Gearing up for a game after a while: A few questions!

[Rich Stokes]

I'm gearing up for a new Agon game starting tonight and while I've read the book and played out some simple contests and a couple of battles, I'm still having trouble with a few things.  I'm prepared to accept that a lot of this is probably covered in the book and if I had more time to sit down with it and re-read parts I'm sure I'd get this, but hopefully someone here can help me out!

1) Advantage Dice - These are only usable once?  Or do they apply to all rolls until neutralised?  For example, if the heroes ambush an enemy, they get an advantage dice going into the battle.  Who gets this dice, is it the player who rolled?  Do they keep hold of this die and add it to any single roll during that battle?  Or does it need to be spent straight away (on the first positioning roll)?

My reading/understanding is that the player who rolls for the ambush gets the die if he succeeds and can use the die once only and add it to the pool of any one roll he makes during the contest.  Is that right?

2) Divine Favour - Players start the game with 7 of 14 boxes available.  They gain one point for completing a quest, and can spend them pretty fast if they want.  The rules also say that a hero gets all his divine favour restored when he makes a sacrifice.  Is that back up to 14, or 7?  I'm assuming 14?  Doesn't that make the one for completing a quest a bit weak, or am I reading this wrong?

3) Divine Favour again - All named NPCs get a pool of DF.  I assume they use them the same way as the players, right?

4) Weapons - Players and opponents choose their currently held weapons (left and right hands) in the breaks between exchanges.  So if the heroes get into a fight with a group of soldiers, the Antagonist decides what the soldiers have in their right/left hands before the first exchange, right?  Assuming the soldiers have a sword, a shield and a bow.  So if the starting distance looks close, then as Antagonist, I'm going to start them off with Sword/shield, and if it's far, I'll start with a Bow.

Can the players try for an ambush to catch the soldiers with the "wrong" weapons in their hands?

5) Monsters - Monsters can only be harmed by magic weapons.  A hero can burn Divine Favour to make their weapon's magical and able to hurt a monster for a battle, but that's very costly.  I get the impression that getting a magic weapon to hurt/kill a monster would be a secondary objective of a quest, something like: Get the Magic Sword of McGuffin, then...  Kill the Kraken.

Is that right?  Am I supposed to provide such weapons as a part of the quest (makes a really neat secondary objective)?  If so, should I provide enough so that all the players have one, or should I just provide one and let the players argue over it?

Also, there are some answers missing from the FAQ.  I guess this is where someone added a question you haven't seen yet!

More NPCs and minions statted up in the book (or another book) would be really useful for getting going.  Along the liners of the Savage Worlds toolkits.  That'd do a lot of the heavy lifting for me as a GM.  Any plans for something like that?

Thanks for your time,

Rich

[Cam]

1. On simple contest add ambusdie to roll, on Battle you get the ambush die ones + can rule the positions at start (and mayby first round as free attack? - i can be wrong at this)
2. Divine favor starts at 7 and sacrifice restrores DV to this maximum. Completing quests adds to MAX DV, very useful.
3. Yes
4. Asuming im right on 1) then this is solved.
5. Not preparing when going to kill (mythical) monsters is foolish, restoring DV with interlude before combat _is_ advisable. I use side quest to reveal some weakness in the monster and Heroes generally seek additional advantages before major Battle. I generally assume that my players seek weapons, weaknes and advantage against quest foes, sometimes foes do excatly this to Heroes

Hope this helps some, i do not have my copy at hand now and i readed the book several months ago.

-cam-

[John Harper]

These questions were also addressed over in the crossposted thread on Story Games:
http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=3384

I don't know why I never responded to this, Rich. Sorry about that. I trust you have it sorted now. :-)