Can someone else provide their understanding of the spell/blessing actions? Here are two brief example, do they match how you have been playing it?

Priest

Priest's turn starts, he is currently at 3 favor (WP of 4) and therefore gains 1 favor to take him to 4. He decides to cast a blessing which costs 5 favor, and therefore places the action card down and adds 4 tokens to it. He decides that he wants to invoke the blessing this turn, so uses the Dire Need ability to use the Curry Favor action. He rolls 3 successes, and because he is in aggressive stance earns 6 favor. The priest then places one more token on the card and then attempts to cast the blessing with one [P] added due to Dire Need.

Next turn the Priest must use 1 maneuver in order to stay at 5 favor, otherwise it will drop to 4.

Sound right?

Wizard

Wizard’s turn starts, he is currently at 6 power (has 5 WP) and uses a maneuver in order to stay at 6. He decides he wants to cast a spell that costs 7 power, and therefore uses Channel and rolls 3 successes and two boons which grants 6 power (aggressive stance) +1 power for the boons.

Stopping the example right there for two questions.

a. With the Wizards power at 13, does he have to “store” it right now before using it and therefore take the 1 stress penalty as he is over 2 x WP, or this only resolved at the beginning of the turn?

b. Do you have to take the boon bonus? I would assume you don’t as in some situations it may be harmful.

Back to the example. The Wizard then casts the spell by placing 7 tokens on the action card and rolls his dice pool with an added [P] as he channeled this turn as well. The spell goes off which takes the Wizard to 6 power.

At the start of his next turn, he must use 1 maneuver in order to stay at 6 power, otherwise it will drop to 5.

As an aside, if the spell hadn't of gone off, at the beginning of his next turn he would need to pay the stress penalty in order to store the power to use i that turnt, correct?

Sound right?

Whammo

Yeah, without checking all the details, that's exactly how we do it.

You don't have to take the boon bonus, and I would charge the stress for being momentarily over the limit, although I suspect my wizard player has slipped that by me a few times.

If you can choose to use boons or not, can you also then choose which success line to use?

For example in the Wizard's circumstance, could you opt to use the single success line (+2 power), even though you rolled three successes (+6 power)? Or is this just a danger of channeling?

Whammo

No, you can choose.

Since there isn't an explicit rule to bring your Favour or Power up to your equillibrium on a turn-by-turn basis, I don't allow it to recharge UP without using the appropriate channel/curry action.

However the rules do suggest that things move towards equillibrium; so I've house ruled that they increase 1 per Rally, and 1 per hour of rest.

Until it's errata-ed or FAQ-ed, I'll assume that the "slow recharge" they're talking about IS using the channel power or curry favour actions.

As an aside, you wouldn't have to put the tracking tokens on the wizard's spell, or on the priest's action either if she already had enough favour to invoke it completely.

Priest:
I'd have to double-check, but I believe you cast the blessing first, then Cury favor/spend favor to power the blessing. The blessing "finishes" casting once the amount of favor equals the cost. Not, like you listed, Currying favor first.

Wizard:
1 - yes, I believe you would need to spend to control the power after the Channeling.
2 - I see nothing that allows you to *not* use all the dice rolls, so I believe you must use what you roll. Of course, you always have the option of using *BB* to reduce a fatigue/stress, so this could be a better option than gaining the extra power.
3 - Power gets used up whether the spell is successfully cast or not. Failing to cast means the spell doesn't have a recharge, but the power is still gone.

Maybe I read things wrong, but my understanding was that you got a chance to dump all that power off before you were forced to roll for it. So, you would wait till the end of the turn before you had to roll to see if you were overcharged and needing to wrestle with it to control it. There's going to have to be a 1/2 page FAQ just on spells and casting...

Unfortunately it doesn't say in the rulebook *when* you need to check for control of power, whether it is a specific step in a turn or immediately. In two of my games, with different wizard players, both wizard players thought it should be at any time your power goes into the 'new threshold'. I tended to agree with them, so that is how I've been interpreting it. I mean, there still is that moment when you've got to control all that extra power. You've pulled in all this power, but you still have to control it before you can put it into a spell (or retain it). That was our thought.

"2 - I see nothing that allows you to *not* use all the dice rolls, so I believe you must use what you roll. Of course, you always have the option of using *BB* to reduce a fatigue/stress, so this could be a better option than gaining the extra power."

Shoot, I didn't see that you could use Boons to reduce stress. I will have to look that up tonight!

I would like to think that you could choose what success line you wish, regardless of the amount of successes you roll. However that doesn't seem to be supported by the rules.

I am seriously starting to think we should get a token for a free set of dice for playtesting their draft rulebook...

Whammo

I could be wrong, I don't have the book in front of me to check the actual wording.

For success lines, the attacker can only choose a single line, and cannot a line with more hammers than what was rolled, but I'm not sure if the rules prevent them from selecting a line with fewer hammers.

For boons, I do know that you cannot more than the number of boons, and you cannot the same boon effect line/action more than once. It is possible, however, that the wording might "may" or "can", and thus allow not using boons, even if they are available. My impression, though, is that you should resolve everything if you're able to. Sometimes things do go too well, which can end up causing problems.

dvang said:

I interpreted hammers to be Degree of Success. In which case the player gets the maximum line rolled.

Boons are Influence of Success, and may or may not be spent however the player wants, within the limit of a boon effect can only be invoked once per action.

It says in at least two locations that the player can choose from among the lines of success for which they qualify.

Mordenthral said:

I stand corrected. While I do like that these rules force you to read EVERYTHING, they are not necessarily the best for mechanics.