Couple of questions after a first game.

[Murmel]

Just played a first game last night at my local game club, we had two tables with three players each and quite a bit of curious onlookers. A few things came up:

With bolt like spells that grant a shooting attack (elemental bolt, bone dart...) do you first roll against the spell number for succes and re-roll for the actual shooting attack or do you use the initial roll against the spell number as the shooting attack? The latter seems more elegant but also more powerful.

Since your warband can never have more than 10 soldiers (11 with an Inn) does this mean that if you have badly wounded soldiers you _must_ play the next scenario with a smaller crew, as you can't exceed the max size of your warband?

If an active figure moves within half an inch of an enemy model and that model decides to not force combat, can you decide to move into combat regardless, moving the models to touch even though you are half an inch short? In short: can the active model force combat?

 
On a sidenote, one of the players at my table lost his apprentice (dead-dead) and did not manage to pick up _any_ treasure. Seems like he's pretty screwed innit. Do you think he can recover?

[Thunder]

With bolt like spells that grant a shooting attack (elemental bolt, bone dart...) do you first roll against the spell number for succes and re-roll for the actual shooting attack or do you use the initial roll against the spell number as the shooting attack? The latter seems more elegant but also more powerful.

You roll separately for the casting of the spell and the resulting attack.

Since your warband can never have more than 10 soldiers (11 with an Inn) does this mean that if you have badly wounded soldiers you _must_ play the next scenario with a smaller crew, as you can't exceed the max size of your warband?

Yes, but you can dismiss soldiers and replace them by buying new ones (if you can afford to do so).

If an active figure moves within half an inch of an enemy model and that model decides to not force combat, can you decide to move into combat regardless, moving the models to touch even though you are half an inch short? In short: can the active model force combat?

No, you can only force combat with an opponent moving within 1 inch of you.

On a sidenote, one of the players at my table lost his apprentice (dead-dead) and did not manage to pick up _any_ treasure. Seems like he's pretty screwed innit. Do you think he can recover?

That's very unfortunate. Anything is possible in this game, but his odds are slim because playing without a wizard + apprentice is quite crippling. The game is known for having a bit of a snow-ball effect. Has he considered starting a fresh warband?

[Timeshadow]

Thunder got the first 3 answers wile I was typing.....

On the issue of a dead Apprentice and no treasure I'd consider a restart for his warband. Unless he got off a ton of spells and got like three levels (extremely unlikely) He'll be better off in the longrun. He can even say the wizard sacrificed some of his life force (ie the xp he would have earned) to revive the apprentice and any other dead followers. Or he could use this as a learning experience and change things up with his wizard maby grab new spells and school...

Or you could let him go into dept to rehire his apprentice (like for an injured wizard) which would get him back to full strength but he would still have to pay back the gold. There are lots of options depending on how you want to play it.

[joe5mc]

There are some that believe starting without an apprentice is a better option. I'm not one of them, but then, I've never tried it either.

[Murmel]

Thanks for the answers and I now realize should have posed my questions in the pinned thread. If an admin could append this thread to that one or simply remove it, please do.