Yeah I'm fine with the FAQ ruling, but it does contradict the rule book.

Big Remy said:

+1. The intent is clear.
I do also note that although the question may have been looked at properly, and thought about, the answer is worded exactly the way you would expect someone to word a casual answer that never looked at the rules. Technically the answer could be interpreted to say that even, for example, trait upgrades for a single hero, must be purchased by the whole party... Obviously that is not the intent but it is a very sloppy answer.

Agreed. A lot of answers in the FAQ are like this, very short and ambiguous

-shnar

Absolutely. They seem to have gone for the shortest possible response, leaving the question still ambiguous about 30% of the time. Still, the new FAQ does clarify _some_ things, and I think the intent of this particular ruling is clear.

thanks everyone for the discussion and the lookup in the new FAQ.

I think the best way to look at it is that the symbol on the "elven sails" card in question is the same as the cost on one of the overlord upgrade cards - a cost paid in Conquest Points, not Experience Points. So instead of paying in XP, the party is paying "conquest", which lowers all players XP.

Chernobyl

Sort of. If you think of it that way, you might be tempted to think that the heroes' Conquest Point total goes down. CPs *never* go down in the advanced campaign, so it's probably best to just explain these upgrades that every hero has to spend the XP cost to get it, though one hero has to go to the shipyard and make the commission.

-shnar

shnar said:

not really...I mean, when the overlord spends conquest, does his total go down? no.

But the Overlord doesn't spend Conquest, or it would go down. OL spends XP, just like the heroes.

-shnar

shnar said:

Nobody spends conquest, everybody spends XP.

Unfortunately the FAQ answer is no real help at all. It is another of the useless too-short answers that doesn't help, particularly since it is flat out wrong.
Q: Ship Upgrades and the Shipyard: For ship upgrades such as Elven Sails that have a experience cost, is this experience cost paid by the entire party (similar to the Tamalir upgrades in Road to Legend) or does only the hero who purchased the upgrade pay the experience cost?
A: Upgrades are paid for by the party.

Upgrades:
Hero Upgrades
Skill Upgrades
Trait Upgrades
OL Upgrades
Avatar Upgrades
Tamalir Upgrades (RtL)
Party Upgrades
Treachery Upgrades
Monster Upgrades
Ship Upgrades (SoB)
Power dice upgrades (fatigue)

Of all of these, the only upgrades paid for by the (whole) party previously were the Tamalir upgrades, which bear little or no relationship to Ship upgrades. Some costs of some of the other upgrades were paid for out of 'party treasury' but that is frankly irrelevant since anything with a monetary cost is paid for out of party treasury, and the XP costs (which is what the question is about) were not paid for by 'the party'.

The FAQ answer is worse than useless because it doesn't say ship upgrades, it just says upgrades, which is palpably wrong. Upgrades are most definitely not all paid for by the party. And such a short throw-away answer that does not pay any attention to the question also is a strong indicator of not having actually looked at the question properly or understood the implications.

If the answer said ship upgrades are paid for by the party at least there would have been indication that some attention was paid and we could use it.

As it is I think the intent is clear, but there is no indication at all the the person answering had any clue what what they were talking about and definite indication that they did not. Unfortunately a declaration of intent by someone who doesn't have a clue is worthless.
Now the person answering might have a deep and thorough understanding and his or her declaration of intent might be valuable. Unfortunately the manner of that declaration, imprecise and technically wrong, gives no confidence that such is the case.

Corbon said:

Based on things, I firmly believe that the person who wrote that answer was very familiar with Road to Legend, but not with Sea of Blood and doesn't realize (although an effort was made to make this clear when questions were submitted) that the sections concerning upgrades are written differently in the two rulebooks. I think said person also makes what are completely understandable leaps of judgment based on their knowledge.

By rules: FAQ change is wrong and contradictory

By intent: Given that at least one of the two designers of the game worked on RtL, its clear that the intent was for all to pay the cost.

Big Remy said:

Sorry, but from what you say, all that is clear is that the intent in RtL (for Tamalir upgrades one assumes) is for all to pay the cost.

Your information makes the answer even less likely to reflect 'SoB intent' than before.

Corbon said:

Even if that would be the case, with which I disagree, it doesn't matter. Because the FAQ answer is entirely clear, and while it might contradict the SoB rules, it makes perfect sense.

Personally, glossing over the SoB rules only after being familiar with the RtL ones, I didn't even realize there is a reading of the rules that makes only one character in the party pay for ship upgrades. Consequently, the FAQ ruling presents no change to my understanding of them.

haslo said:

So if your melee hero upgrades his melee trait are you going to charge your mage (all your heroes in fact) XP? That is what the 'entirely clear' answer says. Upgrades are paid for by the whole party.

