Hello all -

Sorry for such a newbie question but this came up in a game.

My clerics attack came to 2 damage and two surges while the defense was two shields. Obviously, the attack fails. My question - could my cleric use the two surges for something else, like recovering a health & a fatigue? ...or does the attack have to succeed before the surges can be used?

Thanks for your time!

G

What you're describing as the attack "failing" is the attack not dealing any damage. However, this is different from "missing" (such as by rolling an X or insufficient range). Dealing no damage (shields greater than or equal to hearts) is NOT a miss.

When you miss, you can't spend surges (except to turn the attack from a miss into a hit, such as by "+1 range"). In your case, you can absolutely spend surges. You may have a surge ability that will add hearts to the attack, and make it deal damage at the end.

Zaltyre -

Ah, understood. Thank you for setting me straight!

G

This is actually not that simple. There is a pretty long topic about this (here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/849799/spending-surges-miss/page/1 )

Basically (quote):

There are three cases --

(1) rolling an "X",
(2) failing to do damage due to range [miss], and
(3) failing to do damage due to the defense roll [melee miss?].

I don't know the right answer. The "what is a miss and what isn't" is not stated clearly enough in the rules. We have played like this:

1) X = Miss, can't do anything!
2) Not enough range = Miss, can't do anything! So no fatigue recover
3) Not enough damage against shields = you CAN recover fatigue with surge (or other stuff)

My logic is that on the case 3) the defender had to 'do something to defend' and that is why surges are good to go.