So I will do my best to really summarize what one of my heroes was doing (and trying to do... consensus was no - will explain in a sec.) and look for clarity on fatigue being used in combat.

So a hero of mine has the Gauntlets of Power. descentinthedark.com/_c_/copper_treasures.php Clicky the link if you want to reference them. Essentially - all attacks gain 2 surges = gain 1 fatigue.

So the hero has 5 base fatigue. He will use his base fatigue to upgrade his dice, we are playing RtL so he will upgrade power die (using 4 fatigue) and roll (shooting from the hip here just for an example) A Blue, Yellow - and 1 gold and 1 silver die.

Here is where the questions begin:
With the roll shown above - he may for example have rolled 5 surges - he can then take 4 of them to recover 2 more fatigue. (no problems here)

CAN HE - now immediately use that 2 fatigue to add another power die or two to the attack? He obviously has not rolled the cap of 5 power die - BUT - the question essentially is when does he get that fatigue, if it's instant - then no problem with this, if it isn't until the attack is finished - no more die being added - then this may not work. (We said yes to this last night - as there seems to be nothing in the card that would really prohibit it.)

CAN HE - in the middle of his die rolling - spend 1 fatigue (to gain a movement point) to drink a fatigue potion - to recover all his fatigue - to use to add more power die in the middle of an attack? To be step-by-step specific, rolls the die - not enough to kill - wants a bunch more fatigue to add power die - burns 1 fatigue - drinks potion - gets back all fatigue - adds more power die to attack. (I said no way to this one... as me and the other person who OL's occasionally didn't think you could drink any potions mid attack - but I said I would check.)

Thanks for the help!

Short answers: NO and NO.

I guess you are aware that the Gauntlets were nerfed to "exhaust on use", meaning only once per turn?

Ok - once per turn should be fine... (only if he did a battle action to attack twice would he have used that feature twice) but that doesn't mean he couldn't - roll dice for attack, use it once with the surges/fatigue gained, then use that gained fatigue in the same attack - right? Would the use of that fatigue be legal to use for that same attack - or not available?

No, he can't spend the surges to gain fatigue, then use the fatigue to add another die.

Using Fatigue and Using Power Surges are both part of Step 5 of the JitD Attack Sequence , so the timing isn't entirely clear.

However, the only reasonable interpretation requires all dice to be added before any surges are spent. If you don't play this way, consider the following possibility:

1. Hero rolls attack dice. (Hero has 0 remaining fatigue.)
2. Hero spends 2 surges to gain 1 fatigue.
3. Hero spends that 1 fatigue to roll another die.
4. Overlord plays a Dodge card.
5. Hero re-rolls the dice, but only rolls 1 surge. He just rolled a die he can't even afford to include!

mahkra said:

That's an interesting way to think of it...

My only counter argument (and please, keep in mind I as the OL don't want them to be able to use the fatigue right away) is that there is no limiting wording of timing as to when the fatigue can be gained. Using the surges is PART of the attack... he could in theory use the surges for something else - but then still decide to add more power dice...

Example:
Rolls dice
Spends surges to add damage to attack - but it still isn't enough
Spends fatigue to add one more die to the attack

That scenario is perfectly legal. So one can use the surges mid-attack to fulfill something on a card and then add more die... why would it then limit the addition of fatigue?

SoylentGreen said:

He's not actually spending the surges before adding another die; he's just thinking about how he could spend the surges. (He won't actually spend the surges until after all the dice are added and any aim/dodge re-roll has occurred.) If he were spending the surges to actually apply damage, then he could kill the monster before the overlord has a chance to play his Dodge card. (The overlord doesn't play Dodge until after all dice are added, so you can't start resolving the attack before all dice are added.)

mahkra said:

Nicely clarified. He'll be pissed now - but hey - deal with it. It makes me happy!

Essentially how he will need to best use that card is to declare a battle action - use fatigue to boost the first attack - Tap the card to regain some fatigue - and have that available for the second attack.

SoylentGreen said:

Mechanically, yes, this is how the card functions. Tactically, I'm not sure why anyone would ever spend fatigue to add dice in hopes of using the Gauntlets. You're basically spending fatigue just to get back even less fatigue - why?

EDIT: The best use of the card is probably just to have something to spend extra surges on whenever you overkill a monster. If you spend anything to get those surges, you're lucky to break even in the end.

mahkra said:

Well to clarify further - he isn't HOPING for the surges - he is adding the dice to hopefully get more damage - BUT - as a side effect he CAN get surges that can then add to his fatigue to give him the chance to get more power die - hence a chance for more damage.

In this rare situation - this is the best scenario for this particular hero - as he really doesn't have anything else to spend his surges on... at the moment anyway.

I don't think you've fully grasped the depths of the nerf they made to the Gauntlets of Power...

"Replace the text on Gauntlets of Power with the following: 'All of your attacks gain the ability: Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and pay <SS> to Recover 1 fatigue.'" (FAQ p.2)

It's not that you can only use them on one attack per turn, you can only use them to recover one fatigue per turn, no matter how many surges you roll.

