Made my first character, have some doubts about its crunch. ^_^

1) I have a plate armor bought via the Secret of Equipment. How could ratings like "+1 to protect the wearer in combat" work?
2) If I want to imbue the armor, do I have to obtain a particular Secret first?
3) How does the Secret of Noble Blood interact with Pool spend caps?

I had others, but I forgot them, so excuse me if I add them later. :-)

Ah, here it is:

4) I could have sworn there was some Secret about inspiring people with Speak somewhere, but I cannot find it anymore. Help? ^_^

I'm going to assume that you're making a TSoY character with the new book - your verbiage sounds like that.

1) According to the book, +1 ratings set your check result to a Marginal (1) level when used. This is mostly useful when you've rolled a failure and want that slightest bit of improvement. Note that this means that +1 ratings are practically only used in situations where the equipment gets damaged as a result. Be sure to fix the armor after the battle, in other words.
2) If you want your character to imbue the armor himself, you need the Secret of Creation from the equipment chapter. If you just want your character to own an imbued armor, negotiate with the Story Guide - at character creation you should get any Secrets (equipment included) that make sense for the character concept, so you could indeed begin the game with an imbued item. Note, however, that you should have made some sort of check (or SG call) about the item's equipment quality at some point; the quality limits the number of imbuements the item can have.

Your third question is easy, fortunately: Pools can only be spent according to their Pool spend caps, so the discretionary Pool point from the Secret has two options: either it belongs in none of the Pools, in which case it can't be spent under any cap, or perhaps the player chooses which Pool it is when he spends it, in which case it goes under that cap. (Note, however, that this sort of complex interaction is intended to be resolved by the Story Guide any way that makes sense to him. This is just how I'd resolve it.)

As for your fourth question, perhaps you mean the example Secret from the Solar System booklet? I'm almost certain that there's a rhetorical Secret of some sort therein. I don't remember an inspiring Secret off-hand in the WoN book, but there might be something like that in there as well.

Thanks a lot! Expect other questions, sooner or later. ^_^

Klaus_Welten wrote: 4) I could have sworn there was some Secret about inspiring people with Speak somewhere, but I cannot find it anymore. Help? ^_^