Bold Abilities

By Minti-me, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

My group has recently been re-reading through some of the rules and found out a few things we have been doing wrong. This one i can't see nay record of where we got it from, so i'm hoping someone will be able to tell us if we just plain made it up and thought it was in the rules.

We were under the impression that on an item that if something was in bold then it could only be done once.

Say a card reads 1 surge = 1 damage and Pierce 2.

We we're under the impression that you could use the surges to add as many damage as you wanted but only add pierce 2 once. Did we just get this confused right at the beginning or are we being blind in our re-checking of the rules?

You got it confused; the bold text just means that that's an ability (and therefore that there are rules for what it does at the back of the rule book).

If the ability has ranks (a number after the ability), then it stacks. There's an example in the FAQ where they say that if your weapon has "one surge: +1 damage and Pierce 1 ", then if you roll 3 surges, you can get +3 damage and Pierce 3 .

Cheers, that probably explains why when we played through our first rtl game we didn't find the silver and gold levels as easy as other people have said. Its nice when the monsters armour actually has an effect. A grinding axe with 6 surges meaning +5 dmg and pierce 3, versus +4 dmg and pierce 6 makes all the difference. Think i might try and get our group to stick with the old way (i.e.wrong) might make it less of a walk over in gold level. ;0)