The problem was that the Gauntlets comboed stupidly well with the skill Rapid Fire, especially in an extended campaign, where if you could get your average surges per attack up to about 4 you could make basically infinite attacks until everything in your line-of-sight was dead (and could make a very large number of attacks even with lower average surges).

I think it would have been better to nerf the skill, which is still just waiting to form a broken combo with any sort of fatigue recovery loop, rather than the Gauntlets, which really seemed rather unimpressive for a copper treasure (in the absence of such a combo) even before. But more people have Rapid Fire (base game) than have the Gauntlets (AoD), and ranged attacks seem to be using Rapid Fire as a crutch for the fact that lots of ranged weapons suck, so this is what we get.

In The Enduring Evil , the new version of the Gauntlets of Power appears as a 50-coin shop item. Heroes don't usually buy it.

Antistone said:

OOOOOOHHHHHH!!!!! I see. The problem is I am at work. No printed out documents and I can really only jump on the forums on occasion. That REALLY changes it!

Even worse off for the card now... jeez!

You can download PDFs of the rulebooks and FAQ/errata from the Descent Support Page , if you're so inclined. Be warned that the rulebook PDFs never get updated, so the base game PDF still contains errors that were fixed in the printed version (in addition to the errors that weren't).

Antistone said:

Oh yeah - I have them all printed and in a nifty binder... There are just SO MANY rules and then so many changes in the FAQ - that something like a change to one item has a higher probability of getting missed... This was simply the case this time unfortunately.

Um, the limitation to one fatigue per turn is Antistone´s interpretation, which is doubtful in my view. All special abilities of items which are triggered by spending surges are meant to stack - why would there be an exception with no explicit stating?

Parathion said:

If the effect could be activated twice, there's no reason it wouldn't stack as normal. However, the effect requires 2 surges and exhausting the gauntlets . Once the gauntlets are exhausted, even if you have 2 more surges to spend, you can't activate the effect a second time because the gauntlets are already exhausted.

The standard notation in Descent is e.g. "<SS>: +1 damage", which means pay 2 surges to get +1 damage. I think everyone agrees that this can be used multiple times in one attack, so it is also short for pay 4 surges to get +2 damage, pay 6 surges to get +3 damage, etc.

Paste this into the text for the gauntlets and voila, you can use it multiple times in one attack.

Except that the Gauntlets of Power do NOT grant the ability "<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue". (Rather, they no longer grant that ability, post-errata.)

Instead, they grant the ability "Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and pay <SS> to Recover 1 fatigue."

If they had wanted you to exhaust the Gauntlets in order to convert surges to fatigue as much as you wanted on a single attack, the errata should have been "Exhaust this card after making an attack roll to give that attack the ability '<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue'"

I won't claim that they necessarily would have written that - this is the Descent FAQ we're talking about here - but the current text is not in any way ambiguous. If they meant it to work the way you want it to work, the FAQ is completely wrong.

Of course the text is ambiguous, since at least two persons (you and me) read it differently.

The erratum ability can be rewritten as: "Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and <SS>: Recover 1 fatigue."

This is just a shorter form. I hope you agree at least to that one.

Now we do the pasting I suggested:

<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue means (by analogy to all other abilities that trigger on surges):

<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue or <SSSS>: Recover 2 fatigue or <SSSSSS>: Recover 3 fatigue or etc. ad infinitum.

This leads to:

"Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and (<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue or <SSSS>: Recover 2 fatigue or <SSSSSS>: Recover 3 fatigue or etc. ad infinitum.)"

Parathion said:

Just because someone (in this case many someones) misinterpret a text does not make it ambiguous. It might just mean that one interpretation is wrong - ambiguity means there is more than one possible correct interpretation.

I confess to having interpreted it wrongly, as many have here, but Antistone is correct. There is only one correct interpretation. the way it is written.

"All of your attacks gain the ability :
Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and pay ~~ to Recover 1 fatigue."

Everything after the : is one, single, combined ability.
There is no ability : "pay ~~ to Recover 1 fatigue" - if there was it could be used multiple times in a single attack.

To use the ability, each time , requires both exhausting the card and paying 2 surges.
You cannot spend 4 surges in an attack to recover 2 fatigue (use the ability twice), because after the first use of the ability the card is exhausted and cannot be used again.
If you had some method of ignoring exhaustion or unexhausting things, then you might be able to use it mutiple times in an attack.

It is really sad that you do not even try to follow my chain of reasoning. Instead you cling to the usual sloppily written text in the FAQ, since obviously want the Gauntlets to be double-nerfed (one fatigue once per turn instead of several fatigue multiple times per turn).

Your interpretation is just plain wrong in my view, so I guess we have to agree to disagree.

You seem to view the usage of an ability that stacks as using the ability several times in sequence (in this case it is just a part of an ability, but nonetheless). While this is certainly one way of viewing it, there is no rules basis that this is the only and correct way to do it.

Parathion said:

I did follow your chain of reasoning (or I think I did, and rechecking does nothing to dissuade me otherwise), but it simply doesn't need answering. It ignores the fundamental point, which you allude to later, that ~~ gain a fatigue is only a part of the ability.

