If a combat defense says "Soldier+1+ammunition" does only a soldier get the +1? And can only a soldier spend ammunition for a bonus? Loving the game!
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Hi, thanks for playing!
"Soldier+1+ammunition" is shorthand for: "If the crew member is a soldier If the crew member makes a soldier check and they spend an ammunition, they can roll their attack at +1 (which would be +3 with their skill advantage)." If the crew member is not a soldier, or cannot/does not expend ammunition from their personal supply, then they can't use that manner to attack and must choose another (or pass).
Since it's a personal item, you can freely trade ammunition between crew members at any time, so while another character couldn't spend ammunition for the bonus, they could hand some ammunition they have to another soldier during battle.
But it occurs to me that I might need to restrict that rule a bit, since you could then just pass a totem around to fight a ghost, which wasn't the intent. Maybe during a combat, it takes that crew member's action to pass a personal item around. Anyway, notes for an update!
Glad you're enjoying the game!
"Maybe during a combat, it takes that crew member's action to pass a personal item around."
That's a smart restriction. I'm a big fan of tradeoffs in games. You get to do something useful, but at the cost of something else. It deepens the decision-making. And so far I have found the combat a tad on the easy side, but I'm only on my 5th day on the island. And I was playing that any crew member with ammo could spend it for a bonus if it was listed in the defense, which now I know is wrong, so things are about to get a little rougher for my motley crew. 😬
Thanks for the replies and the awesome game!
Ah, I need to edit what I wrote above. That was incorrect.
When it says, "soldier+1+ammunition", what it means is "perform a soldier check at +1 but spend an ammunition". It is not specifying that the crew member must be trained in the soldier skill; it's just telling you what type of check you're making. (This is different than what I wrote above which was incorrect. Sorry; an earlier setup of the game split out attacks by soldier/non-soldier, but it was replaced by just giving soldier-trained crew a roll bonus. This is cleaner.)
Every crew member may attempt a soldier check. It's just that the ones trained in it get a bonus on the roll, so they're more likely to succeed when they do.
So any crew member can take advantage of that method to attack (assuming they have the ammunition to spend on it). It's just that when they do so, solider-trained crew have a +3 on their roll, while non-soldier-trained crew have only a +1 on their roll.
This distinction is important in case all your soldier-trained crew have been killed or are otherwise unavailable in the fight. It is entirely possible, especially in the late game, that no one on the crew will have a given skill. They still need to be able to fight!
Sorry for the confusion!