My group of Descent players have sowre off this game until we figure out wether or not this stacks.

For example:

A Weapon card states

"surge" = Pierce 10

(ill use the relic for this example)

Does that mean you can spend 2 surges to get 20 pierce?

5 of us have looked up and down every reule book we got and have not found anything concrete as to wether or not this can happen.

Fists were nearly thrown, and i have sent a message to FFG directly but its been months and i have not recieved a reply.

To the best of my knowledge:

If it says "1 surge = +1 Pierce" then yes it stacks.

If you are getting Pierce from two different sources, then it stacks.

If it says "1 surge = 10 Pierce", then no, because there is no plus sign. Best example for this is to look at pg10 of the JitD rulebook at the spending surges example with Knockback. In that one, its stated that spending another 2 surges will not get you Knockback 2. However, there is a weapon in one of the expansions that has "1 surge = +1 Knockback" or something along those lines.

So for your question, once that weapon gets 10 Pierce with a surge, that's it.

Thats what one other and i thought. i saw it both ways. in any case im glad we can get back to playing.

What you says makes sense. and will now be used.

This is a common point of contention. I believe the way it works is that abilities with levels will stack and abilities without levels will not. Thus, if a surge ability grants Reach to a weapon, you can use it repeatedly in RtL(where it stacks) but only once in normal Descent (where it doesn't stack). Knockback doesn't stack because it explicitly doesn't have any levels; you have to get extra Knockback spaces instead. In this case it will stack if it says "~ = Pierce ", "1 surge = +1 Pierce ", "some number of surges = 10 Pierce ", etc. The number is not necessary, and Pierce by itself is considered to be level 1 Pierce .

I just read on another forum about this topic.

Lets take the bow from the shop.

it has 2 pierce as its ablility.

what i am understanding is that if it also had the "surge= 10 pierce"

it would then recive 12 pierce if a surge is rolled.

so given this example what you are saying is that if the bow rolled 5 surges it would get 52 peirce should the hero so desire?!

GuantsGhost said:

Yes.

Though why on earth you would want 52 Pierce unless you are doing Pierce wrong, I have no idea...

All Pierce does is allow the rest of the attack (which effectively means the rest of the damage done by the attack) to ignore (X amount of) armour, not do actual damage. So unless your target has armour in excess of 12 those additional 4 surges would be better spent on something else. Anything else. Nothing even, just for bragging rights.

If I've understood correctly, pierce does stack. And for example that Blade of light is designed to be able to cut through any armour so that pierce 10 multiplied several times is just ordinary.

Thundercles said:

Thundercles is right about the point of contention. Wait until you get something with "~ = Blast", you're going to run into the same problem. I don't know if we've ever seen an official answer to the whole issue. I'm really fine with it either way, I would just like to see an actual answer on it or something in the myterious 1.5 FAQ saying "It all just stacks".

I took a look at all the bosses from the AoD rule book, and found that only one boss had higher then 10 armor. That being a master troll with 14 armor.

This being said, stacking pierce would make bosses pointless. they are bosses. they aren't supposed to be easy. so what we are gonna roll with is that piercing stacks as long as its from 2 different sources.

until we find a concrete ruling from the game creators stating otherwise, this is the way we are going to play.

I think that is a vaiable way to play.

Actually, this is specifically addressed in both the basic rules and the FAQ, and it stacks. I'm not sure where you think the ambiguity comes in.

On page 10, under Using Power Surges: "A hero may trigger a specific effect more than once for a single attack, as long as he rolled enough power surges to do so."

On page 22, the Special Abilities section: "Note that some special abilities have ranks...If a hero or monster gains a given special ability from more than one source, any ranks the ability has are added together."

I suppose, based just on those, one could conceivably argue that activating the same surge ability twice is not "more than one source," and thus is stacks with everything else but not itself. However, the FAQ slams the door on that one:

Q. Do special abilities stack?
A. Special abilities that require you to spend surges are designed to stack. So if you have an ability such as "~: +1 damage and Pierce 1," and you pay 3 surges, you gain +3 damage and Pierce 3. Some items may explicitly limit your surge spending/stacking, but those are the exception to the rule.

So to answer the original question: YES , you can spend 2 surges for Pierce 20, this has been officiallly clarified. You can get stacking Blast on weapons like the Bane or Fire Storm, too. It all stacks unless the ability is unranked or the card specifically says otherwise.

The point of confusion for some people comes in when they have it written differently on the cards. Some cards I think say "~ = Pierce 1" while another will say "~ = + Pierce 1". So you get into this semantics arguement where one appears to be able to stack (the +1 Pierce) while the other wouldn't since it doesn't have a plus sign.

Big Remy said:

True, that is not very clear on the cards. I think that is why they included that in the example in the faq. There it is clearly shown that it always stacks, even if it is 'pierce 1' instead of '+1 pierce'.

Tipically, when you have an item that already does pierce damage the card will say " ~ = +X Pierce " where as if a card doesn't already do peirce it will say " ~ = X Peirce " .

The point of confusing is players trying to think to hard on it. Peirce stacks plain & simple cut / dry. Cool? Absolutely.

Big Remy said:

My cards seem to be totally consistent: all of them have the "~: Pierce X" format. Never a plus sign or with the ranks before the word "Pierce" that I've noticed, except when it's part of another effect (as in "~: +1 damage and Pierce 1," as on the Curse of Rot (?)).

What cards do you have that look different? Maybe you've got a different printing or something?

Regardless, even if the formatting is inconsistent, I think the FAQ is pretty clear.

Yeah I think I had some from a different printing.

Regardless, I looked again at the FAQ and it does pretty much suggest that everything stacks.