You simply don't get to ignore half an ability and activate the other half twice.
If there were two abilities on the card then you could, but there is only one ability and it has two parts. To use the ability you must do both parts. To use the ability multiple times you must do both parts multiple times. It really is that simple.

Yes, you can use the ~~ part multiple times. You can spend 6~ for 3 fatigue, but you also have to exhaust the card three times if you use the ability three times since the usage of the ability explicitly includes exhausting the card. It is not an inability to spend multiples of 2~ that stocks you using the ability multiple times, it is the inability to exhaust the card three times.
It doesn't make any difference whether the usage is sequential or all-at-once, you still have the pay the full rate each time or multiple you use it.

Your excuse that the ability is badly worded so you will change it is ...ridiculous.
It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. It isn't ambiguous, it isn't 'broken", it doesn't clash with any other rule or mechanic. It just doesn't say what you want it to say.

I don´t need any excuses and I don´t need to change any wording - in my interpretation it works as I said as written.

Since you didn´t feel the need to answer my chain of reasoning, I suppose you didn´t get it.

I don´t need to ignore the exhaust part, I am just using the ability once , with one Exhaust.

Just as I would be using the ability "<SS>:+1 damage" once (since I only made one attack ), but could spend multiples of two surges to get the stacked effect.

How someone familiar with the Descent mechanics fails to even take my reasoning into the realm of possibility is beyond me.

To quote you: "...it isn't 'broken", it doesn't clash with any other rule or mechanic."

Parathion said:
The erratum ability can be rewritten as: "Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and <SS>: Recover 1 fatigue."
This is just a shorter form. I hope you agree at least to that one.

This is wrong. Your reasoning after this point isn't faulty, but it's based on an incorrect assumption. Your rewrite changes the meaning; it's not "just a shorter form".

If it were written as you suggest, then the meaning would be ambiguous. It's unclear if your proposed rewrite is "[Exhaust Gauntlets and <SS>]: Recover 1 fatigue" or "Exhaust Gauntlets and [<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue]"

However, the language that is actually in the FAQ is perfectly clear and has only one meaning .
You must exhaust AND pay <SS> to recover 1 fatigue.
It does not follow that you can exhaust and pay <SSSSSS> to recover 3 fatigue; rather you would have to (Exhaust 3 times) and pay <SSSSSS> to recover 3 fatigue.

Parathion said:
You seem to view the usage of an ability that stacks as using the ability several times in sequence (in this case it is just a part of an ability, but nonetheless). While this is certainly one way of viewing it, there is no rules basis that this is the only and correct way to do it.

As Corbon was trying to explain, it doesn't matter if you're triggering the abilty 3 times simultaneously or 3 times in succession. You still have to pay 3x the full cost, which means you have to exhaust the gauntlets 3 times in addition to using 6 surges.

Parathion said:
I don´t need any excuses and I don´t need to change any wording - in my interpretation it works as I said as written.

But you DID change the wording. Your entire line of reasoning was based on a faulty assumption that your rewrite had the same meaning.

Parathion said:
I don´t need to ignore the exhaust part, I am just using the ability once, with one Exhaust.
Just as I would be using the ability "<SS>:+1 damage" once (since I only made one attack), but could spend multiples of two surges to get the stacked effect.

You use the +1 damage ability once but spend multiples of 2 surges to get stacked damage in your example. That same reasoning with the gauntlets would mean you use the ability once and spend multiples of (Exhaust + 2 surges) to get a stacked effect.

I think the confusion here is that you're assuming you exhaust the gauntlets when you use them, and you're saying you only used the gauntlets once. However, that's NOT what the ability says. It's not 1 exhaust per use of the gauntlets. It's 1 exhaust (+ 2 surges) per fatigue.

EDIT: A "shorter form" with the same meaning is " <SS> + Exhaust Gauntlets : Recover 1 fatigue "

Parathion, if you tell me that I can "give Parathion one dollar and touch myself on the ear to gain $1.25" can I then give you $1 and touch myself on the ear 500 times to earn a total of $625?

No, because that's not how English works. "<verb> <noun> and <verb> <noun> to <verb>" has a very specific meaning. Your rewrite of the rules changes that meaning. It's not that people aren't answering your line of reasoning, it's that your base supposition (you can change the wording to "x") is wrong, and thus any reasoning that follows comes to the wrong conclusion regardless of how logical it is.

How is "<SS>: Recover 1 fatigue" different compared to "pay <SS> to recover 1 fatigue" ?

"<SS>: +1 damage" means exactly "pay <SS> (or multiples) to get +1 damage (or multiples)", does it not?

How can you state that "Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and pay ~~ to Recover 1 fatigue." must always mean

"(Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and pay ~~) to Recover 1 fatigue." and never "Exhaust Gauntlets of Power and (pay ~~ to Recover 1 fatigue)."

Are you still thinking the FAQ statement is clear and unambiguous without the brackets?!

Edit: @ James, you would earn a total of $624 only, since I would definitely insist on getting that one dollar from you

If touching your ear for $1.25 was a stacking effect, then how would you write your example ability to earn the big bucks?