Questioning the Laws of the Order?

[Silent Tamatama]

Hey Clinton.

I got a chance to look at your Paladin game at Gen-Con thanks to Scott Knipe and had a couple of questions about the rules for Paladins in action.

The rules state that activating an Animus attribute for the re-roll means that you may only re-roll dice that are equal to or less than the activated Animus attribute number.  An example of this would be an Animus attribute of say Craftiness with a value of 3 being able to re-roll all dice that are 3 or less in value.  In your contested rolling example though you have the sample character Gloria re-rolling all of her unsuccessful dice (1,1, and 4 to use the exact values in the example) with her activated for free Light Animus attribute of Balance 1.  According to the rules she would only get to re-roll the dice that rolled 1's and not get to re-roll the 4, but in the example she does.  The character Vincent on the other hand only gets to re-roll 4 out 5 of his failed dice because his activated attribute only has a value of 3 and therefore can only re-roll the dice equaling 3 or less.  Was this just an oversight or is there something I'm missing in the rules?

Also I think there is a typo in the fourth paragraph down on page 11 stating, "Vincent can re-activate Craftiness 3-all his dice are above 3.  Should it be cannot instead of can or is the rule supposed to be on the second re-activation of an attribute that you re-roll all dice that are above your re-activated attribute score?

The section on Multiple Participants In an Action has me a little confused as well.

The lowest dice pool among the characters helping is made up of what exactly?   Is it just their pertinent Attribute or is it Attribute plus Ability or what?

In the example the "good" guys and gal get to add their bonus for each having an Ability in Arms on top of the calculated lowest dice pool in the group.  Is there a special rule somewhere in the rules for this?  Like a bonus for all three of them using the same Ability in the same action that they are all participating in?  Is this why in the example that the 'bad" guy and gal don't get to add Vincent's Ability in Arms to their lowest calculated dice pool?  Also how come Vincent and Sophia don't get the same bonus in the same way for spending Animus as the "do-gooders" do?  Is it because the Animus that Vincent and Sophia are using is Dark?  

The rule for the activation of an Animus attribute states, "Only one person at a time can activate an Animus attribute..." this seems pretty vague and open to lots of interpretation.  

Also this may be another typo or something that I'm missing in the rules but in the third paragraph down from the top on page 12 Sophia's Flesh dice pool equals 5 plus an additional 4 bonus dice equaling 7?  Did you mean to use Vincent's Flesh dice pool of 3 instead of Sophia's flesh dice pool of 5?  His is the lower of the two (unmodified without Abilities or weapons added).  Or is that 7 supposed to be a 9?  

The section on weapons and armor states that if you are using a weapon you need to roll at least as many successes as the weapons value adds to your pool to be used.  Using armor on the other hand say's you need to roll as many successes as the armors value adds to your pool to win in combat.  Is there supposed to be such a big difference between the bonus that a weapon gives and the bonuses that armor gives?

I'm looking forward to reading your responses, since I'm thinking that this will be the next game I run.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

You caught me with a few typos. I've actually fixed most of these in the PDF version of Paladin, but I'm guessing you saw a version of it that wasn't fixed yet. On specific points:

The rules state that activating an Animus attribute for the re-roll means that you may only re-roll dice that are equal to or less than the activated Animus attribute number.

That example was full of typos. They've been fixed, though. Your statement is correct.

The section on Multiple Participants In an Action has me a little confused as well.

The lowest dice pool among the characters helping is made up of what exactly?   Is it just their pertinent Attribute or is it Attribute plus Ability or what?

Whatever their dice pool is. If character A has 3 dice from an attribute, plus 1 from an ability, and character B has 5 dice from an attribute and no ability, the lowest dice pool is 4 from character A.

In the example the "good" guys and gal get to add their bonus for each having an Ability in Arms on top of the calculated lowest dice pool in the group.  Is there a special rule somewhere in the rules for this?  Like a bonus for all three of them using the same Ability in the same action that they are all participating in?  Is this why in the example that the 'bad" guy and gal don't get to add Vincent's Ability in Arms to their lowest calculated dice pool?

Again, this was just a major typo from an earlier version of the rules. It's been fixed for a few weeks. You did catch some bad math, which I just fixed, if you want to download the file again.

The rule for the activation of an Animus attribute states, "Only one person at a time can activate an Animus attribute..." this seems pretty vague and open to lots of interpretation.  

Not really - each time a side has a chance to activate or re-activate an Animus attribute, only one person on that side can activate.

The section on weapons and armor states that if you are using a weapon you need to roll at least as many successes as the weapons value adds to your pool to be used.  Using armor on the other hand say's you need to roll as many successes as the armors value adds to your pool to win in combat.  Is there supposed to be such a big difference between the bonus that a weapon gives and the bonuses that armor gives?

I'm reading it, and don't see the same thing you are. Both weapons and armor work the same - they add dice to your pool, but require as many successes as the number of dice they added for you to win.

I'm looking forward to reading your responses, since I'm thinking that this will be the next game I run.

Thanks! I'd love to hear how it goes.