Rules: challenge of name, shield, athletics vs range, creative ability x2

[Guy Srinivasan]

I'm about to run some Agon! And I have some rules questions.

1. During interludes, all sorts of impairment fall under the same rules? "I call for a challenge of Armor" is Name+Armor? In particular, how do you remove impairment from Armor and Name.

2. I see there's been some discussion about the Shield skill. Here's what I think I'm doing, is there anything obviously wrong with it?
Shield Bash - Range 0 weapon (+range does not affect this) with standard "left hand attack is -2 and you can't defend with those dice during this exchange" rules.
Shield - when Creative Abilitying into your own Shield Bash in a Battle, only impair if you lose the roll.

3. Heroic Traits - I'd like to use the unofficial construction kit thing, but there is at least one oddity: +2 to Athletics is strictly superior to +2 to Positioning <condition>. Anything else I should be aware of?

4. When using Creative Abilities, can you use the same one repeatedly? On the one hand you could stack up lots of bonus +2s, but on the other hand you're taking lots of impairment. Also, in Battle, if an ability die is already in your pool due to weapon choice, can you still use it as a Creative Ability? (Obviously yes if you can repeat them in general.)

Thanks,
Guy

[Guy Srinivasan]

One more - If you have an ability impaired past d4, how can you remove the impairment when you can't roll a challenge with it? Via Fate and via someone else removing it for you during an interlude, and probably they can charge exorbitant oaths. Is that right?

Thanks,
Guy

[Ben Robbins]

1. During interludes, all sorts of impairment fall under the same rules? "I call for a challenge of Armor" is Name+Armor? In particular, how do you remove impairment from Armor and Name.

The FAQ answers this one: http://random.average-bear.com/Agon/AgonFAQ

Basically yes, all impairment is the same, so you remove impairment from Armor the same as anything else.

Note that Armor is not one of the 16 abilities, so you can't call for a challenge of armor.

Also I'm not sure you were thinking this, but you don't have to repair the ability that the challenge was in -- I can call for a challenge of Hunt and then use the successes to heal Grace, for example.

[Ben Robbins]

One more - If you have an ability impaired past d4, how can you remove the impairment when you can't roll a challenge with it? Via Fate and via someone else removing it for you during an interlude, and probably they can charge exorbitant oaths. Is that right?

See my previous post -- you don't have to remove impairment from the same ability used in the challenge.

[Ben Robbins]

4. When using Creative Abilities, can you use the same one repeatedly? On the one hand you could stack up lots of bonus +2s, but on the other hand you're taking lots of impairment. Also, in Battle, if an ability die is already in your pool due to weapon choice, can you still use it as a Creative Ability? (Obviously yes if you can repeat them in general.)

The simple rule of thumb is one person can never use an ability twice for the same roll.

I could use my Insight, and then let someone else also use my Insight on the same roll (creative ability, taking impairment), but I couldn't roll my own Insight twice for myself. That other person is now using two different Insights, mine and their own, so that's okay.

So if I had a +2, I could wind up giving it to everyone at the table for a lot of impairment, but no one could get that same +2 twice on one roll.

Same thing for using Battle abilities -- if I rolled my Sword die and it's on the table, I can't use my Sword die again as a creative ability to use it with my roll (unless I re-roll the with Divine Favor).

[Ben Robbins]

Shield - when Creative Abilitying into your own Shield Bash in a Battle, only impair if you lose the roll.

I'm not following this part.

[Guy Srinivasan]

you don't have to remove impairment from the same ability used in the challenge.

Ah, this is exactly what I was missing. Thanks!

"When you use a Shield Bash as a left-hand attack, if you didn't put your Shield die in your initial pool, feel free to add it to your attack and only impair Shield if you miss".

[Ben Robbins]

I say treat the shield like any other weapon -- no special rules:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26168.0

It sounds like you are taking the non-impairment idea from the Special Maneuvers like Tactics and Battle-wise. But for special maneuvers it's actually an added penalty -- when you do something normal like swing a sword, there's no way to impair yourself because you missed the roll. You just miss. Special maneuvers can actually hurt you just to try them.

In your Shield rule you are adding a creative die (that would normally require impairment) but then not taking the impairment unless the roll fails, which makes it a bonus.