plausible.

Also, the early quests are deliberately easy for the heroes so they can learn the game. One can certainly argue that the intro quests should be simpler but still balanced, since the overlord is learning, too, but in practice, the overlord is usually the best/most experienced player, and most play groups seem to feel that they should move on to the next quest if the heroes win but that they should play the same quest over again if the heroes lose. So that's what we've got.

When we started playing vanilla we took turns playing the OL, in the quest until the hero's had won, before moving on to next, so every forth game (not quest) you got to be the OL, one quest we played 7 times before the hero's won, so in that quest 3 of us got to be OL twice, and 1 once.

We felt that this was good as everyone had a chance to learn the rules and tactics for both hero's and OL before we moved on to RTL.