I’ve been looking over the rules for a number of things, and I have a few questions that I can’t seem to find answers for.
1: Losing a die vs advancement
Does losing a die (taxed resources, failed wound recover) reset advancement (wipe out all recorded tests) in the stat/skill where the die was lost?
If not: does that mean that a stat could be reduced, then automatically advance?
2: Let it Ride vs The Power Still Flows Through Him
Can Let it Ride rules be applied when a Sorcerer is retesting tax for sustaining a spell?
3: Get a Job! Clarification
If you succeed in Getting a Job!, you recover taxed resources dice at the end of a lifestyle maintenance period (unless you have extra successes). Do you make a lifestyle maintenance check before or after you get the dice back?
Does this change if you incurred the taxed dice (and subsequently, the job) part-way through a lifestyle period?
So, what if you get a die taxed 6 months after you make a lifestyle maintenance test with a turnover of 1 year. The Get a Job! rules say that it should be a year before you can get the dice back. 6 months later, you should be making a lifestyle maintenance test again. Would the lifestyle maintenance test get pushed back for convenience?
Permanently changing any stat wipes out all advancement progress. This is because otherwise you can end up with weird situations where you lose a die and then immediately regain it. On the other hand, the game won’t break if you don’t wipe out progress; you’ll just be saying that you were so close to advancement that losing the die effectively just cost progress, not 1D of stat.
There’s no explicit rule. I’d say LiR doesn’t apply, but you also only get one Forte test equal to the hardest roll for tax you make. Otherwise it’s either too easy to keep spells up forever when not under pressure or too easy to acquire ludicrous Forte without risk. Of course you can also say that LiR doesn’t apply; this will mean wizards are much happier to maintain spells all day until they become necessary. You might end up with D&D-esque morning buff situations, but if you want that go ahead!
Here’s my interpretation of getting a job. It’s worked in my games, but I’m fairly sure it’s fiddly and idiosyncratic and likely not how BWHQ intended it.
Strictly speaking getting a job takes exactly as long as the maintenance cycle, so if you lose a die and get a job you’ll be retesting for maintenance before you get the die back. In practice as long as the player declares that he’s getting a job immediately I allow the die to be recovered before the next test. If the job begins midway through the resources cycle the die doesn’t come back at the end of the cycle, it returns at the same point in the next cycle. For instance, if you have a one year cycle where the tax collectors come on Christmas (they hate joy) and you get a job on June 24, 1432, you don’t get any dice back until June 24, 1433.
This also means that you need to record your margin of success. If you’ve lost 1D to tax and get 5 successes against Ob 2 the extras may not be wasted. You can lose more resources dice which you’ll then recover at the end of the job. This also means that there’s reason to get a job even when you don’t have any taxed dice: you roll against Ob 1 and each success can recover tax later. It’s worth working in the anticipation of spending money so you can get it back!
Let’s say you have B4 Resources and lose 1D to tax on Christmas. Then you fail a test and lose another 1D in May. In June you get a job and test against Ob 3. You get 3 successes, so you’ll recover 1D next June. But when Christmas rolls around you can’t meet your maintenance Ob and lose another 1D. Now you’re at an effective B1 Resources until June, when your job gives you back 1D of tax and you’re up to B2.
If you have B4 Resources, lose 1 to tax, get a job and get 4 successes, then go on a spending spree and get taxed all the way down to 0 from tax your resources will become B3. At the end of the job you’ll recover all the missing dice up to B3 but not to B4. (And you lose all advancement!)