The FAQ answer is not entirely clear. The fact that you, coming to SoB without reading the rules properly (yet claiming an 'understanding of them') but merely making assumptions based on RtL, make the same misinterpretation as the FAQ ruler appears to have made just proves my point. Big Remy's evidence that the writer was thoroughly familiar with RtL just makes it all the more likely that the writer neither understood nor actually looked at this SoB question, given the brief, vague, and flat out wrong-even-if-the-SoB-intent-was-known answer.

So essentially, we're now arguing about something that is entirely clear to every single one of us, including you, just because the rules can be interpreted another way? The question was about ship upgrades ( and refers to these ship upgrades simply as "upgrades" in the second half of the question), the answer refers to the question. Yes it could have been worded better, but do you really think that the whole party should pay for every single upgrade, or do you merely argue for the argument's sake?

If we want to be super technical about it, the FAQ writer worked on SoB, not RtL.

Because they don't post their intentions when they answer questions, it becomes hard to believe their answers are legitimate, especially when they're an unexpected about-face from the rules.

haslo said:

No.
I confess I am reacting to people who come along with the attitude of "oh, I didn't have a clue what the rules were and was surprised to hear that this was an about face from what they actually say, but since I was playing it this way all along it must have been the intent before so this is a straitforward rule".

Sorry, my bad. Newish baby in the house and not enough sleep I guess. Must be grumpier than I feel.
Seriously, my bad. I apologise.

The fact is that this is an about face from the rules as written and looks very much like it was answered by someone who didn't bother to examine the question in the light of SoB rules. It only looks that way because it was lazily and badly written. A tiny smidgen of actual effort in the answer would have provided ample assurance that the answer-er knew what they were doing. But there was none (effort), which for an about-face in the rules is extremely frustrating.

To Thundercles: Sorry, Remy posted that he firmly believed the person working on this was "was very familiar with Road to Legend, but not with Sea of Blood" which I understood to be inside knowledge.

Corbon said:

Corbon said:

First congrats on the baby.

Second, I don't have any inside knowledge but it is the most likely answer as to the about face in the rules.

Corbon said:

Sorry, my bad. Newish baby in the house and not enough sleep I guess. Must be grumpier than I feel.

No problem gratz on the baby, and my apologies for spouting uninformed nonsense (which kinda is what I did, since that's the way it works in RtL and I seem to have glossed over this portion of the SoB rules only, I missed the different reading concerning party upgrades that these do have by necessity) - I usually try to avoid that, just like I try to avoid applying logic to game rules

There are other places in (probably) this and (definitely) other FFG FAQs that, if taken literally at their full face value, imply more than they mean. I've come to live with that and try to apply FAQ rulings not as a general game rule, but only pertaining to the specific case the question is about.

ProtoPersona said:

Because having actually examined the rules, both as RAW logic and as thematic 'whats happening here', I don't believe for a moment that it was the intent they be treated the same. They are simply too different in fundamental ways.

Edit 2: Just to clarify, I think the intent of the original writer of this section was that the XP cost of ship upgrades is paid individually. I think the intent of the person who wrote the FAQ answer (or more accurately, what he thinks the intent of the person who wrote the original rule is) is that the cost be paid collectively. Earlier I have written several times something like "the intent is clear" which referred to the person writing the FAQ, not the person writing the original rule.

Tamalir upgrades do not require any action by any hero. They do not soak up time (week actions) for any individual hero. They are explicitly paid for by the party, the only upgrade that is not paid for by the individual. They thematically (and descriptively) represent the heroe s using "their growing notoriety to convince its rulers to improve the city". Basically they collectively go to the council and say, "you need to do this".
Ship upgrades require an individual hero spend his personal week long train action supervising at the Shipyards. Meanwhile the rest of the heroes do their own thing elsewhere. Thematically and descriptively it is an entirely individual upgrade and other heroes are busy spending their XP on other things at the same time.

There is absolutely no indication anywhere in SoB that Ship upgrades should be paid for collectively. There is no indication anywhere in SoB that there is any possibility of any sort of upgrade being paid for collectively. Remember, RtL does not exist for SoB - meaning that you can play SoB without owning RtL. If you don't own RtL what would make you think the XP cost is collective?

The reason people (including me) made the wrong base assumption is because the Ship upgrade cards have XP costs printed on them. For the heroes, in RtL, the only cards with XP costs printed on them were Tamalir Upgrades which were explicitly paid for by the party. So people saw the symbol and didn't think further. However the hero upgrades (skills, traits, SM) all have dual costs, which are not paid for by the party, but either their cost varies according to the existing skills or they are not represented by cards. So we never saw dual cost cards before. (Note that Tamalir upgrades were not dual cost either, being XP only.)

Frankly, I remain convinced that the person answering the FAQ had no idea what he was talking about (in this particular case) and just answered off the cuff assuming it was similar to RtL Tamalir upgrades.

Edit: Btw, thanks to all for gratz on the baby. Nearly 3 months now, but that just means the fatigue has accumulated...