I have read the serene focus talent card and every rule related to stress recovery and yet I cannot find a single entry in the book that mentions the ability to even be able to use a willpower check to remove stress.

So I guess my question is what the heck is the point of this talent? Is it misprinted, or can someone cite the willpower check to recover stress page.

Not sure what it specifically says on the card your mentioning (don't have it with me) but from the Imparment, Wounds & Healing secion:

Fatigue & Stress

Fatigue and stress are short term impairments. They accumulate quickly during an encounter, as adrenaline fades and tensions wear away at the characters. Thankfully, fatigue and stress both fade quickly outside of an encounter.

At the end of an episode or encounter, characters immediately recover from some of their fatigue and stress. A character recovers from a number of fatigue tokens equal to his Toughness, and recovers from a number of stress tokens equal to his Willpower.

During the Rally Step one of the options is that a PC may make a Discipline (WP) Check to recover Stress, similar to making a Resilience (To) check to recover fatigue.

The Serene Talent Card reads as follows "When you succeed at a willpower check to recover stress, you may recover one additional stress.

My question is does recovery of stress and fatigue happen automatically equal to your related stat, in this case willpower of 4 would mean recover 4 stress or does it actually mean make a willpower check and number of successes = how much you recover?

According to the card its the later, according to the book which you cited there is no check.

Additionally I looked under resilience and discipline to see if you could make a check to recover stress with those skills and found nothing, I also looked under the entry for willpower and again found nothing.

The reason I even posted this question in the forums is because this card seems completely worthless if there is no actual check involved in recovering stress and fatigue.

dvang said:

I didn't see your post, that is most helpful.

I guess my question becomes why is this card so ineffective compared to others that recover stress, one generates a free recovery for each eagle symbol rolled and the other you can exhaust to simply recover 2 stress.

Do most groups run a highlander rule on cards thus the variety needed in cards of stress recovery? Like counting on someone with high willpower or toughness to be able to recover quite abit without needing the better cards?

I don't have the action cards in front of me, and don't recall off the top of my head. Does Assess the Situation action use a WP check? If so, that would help this talent as well.

No that would be an int check.

The initial reason I posted the question is I was rolling up my first character, and I managed to randomize Dwarf and Ironbreaker as one of my classes. Willpower is a primary attribute of the class and the class seems like it could be self sustaining for removing a lot of fatigue and stress tokens.

In addition the Dwarf has 14 wounds 5 soak value, and action cards that allow him to block and recharge block quicker.

I'm trying to make sure he has no issues receiving stress and fatigue and removing it.

I was just trying to figure out how to roll a character well so i could show my group. No one has played the game yet.

Which was the reason I had no idea there was even a rally step, go figure its not in the players hand book because its a GM mechanic.

Looking through my Support Action cards:

"My Life For Yours" is a Discipline (WP) and recovers fatigue and stress with 2+ successes

"Saga of Grungni" is a Discipline(WP) and recovers fatigue and stress with 3+ successes

"Saga of Valaya" uses Discipline(WP) and on the Green side recovers stress and fatigue with 3+ successes

"Staring Contest" uses Discipline(WP) vs Discipline(WP) and can recover 1 stress on 2 boons

They all look pretty decent too. So, there are a few Action Cards that can recover stress where that talent would be useful. Hope this helped!

Oh my your absolutally right, I completely forgot to look in the action cards for abilities that would allow him to recover his fatigue and stress.

I initially went for the sword and board, and counterblow without thinking much else.

Thanks a lot.

dvang said:

Quick question does your group play with the rule that if there is one card only one person may use it to keep each individual unique?

If you do or don't could you maybe explain the pros and cons you have found to using one way or the other whichever you use?

Thanks again I'm hoping my group starts playing soon.

We pay with the rule that every card is unique so no two players are the same. The pros are that no two characters are the same so no one overlaps each other directly they all bring something new to the table. The other pro is that you create a group that should be more well rounded and able to tackle every aspect of an adventure then just a bunch of combat machines for example.

The cons are that you could run into a situation, especially in a larger group where you may end up with a character who becomes obsoleted because someone else has all the good offensive cards, someone else has all the good defensive cards and they are left kind of in the middle. Realistically this shouldn't normally happen as there are more then enough good cards to go around. But it is a possibility. The other potential con is lack of advanced careers currently to move into in some paths. But given that the advanced careers aren't dramatically better then the basic careers (like they were in previous editions) this isn't so much of a problem.

Personally I accept the cons and find that the unique aspect of creating characters that can't be the same trumps the cons and in a mature group of players that are building their characters with the group in mind. They should be mindful of what cards/careers they pick so that no one gets left behind.

I would allow duplicates, but none of my players have had the inclination to take the same action cards or talents. Of course, they are all very different PCs (human Merc/thug, human priest of Morr, human amethyst wizard, human gambler/ratcatcher).