Some debate has come up in our group regarding the wording of 'spending' a surge. Do you actually have to burn the dice just to get the benefit of spending a surge or are the surges just addition to whatever you roll?

I've read through the FAQs and searched the forums, but the topics discussed here are generally more advanced than what we've come across. Sorry if this is covered elsewhere and I missed it.

capnwoodrow said:

Depends on which dice you are talking about. So you have the "core" dice (which I define as the Red, Blue, White, Green and Yellow) and the black power dice.

For "core dice" which can have surges, hearts and range all on the same face, you use everything that is there. So on the White dice roll the side that has 1 range, 1 surge and 3 hearts you get to use all of them (so 1 range for the attack, 1 surge to activate an ability and 3 hearts of damage).

Power dice on the other hand, you can only use what you roll. So blank, surge or enhancement (giving you range OR damage).

So say you roll with a weapon that rolls White Green and you have 2 black power dice. The weapon does 1 surge = 1 damage. You roll White (1 range/1 surge/ 3 damage), Green (1 range/1 damage) and get a surge on each of the black power dice. So your attack has 2 range and does base 4 damage. Then you spend the surges you rolled to add an extra 3 damage resulting in 7 damage total.

So you spend the surges to activate abilites on weapons and items. Once a surge is spent, it can't be used for anything else but the actual die itself being used up depends on what kind you are rolling.