This one came up just the other night, and I have not found a ruling after a couple days of searching.

My friend is playing the Tavern Maid. The class I am playing is irrelevant in this case, but I have the Alchemist follower.

My friend lands on my space, and uses the Tavern Maid's ability to serve me a drink. I have no gold, but I do have several objects. Because the Maid's ability says "give her 1 gold if able", my friend says that having an Alchemist and items that he can convert into gold qualifies me as "able", forcing me to sell/convert an item into gold and pay him. Due to poor luck, I kept rolling 2 multiple times, so this kept happening until all of my objects were gone.

I say that I cannot be forced to use my follower's ability by another player. My friend says having that follower makes me able to pay him, so I have no choice.

Which of us is correct?

Hi there,

You're friend is wrong.

'if able' means if you are directly able (if you have gold) not 'if you are able through a serious of actions'.

Do you have an official ruling reference?

There's no official ruling on this specific topic as far as I know.

You don't have gold to give, it's not much harder than that. Sure, you could make some but that's something completely different.

If you have no gold at the time that you rolled, you do not have to give a gold.