Just like the title says, can a player use his magic trait die and JUST roll his power die without a magic item? Also can magic be used either ranged or melee as well?

Thanks

I'm...not entirely sure what you think that would do. Dice rolls without context are meaningless.

A hero's magic trait dice are added to magical attacks that hero makes. The type of an attack (melee, ranged, or magic) is dictated by the weapon used (except for unarmed attacks, which are always melee and aren't usually a good idea).

You don't get to add dice from any trait (magic or otherwise) to any rolls other than what the rules explicitly allow, although occasionally the quest will have special rules for using them in an unusual way, such as for the riddles in quest #3.

Why Im asking is because i had a player that had one power die for his magic trait on his character sheet but he had no magic weapon to attack but wondered if he needed a magic item/weapon at all or if he could just use the one black power die he has in that trait on his character to attack an enemy.

He wanted to make an attack that rolled only 1 black die and nothing else?

No, he can't do that. But additionally, even if he could, it would be a terrible idea (tactically) in pretty much any situation I can think of.

That last message made me smile and giggle a bit thank you for you quick responses.

Antistone said:

Any hero with Inner Fire needing one damage to finish off a monster that has zero armour and is at 2 range?
Or rather, any combination that fits within the range/damage bonuses a hero has anyway. Say, an Elevated Carthos with Inner Fire, Blessing and Wild Talent (+4R, +5D and +1R/D automatically) wanting to target a skeleton, spider or Kobold within 5R or a beastman, Master skeleton or Hellhound within 4R (all assuming 4 heroes).

It's better than using a weapon because there is no X.

But yes, it is entirely illegal.

Seriously? You're picking an argument over whether or not "pretty much" was a strong enough qualifier for me to use on my generalization?

yeah... you've picked arguments over smaller things.

Antistone said:

No, I'm not picking an argument at all.
Sometimes it's just fun to think about things a little more. I apologise for any offense caused.

There's a rule in the Descent handbook that without a weapon you can make an attack using a red dice and your melee trait.

There is NO official rule on doing the same with a magic attack, but hey... you could allow it in your game specifically, as long as everyone understands this is not a general rule.

Now as to why you'd want to do this?

I had a sittuation in one of my games where a player got webbed and was being slowly killed off by a spider, so he took a magic wand, despite not having any magic trait at all, just to kill the spider and save himself from death.

Using just a white dice and black dice would probably actually give him a better chance of living through this than what he did anyway.

HighHanded said:

Out of curiosity, where were the other heroes during all this? Webbed as well? There should've been at least one other hero in the dungeon, even if you were playing a 2 player game.

HighHanded said:

I'm not sure where you're getting "black dice" from if the hero's magic trait was zero. He can spend fatigue for dice on a magic wand attack as easily as he could on a theoretically "unarmed" magic attack, so the wand would be rolling at worst the exact same dice, and probably more. More dice never hurt (unless you're using morph to roll more than one of the X-dice, of course =P)