Hi John,
These questions come straight out of my experience on the Island of Skyros.

1. It became apparent that since Players are free to angle towards contests that they want, it makes sense to always take 2x d4 and 2x d8 in each Ability family during character generation.  Why not just enshrine this in the rules?  Or, is there some emergent feature of longer-term play that makes the idea of "nah, leave 'em all at d6" more appealing?

2. When the Antagonist 'earns' strife, it goes into the pile for the current quest, right?

3. Is it legit for the Antagonist to stat-up NPCs but not spend the strife until they're needed?

4. Is it legit for the Antagonist to smack the heroes with any number of low-cost NPCs?  Or should they collectively be cheaper than the single-NPC limit?

5. Do NPCs suffer armour penalties?

6. How do you break ties on positioning rolls?  What if the ties are between Heroes?

7. Same question for action order ties.  What if two equally-skilled spear fighters are attacking from the same range band?

8. Does successfully 'defending' against a special maneuver (War-Cry, for instance) count towards the +1 positioning bonus next round?

9. Same question for the 'free attack' from Fiery Form.

10. When Heroes defeat an NPC in combat do they have to kill it?  I know that Heroes have a certain amount of plot immunity in Combat, but what about NPCs?

Thanks,
Darcy

Hi, 
Oooh!  I totally forgot to mention this!

We played with a drifted version of the "Recharging Divine Favour" rules.  Since we were playing a one-shot, it seemed a good idea to constrain this rule's use.  We settled on once per quest per hero.

It worked well.
Darcy

I love questions! I love numbered questions even more.

1. It could be in the rules, yeah. Leaving them at d6 is a mistake, in my experience. The only *slight* problem with a d4 ability is it's an easy target for other heroes to shaft you on contests. Just make sure you're not the the only hero with a d4 in that ability, though, and it's okay.

2. Correct.

3. Legit and encouraged. It's fun to have an NPC statted-up and then when the heroes take an Interlude, you go, "Oh, cool! Now I can bring in Drakon!"

4. Any number! When you're feeling nasty (and have the Strife), send 3 or 4 strife-limit NPCs after them and kick their asses.

5. Yes.

6. Break ties with Grace, then Insight, then weapon (shorter first), then Fate, then dice for it. If you don't remember that in the moment, dice for it.

7. Same as above, but without considering the weapon obviously.

8. Yes.

9. Yes.

10. A defeated NPC is at the mercy of the heroes. They can kill it or do whatever, including extracting promises or banishing it, etc. and it must abide by the heroes' terms. The heroes might not agree about what to do with a defeated NPC, which is solid gold.

Good idea to drift the DF rule for a one shot. Wilhelm has some cool one-shot scoring rules on the wiki, too.

Hey John,

Thanks for the replies.  As I was typing up the questions, I'd been niggled with the knowledge that there was one question that came up in play that I didn't write down.  It just came to me:

11. When setting up a simple contest, at what point in time does the Antagonist spend Strife to choose die size/harmful?  Essentially, what's the "order of operations" for everything that happens before the roll?

Thanks,
Darcy

Everything before the roll is "free and clear." In other words, no one has to commit to anything and then stick to it. The players can agree to roll, then the GM can spend strife to change the adversity level, then some players can change their minds and drop out of the roll, etc.

Once everyone has settled on what they're doing, then you roll.