FourOfPipes

Suppose one of my characters is targeted by an enemy attack, and it and my Doctor Voodoo play the Sacrifice Team Tactics Card, causing Doctor Voodoo to be the target of the attack. Sacrifice says the new target cannot "add additional defense dice" to its roll. I have always understood this to refer to step 8 of the attack timing, where you add additional dice for criticals. Brother Daniel says "While this character has the token, add 2 dice to all of its defense and dodge rolls." I have always understood this to refer to step 5 of the attack timing, where you build your defense die pool. Specifically, these are not "additional" dice because they're there from the start. Does Sacrifice prevent Brother Daniel from adding 2 dice to Doctor Voodoo's pool? If not, is the distinction between "adding dice" and "adding additional dice" unintentional/not meaningful? It's very consistent across cards. If so, does it follow that other characters can use their superpowers to add dice to their dice pools in step 5? For example, can Captain America pay for Vibranium Shield to add 2 dice to his dice pool?

Doctor Strange's attack Crimson Bands of Cyttorak has a crit, wild, hit trigger of Mystic Binding. Mystic Binding says: "After this attack is resolved, instead of inflicting the Stagger special condition, if the target character does not have an Activated token, you may give it an Activated token." If I'm attacking a character that's already activated and I roll crit/wild/hit, what happens? I would like it to work like: * Special rule is triggered * I'm presented with an option that I may take * I choose not to take it * Therefore the "instead of" part never takes effect. End Result: I choose not to give an Activated token and they get Staggered instead. But the more obvious reading is: * Special rule is triggered * Instead of inflicting the Stagger special condition, I'm presented with an option * The target character has an Activated token, so I have to decline the option End result: no stagger Which reading is correct?