Questions from Play:Defend, Cleric Spells, Poison, Aid/Interfere

Okay, some questions we hit upon while playing last night.

1)When Defending, can you use all of your hold at once or is it one at a time? We went with using as much as you wanted at once as it didnt' feel (to me) like a couple of the options made much sense otherwise.

2)When Clerics fail a casting, do they automatically lose the spell too or is this up to the GM as a Golden Opportunity choice? We decided that you do lose it, otherwise you could just keep reattempting it.

3)Can Clerics memorize the same spell twice? We've thus far said no.

4)Can you lose your Rotes the same as other spells, upon failure?

5)After poison has been applied to a weapon, is it used up with one strike or is that another GM move option for weak hits and failures (deplete their resources).

6)Can you Aid/Interfere with someone you have no Bond with? As written, the answer is no but it seemed a little strange.

7)Do you get XPs on a failed Aid/Interfere roll? In the light of day this seems like an obvious yes, but for some reason I questioned this last night. Yes?

8)You can only get 1 XP per session for resolving bonds. But can you resolve other bonds if you feel like its time to move on and rewrite them, just not get experience beyond the first?

1)When Defending, can you use all of your hold at once or is it one at a time? We went with using as much as you wanted at once as it didnt' feel (to me) like a couple of the options made much sense otherwise.

Yes, we play it that way. Spend as much of that hold as you want while defending.

2)When Clerics fail a casting, do they automatically lose the spell too or is this up to the GM as a Golden Opportunity choice? We decided that you do lose it, otherwise you could just keep reattempting it.

Golden opportunity. Having them lose their spell is just Use Up Their Resources which is fine go-to, but I like my golden opportunities so I can do something more interesting if the fiction has an opening. I like to be as evil as possible with GO's so that any time a 6- gets rolled, the players take notice and cringe.

3)Can Clerics memorize the same spell twice? We've thus far said no.

I don't like the notion of memorizing the same spell more than once, but if someone presses me on it, it's easy enough for me to not care if it means a lot to the player. They're essentially giving up versatility in favor of failure mitigation which is less interesting in my opinion. To each their own.

4)Can you lose your Rotes the same as other spells, upon failure?

I don't ask for a roll on Rotes or Cantrips. Maybe I should, but it doesn't come up enough for me to see anything abused.

5)After poison has been applied to a weapon, is it used up with one strike or is that another GM move option for weak hits and failures (deplete their resources).

We say it's off the weapon once you've gotten a hit in. But that's an interesting thought. I could see it done either way.

6)Can you Aid/Interfere with someone you have no Bond with? As written, the answer is no but it seemed a little strange.

Wouldn't it just be a straight up 2d6 (Bond 0)?

7)Do you get XPs on a failed Aid/Interfere roll? In the light of day this seems like an obvious yes, but for some reason I questioned this last night. Yes?

Yep. A miss is a miss.

8)You can only get 1 XP per session for resolving bonds. But can you resolve other bonds if you feel like its time to move on and rewrite them, just not get experience beyond the first?

I think you can only resolve one old bond and establish one new bond per session. But I see no good reason to disallow some reshuffling from time to time if the group wants to do that.

Thanks for the feedback Iserith. Concerning the Aid/Interfere, yeah, that was my take too but then when we went to use it last night, the wording is pretty specific about using it with someone you have a bond with. Is there anywhere in the rules that mentions the possibility of having Bond 0 with someone? If we are correct that its the way its supposed to be played then the wording of Aid/Interfere can be touched up a little I think. I'd just leave out the part about "...someone you have a bond with..." and just trigger it through aiding or interfering with anyone, Roll+Bond.

If it's not stated clearly anywhere in the rules, and I suspect it ought to be, if you don't have a written Bond with another PC, you're rolling +0 to Aid or Interfere.

I think that is the most AWESOME opportunity to create a bond right there and then. Either use the create new bond guidelines, or steal directly from the bond lists on the playbooks. If you can encourage them to justify the interfere/aid move directly via the newly created bond, you can entice the players with XP too....

I didn't go into details there but that's actually why Rudiger continued to help Pox in that scene, after Siggrun had already headed ashore. Pox has for one of his Bonds that Rudiger always has his back. It was very tempting to pull Rudiger out when things were looking bleak but, being the player of Rudiger, I kept thinking about that bond. It was definitely being tested in that moment. But that's why Rudiger ultimately made that last grab for Pox.

So there was definitely some cool stuff happening both in the fiction and in the metagame there! Lots of fun.