Questions from players and errata for cards in the first printing of No Honor Among Thieves. If you have any questions about the game that aren’t answered here, let me know.
Q. Can Taking It Personally and Investigation be played even by players who aren’t part of the heist?
A. Yes. These cards represent the actions of non-player entities that exist in the fiction of the game, and as such can show up on any heist, without warning. This is represented mechanically by your backstabbing friends playing them to kill and arrest your characters.
Q. Can a player play Paranoia if they don’t have enough coins to pay the penalty if they aren’t betrayed?
A. If the player doesn’t have enough money to pay the Paranoia non-betrayal penalty, they can still play the card. I don’t want to punish people for being too poor to play a card that might safeguard any money they get. If a player has to pay for Paranoia and can’t, then no money changes hands.
Also, it’s important to note that Moment of Truth happens before coins from the heist are split up, so the player doesn’t have to pay out of their share from the heist if they didn’t have the money beforehand.
Q. Does Magnificent Betrayal counter Safe Ground, or the other way around?
A. Magnificent Betrayal counters all non-betrayal Moment of Truth cards, including Safe Ground.
Q. Can you recruit zero-cost characters and fire them in the middle of the same recruit action?
A. You can fire characters at any time during your turn without it taking an action, so yes.
Q. Does the Inside Man count towards the four-character limit on your crew?
A. Yes.
Q. Why does the Kickstarter campaign page say 20 skill tokens, but the box only has 12? And why aren’t the skill tokens listed in the components section on the box or in the rulebook?
That’s a bit complicated, but mostly comes down to me missing some details while working on the final files to send to the manufacturer. When I was putting everything together, I forgot that I’d already given a number for how many skill tokens there would be. I’d found during playtesting that in most situations I didn’t need more than two of each type, so I figured three of each would work out fine. They aren’t listed on the box or the rulebook because, again, I forgot. The skill tokens were a very late addition to the game, having been added in a stretch goal that I hadn’t actually planned until shortly before the crowdfunding campaign started, and I didn’t remember to change the rules and back-of-box text to include them.
Q. How are you supposed to use the skill tokens?
A. You don’t need to use the skill tokens to track every last skill bonus that is given to characters and defenses on a heist. Use them instead to track the net difference between them. Knowing that you have 3 Muscle and the defense has 2 Muscle isn’t what’s really important to gameplay; what’s important is that you’re one up on the defense.
Q. During a Logistics action, if you use a card that gives you another card, can you immediately play the new card during the same action?
A. Yes.
Q. Can characters in Jail be exhausted?
A. No. Also, characters become unexhausted when they’re arrested. All characters in Jail are equal before the law.
Q. On a heist, can players target the Mastermind and Alchemist characters?
A. If the Mastermind or Alchemist has been used to contribute skills to characters that are actively on the heist, then they are considered to be participating as well and are thus targetable by Scheme cards. Note, however, that taking out the Mastermind or Alchemist doesn’t remove the bonus skills that they’ve given to their allies.
As a side note, this is one of the reasons why Shackleton’s special ability is an improvement over the Mastermind or Alchemist–he provides a similar character boosting effect, but can’t be targeted himself when other characters use the ability that he gives them.
Q. Can the Ghost counter Moment of Truth cards?
A. No. Nothing can counter a Moment of Truth card except another Moment of Truth card, unless a card explicitly says otherwise.
Q. Can the Forger counter Contingency Plan to stop Contingency Plan from countering another Scheme card?
A. Yes, the Forger can counter Contingency Plan, but doing so doesn’t actually change anything.
The important thing here is that the Forger’s ability requires you to use the effect of the countered card. I’m going to repeat the Forger’s ability text here, with some emphasis on a specific part: “Counter a Scheme card that is not targeting the Forger and then use its effect yourself.” This second part of the ability is not optional. So if you counter Contingency Plan with the Forger’s ability, you have to use Contingency Plan to counter a Scheme card, and there’s only one card that you can target–the card that Contingency Plan was countering. So you have to counter the card that you were trying to stop being countered, and nothing changes except now you’ve exhausted the Forger.
Q. Are coins an hand sizes public knowledge?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you only have two characters on a defense, or two per player going on a heist?
A. The entire group of players going on a heist, all together, may only have a maximum of two characters on each defense. This means that you have to work to find the two characters who will together be able to match or exceed the defense that you’re trying to get past.
Q. When a heist fails, how are coins split on successfully-bypassed defenses with three characters on them?
A. Characters such as the Lookout and the Animal Companions, which don’t count towards the character limit on a defense, also don’t count for getting heist rewards.
Q. If an exhausted character is stolen from a player by the Hire Away Scheme card, are they still exhausted?
A. Yes. Characters only become unexhausted when arrested, killed, or rested.
Q. Can “kill character” effects be used on characters in Jail?
A. Not usually, no. The promo card Gallows Day is the only card that breaks this rule.
Q. What happens when, in a three-way Moment of Truth, someone plays Safe Ground, someone else plays Magnificent Betrayal! and someone else betrays the crew?
A. This is a complicated one, but the end result will be that Safe Ground wins out and nothing happens.
Q. Do Animal Companions count towards the crew limit of four characters?
A. Yes.