In a conflict, can any character help the acting character (provided appropriate description of course), or only those who don’t have an action that round? I had always thought any character could help any other character, but then I saw the passage on 69 “The others [those not acting] can help you this round,” which made me wonder only those not acting can give helping dice.
Needless to say, if I’ve been running this wrong, it’ll have a big effect on how many dice the players can bring to bear at the table. Apologies if this has been asked before, my search-fu did not discover anything.
That passage only refers to teams of 4 or more, since you can only have 3 actions per round. A simpler way of understanding it is this: anyone on your team can help you if they have the appropriate skill and have not been knocked out, regardless of whether or not they scripted an action this round.
It is important to emphasize the “appropriate skill” bit as well, as that seems to have been absent from OP. This is similar to normal tests but much more restrictive: the only skill that can help is the skill being rolled for the action. For example, in Kill or Drive Off you can only get help on an Attack action from characters that have the Fighter skill. Relevant Nature Descriptors and Wises still work, but no other skills. Spellcasters may help using Arcanist/Ritualist in circumstances where they have a cast a conflict spell that allows them to replace the skill being used on an action type - see “Spells in Conflicts” in the Magic & Miracles chapter for a bit more detail on that. Since everyone has Health and Will, everyone participating in the conflict can help on actions using those barring the two limitations of being knocked out or Afraid.