Common Misconceptions

From the V8 Rulebook

1. For Verbals, unless otherwise stated, it doesn’t matter if your target is in range/in line of sight/able to be affected by a Verbal at any point other than the end of the Incantation.
2. If you moved after dying, you must have Summon Dead cast on you from Respawn in order to return to play in any way other than respawning. You can’t just run to the Healer and have them Summon Dead you in the middle of the field.
3. Ancestral Armor doesn’t block engulfing hits to your equipment. It will block engulfing hits to your armor. The reason is because, for example, an Entangle ball to the weapon doesn’t count as an entangle ball to the arm holding said weapon; engulfing magic balls just affect you if they hit your equipment, and ancestral armor only stops hits to the armor.
4. Light Thrown is generally more powerful than Heavy Thrown, and purposefully so. They both do the same amount of damage, but light thrown has smaller design requirements and you can therefore carry more. This is meant to be an advantage for Assassins.
5. Release and Greater Release don’t just end States, they also end Ongoing effects. Fight After Death, Elemental Barrage, Awe, Heat Weapon, and Terror are all examples of effects that can be removed by Greater Release.
6. Phase Bolt/Phase Arrow only ignores Enchantments and Ongoing Effects. It doesn’t ignore anything else. For example, you can throw a Phase Bolt at a Monk in Sanctuary from 2' away and they are affected because it ignores Sanctuary and Missile Block. It does nothing to a shield, and it doesn’t ignore regular armor. It will ignore pure magic armor (like Stoneskin) and treat Warrior Ancestral Armor like regular armor. It will not ignore the Insubstantial and Frozen effects; even if those effects are given by an Enchantment.
7. When casting a Verbal at 20’ range or greater the caster must begin the incantation with the target’s name. If the target’s name is not known, then the caster must do three things: Point at the target with a free hand; state the target’s class; and state a unique descriptor for the target. If the caster doesn’t either state a name or do all three things, the Verbal is not properly cast.
8. Heat Weapon targets weapons. If the targeted weapon is dropped mid-incantation, it is still heated because the weapon, not the person, is targeted. This means that a weapon lying all by itself in a field can be affected by heat weapon.
9. Pyrotechnics targets a person but affects their equipment. The weapons themselves must be immune to flame in order to be protected from Pyrotechnics. Monks and Anti-Paladins are immune to Verbal Magics and Flame respectively, but their equipment is not. In general, when it comes to immunities what a spell targets doesn’t matter; just what it affects.
10. Shield Crushing/Armor Breaking don’t have to be announced on every swing. When you first engage with someone, let them know the special effects of your weapons, and you’ll be fine. Same goes for any Enchantment/Special Effect.
11. It’s commonly known that enchantments can only be cast on yourself if they have a range of Self; Touch: Others enchantments cannot be cast on yourself. A common misinterpretation is that this applies to Verbals too. This is not true. You can cast Touch range Verbals, such as Heal and Release, on yourself.
12. The range on all Verbals state their maximum range. This means that all ranged Verbals can be used at a range of touch. Because Enlightened Soul only makes someone immune to Verbal Magic used at a range greater than touch, it will not protect against a Verbal Magic used at a range of touch.
13. In order for an unwilling player to be affected by a Touch range Magic or Ability, they must be Frozen, Stunned, Dead, or unable to otherwise fight and move away. This, for example, means a Frozen Monk is not immune to Shatter used at a range of touch. A player who is just Stopped, but has no weapons, is still considered able to engage in combat, and so must be willing in order to be affected by touch range Magic or Abilities.
14. You can wield a shield and a weapon in the same hand. The restriction is that you can’t wield two weapons in the same hand. Shields aren’t weapons.
15. If you just thought of some obscure combination of abilities that are able to grant you a huge battlefield advantage that obviously wasn’t intended, the answer is probably no.
16. Declaring Enchantments/game effects or explaining what abilities do to new or inexperienced players should not interrupt existing incantations or ongoing chants. The point of declaring enchantments is to keep the game flowing smoothly for all involved. A player is not punished for pausing an incantation to aide in the flow of gameplay. If a Bard, for example, paused their Chant to explain to a new player what the Chant represents, he/she may resume the chant when they are finished. When in doubt, give leeway to players who go out of their way to teach the game to other players during a game.
17. Sniper made easy: Player may physically carry any number of Specialty Arrows of each type. Player may shoot one arrow of each specialty type per life; Then may charge x3 to shoot another arrow of that type. (Repeat for any number of further arrows of that type that life)
18. Armor stops Wounds by losing points in the location it is hit. This damage is tracked on a location, as long as there is any armor on that location. Adding another piece of armor does not affect the damage, although it might affect the maximum armor points of that location. You must remove all armor from a location for the damage to stop being tracked.
19. Teleport - you must move *directly* to a fixed location (One that won’t move during transit, you can’t pick “10 feet behind that warrior”). If you cast Teleport on yourself you may end the teleport as per normal for Insubstantial but there’s no wandering around. Directly means directly, and reeves have final say as to what that means you can do in transit.
20. If a player under the effects of Circle of Protection is affected by Teleport, the duration of Insubstantial changes to the duration of Teleport, but the restriction that you cannot move lasts until COP ends.
21. For the purposes of having an empty hand for casting, opening the hand gripping a shield handle is all it takes to qualify. You do not have to completely remove your hand from touching the hand-hold in order to not grip a shield, as Gripping means to take a firm hold with your fingers.
22. Lorica segmentata is not Plate Armor. It is equivalent to Brigandine, base 4 points, max of 5. (Due to the design it cannot qualify for the higher max via Large Plates)
23. Neither slingshots nor atlatls appear as a weapon type in the Rulebook. The only things you could argue they could be are:
    
    • • Heavy Thrown/Light Thrown.
        
      • An alternative to bow/arrows.
        
    • They aren’t legal because:
      
      • Thrown weapons must be thrown.
        
      • A slingshot/atlatl isn’t a bow.
        
24. Casting Persistent on an enchantment that provides a set number of uses only matters if you died with remaining uses left (through Phase Bolt/Phase Arrow or some other method that bypassed Phoenix Tears for instance).
25. Half Draw is half the distance between the brace height and 28 inches. If your bow has a brace height of 8in. That bow’s Half Draw is 18 inches.
26. If you intentionally cause your own death, it has the same repercussions as taking a death.
27. Enchantments only check validity when they are first cast. For example: If someone has Attuned and two Persistent Enchantments and they die, Attuned is removed, but the two Persistent Enchantments stay.
28. Any armor worn under other armor can be treated as a Gambeson (on a per location basis). However, if that Gambeson extends past the area covered by the armor it is supporting, it can still only be treated as Cloth armor or Garb.
29. Cross Section refers to the width of a strike legal portion of a weapon (the distance from one edge to the other of the flat of a flat blade for instance). The thickness of the striking edge can be any amount that still results in a safe weapon.
30. The Amtgard rulebook uses the terms ban and suspension interchangeably, regardless of duration or other qualifiers, for purposes of the Code of Conduct.