Hi, Sorry if these questions have already been answered... I did a scan and spent about an hour reading forum entries so far and didn't see them... really want to be ready to kick off a game this weekend.

1) Unfair engagements: It lists being outnumbered as a possible source of misfortune dice, and outnumbering your opponent as a possible source of fortune dice... but nothing more clear. Was hoping for more detail in the ToA, but it wasn't there. If two enemies are engaged with one player is that an extra white die for all actions by the two and an extra black die for every action by the one? What about 3 on 1?

2) Separate from the reference above, their is the Assist maneuver. If I have two on one... the two can each assist each other for an additional 1 or 2 white dice. What about if there is a fight that is 2 on 2? Do A and B assist each other in their attacks on C and D, while they do the same? So everyone just winds up rolling an extra white die or two?

3) Maneuver - for melee characters it didn't seem like there was any real use for maneuvers once you were in combat other than 'Assisting'. Did I miss something?

Thanks,

James

There are no hard and fast guidelines like "when outnumbering opponents, each additional ally engaged with the same opponent adds an additional fortune die up to a maximum of +4," or anything like that. It's pretty much a GM call. In the end, it's whatever you think is fair and makes your game more enjoyable.

As for the assist maneuver, I would still require justification/explanation for how once character is providing assistance to another, they can't just spend the maneuver and add the die automatically. So if one is breaking a door down and another wants to assist, in that effort, okay, bonus die. But you can't just say, "I'm spending a maneuver to assist my engaged ally with his next melee attack." How are you doing that? If they said, "I'm going to try to distract the foe and make him focus on me rather than my ally," then I might award a Fortune die to the next melee attack even if the player didn't specify that they were performing an assist maneuver. If two players both want to just keep doing this however, then I would just consider this a bonus for outnumbering the foe rather than the use of an assist maneuver and I probably wouldn't give them the benefit of both outnumbering and assisting. On the other hand, if one of them maneuvered behind the foe, I'd give them a Fortune die for flanking on top of the one for outnumbering since this would make it harder for the opponent to keep an eye on both of them at all times. Again, it's all GM interpretation.