This was (kind of) brought up in another thread here but not really finished off:

Can you choose to suffer damage and fear without testing to negate?

There two contradictions:

1. Learn to Play, page 12, “Negating Damage and Fear:” Before suffering the damage or fear, the hero may test the indicated stat.

2. Rules Reference, page 11, “22.9 Negating Damage and Fear:" Sometimes a hero can attempt to negate damage or fear before they suffer it.

Note in the Rules Reference it doesn't say may. However it says attempt.

Occurrences where you wouldn't want to test to negate would be after an enemy counter attacks and you want to attack again, knowing you have a success coming up. This happens mostly with Gimli, who can place a card from the attack test back on top of his skill deck. *

Thoughts?

*My group plays that Gimli puts a card back on his skill deck after he attacks (attack test) before the enemy counterattack. That is discussed in another thread though.

I don't see a contradiction. In this case I'm pretty sure the words "may" and "can" are synonymous. I'm quite confident that you can choose whether you want to test to negate damage or not.

I can't remember the specifics off the top of my head (plus I wouldn't want to give a spoiler) but I am pretty sure I've had a few situations where I had to take damage and did not have an opportunity to test to negate it.

I also had an enemy attack once with the special instructions "if you take damage from this attack, become emboldened." So while I tested (quite successfully) to negate it I still elected to receive one damage as it was very beneficial for me to have an emboldened character in that situation.

2 hours ago, MeeKey said:

This was (kind of) brought up in another thread here but not really finished off:

Can you choose to suffer damage and fear without testing to negate?

There two contradictions:

1. Learn to Play, page 12, “Negating Damage and Fear:” Before suffering the damage or fear, the hero may test the indicated stat.

2. Rules Reference, page 11, “22.9 Negating Damage and Fear:" Sometimes a hero can attempt to negate damage or fear before they suffer it.

Note in the Rules Reference it doesn't say may. However it says attempt.

Occurrences where you wouldn't want to test to negate would be after an enemy counter attacks and you want to attack again, knowing you have a success coming up. This happens mostly with Gimli, who can place a card from the attack test back on top of his skill deck. *

Thoughts?

*My group plays that Gimli puts a card back on his skill deck after he attacks (attack test) before the enemy counterattack. That is a discussed in another thread.

With gimli you can use his ability only after resolving full counter Attack, so the card is yet on discard pile when he negate damage

18 hours ago, Shooock said:

With gimli you can use his ability only after resolving full counter Attack, so the card is yet on discard pile when he negate damage

This is discussed in another thread and it’s agreed that it’s badly written. However this is my group’s reasoning split into three arguments (put into quote environments):

Quote

1. Gimli’s ability says: “ After you attack, you may place 1 card from the test on top of your deck. ”

Breaking it down we have:

An Attack (12.1 Hero Attacks) consists of:

• Choose item and stat

• Choose target

• Perform attack test

• Counterattack

This means a hero performs 2 tests during an attack: an attack test and a negating test (due to counterattack).

Gimli’s ability refers to “ 1 card from the test .” This is a card from the attack test since it is using the singular term “ test .” If it did include 1 card from the attack or negating test, it would’ve said “tests” (plural).

Quote

2. Of note is section 21 Counterattack . The first line says: “ After a hero attacks an enemy group, that enemy group may be able to attack the hero who attacked it. ” Note the phrase " after a hero attacks. " This is after a hero's attack test , even though it isn't specifically written as that. Same would apply to Gimli's ability.

Otherwise the enemy would counterattack twice: once in from 12.1 Hero Attacks - 12.5 Counterattack and again from 21 Counterattack .

Quote

3. Re-reading 12.5 Step 4—Counterattack , I've noticed that it says nothing about actually resolving the counterattack. It only tells the players for select "Yes" or "No" in the app prompt for if the enemy can actually counterattack. This means that 12.1 Hero Attacks actually only consists of a hero's attack test, and after 12.5 Step 4—Counterattack , the attack ends. Then the next step is 21 Counterattack , resolved completely separately. The reason for 12.5 Step 4—Counterattack is to see weather an enemy can actually counterattack.

Hope all that makes sense...

Another common scenario is when you have the boon card Hidden and get attacked. When you discard Hidden you negate all the damage, so in many cases you don’t want to bother testing and “waste” success cards when the damage is already negated by being hidden.

17 hours ago, Faranim said:

Another common scenario is when you have the boon card Hidden and get attacked. When you discard Hidden you negate all the damage, so in many cases you don’t want to bother testing and “waste” success cards when the damage is already negated by being hidden.

In the case where it's only damage and no fear, it doesn't make sense to do a negate test. I wonder how the rules deal with this? Are you even allowed to do a negate test?

in theory, doing a test doesn't waste anything because it's random anyway (unless you scouted immediately before). So negating nothing is still good because it runs your deck down giving you better knowledge of what's left in it, and ability to make a more informed decision going forward. The exception would be if you know that most of your successes are left and the odds are you would be wasting them.

Hidden says to prevent all damage and discard. 22.12 says Abilities that explicitly use the word “prevent” always reduce damage or fear without the hero needing to perform a test. So I believe you discard hidden, and then do not test, unless there is fear remaining.