how does the spell storm of spirits work in combination with the lore bound skills? can i reroll 1's, get extra dice when spending clues, or act as if blessed if i have the skills corresponding to the lore checks? a 'grapple' card would have made my rolls blessed without the spell, but after casting storm of spirits, will i still need the 'grapple' or is the 'library use' card the one i would need to be blessed on the combat check?

Taurmindo said:

we went ahead and ruled it in favor of the library use, deciding that the storm of spirits made the combat check a special lore check instead of a special fight check, and thus the fight modifiers shouldn't have any effect anymore. we reasoned that it have to be either fight modifiers or lore modifiers after the spell is active, and it would be weird if e.g. grapple made it easier to hit with a spell..

When you're using Storm of Spirits, your base combat check is Lore instead of Fight. Things that add to or modify your Fight score no longer apply. Grapple and Wrestle will not help. Library Use and Linguistics will help your combat check (since it is a Lore check), but so still will Marksman, Fisticuffs, and Endurance (since it is still a combat check). If you happened to be Marie Lambeau, you could even sneak in another +2 with the Martial Arts skill (the Storm of spirits is attached to your Third Eye).

The above also applies to doing combat with the Dark Pharaoh monster.

People get confused about this situation because they're so used to associating Combat checks to their Fight stat. But it's really simple in the end: substitute "Lore."

Taurmindo said:

I would have said use Grapple. Because the way I see it, Storm of Spirits makes you use the number printed under Lore instead of the one printed under Fight, but it is still a Combat check. And for combat checks you use Fight. Imagine the investigator with Grapple as being more agile or hitting the monster with Storm of Spirits on a vulnerable point on its side or back. Because on the other end, how does a library pass help you in a fight?

But in the case of Storm of Spirits, Fight is not involved at all. Remember the adage, combat checks are special fight checks. Only in this case you substitute "fight" with "lore."

Taurmindo,

This one was debated hotly several months ago ~ the logic of the argument conveyed by Tibs is one that I initially posited in the previous thread. It really is as simple as substituting "Lore" for "Fight" and not getting hung-up on the Combat check portion of the discussion. Thus, it's Library Use in this situation which will aid your Investigator

The Professor

Tox said:

The Professor said:

Thematically when you use SoS you are calling spirits/ghosts to do the fighting for you. Higher lore means you know of better spirits to call, library use means you know where to find the tomes that tell you how to find even stronger spirits. It's considerably less helpful to try to literally wrestle the spirits from the ethereal plane to do your bidding.

I think there is no issue with the literal reading, only with our experiences. The rulebook only refers to Combat checks as using your Fight stat because 99.9% of the time, it does use Fight. It's simpler just to said it does all the time and have an individual component that lists an exception (the Dark Pharaoh was in the base game!).

By the looks of it, some of the Mask items in the revised Curse expansion will be swapping some stats for others. We may have to get really used to this concept soon.

i'm glad (most of) you agree. when i had Amanda Sharpe start with Storm of Spirits, +1 Lore skill and the Library Use skill, it just felt like i got quite a good combination. but since the fight skills did not make sense with the spell active, we ruled it in that way - and will continue to do so then.