You always have all of the main five stats, but there are some stats that are temporary. You gain them from certain Moves or in certain situations, and they last until you're told otherwise. These temporary stats are Hope, Despair, and most importantly, Bonds.
Hope: When you are filled with Hope, instead of rolling two six sided
dice, roll three and take the highest two dice as your final roll.
Despair: When you are filled with Despair, instead of rolling two six
sided dice, roll three and take the lowest two dice as your final roll. Companions who are in Despair cannot use their Moves, cannot take damage for you, and cannot help you.
Hope and Despair do not "stack." That is, if you have Hope from two different sources, you still only roll three dice and keep the best two.
Hope and Despair also cancel each other out. If you have both Hope and Despair at the same time, you roll normally. This is true even if you have double Hope and triple Despair, because again, they do not stack.
Bonds: Bonds are a description of your relationship with another
player, a Companion, or an enemy. Bonds can be one to three sentences long. When you gain a Bond, using the Forge a Bond Move, it starts at only a single sentence, describing an experience you two have shared or the relationship you two have. If you Forge a Bond with someone you already have a Bond with, you can add an additional sentence, describing your relationship in further depth, or you can rewrite an existing sentence to better suit your new relationship. Each sentence is one Bond, and you can have a maximum of three Bonds with a single person.
Teamwork is an extremely important part of Fellowship, and the Bonds you have with your allies will support and protect you along your journey. Bonds with the other players will bind you together and fill you with Hope, and forming Bonds with people outside the fellowship will help define their role in the story, bring them to your cause, and otherwise flesh out your place in the world.
Bonds with Companions are used to measure how much they respect you and how faithfully they follow you. When a Companion is damaged while they have no other stats to take the hit, someone loses a Bond with them. If no one has any more Bonds with a Companion, they will leave you. If you intentionally harm your Companions, your Bonds will break, with serious consequences.
Bonds with enemies are the opposite. Bonds you have with the enemy can fill you with Despair, or be used to put you in a bad spot, or even dissolve your other Bonds. You will not usually gain Bonds with the enemy willingly - the Overlord and their minions will create Bonds with you, and they are one of the Overlord's main tools for getting underneath the fellowship's skin and causing dissent among the ranks.
Bonds with the enemy are extremely dangerous, but they are a known danger - like all Bonds, they are recorded directly on your character sheet. You know your own weaknesses, after all, and you can try to plan around them. For more details on how Bonds with the enemy work, see the Overlord's playbook in chapter 6.
Companions
Companions are the friends and allies you recruit along your journey. They are not necessarily people - mounts you can ride, animals you have trained, and vehicles you can pilot also use the Companion rules.
A Companion is an extension of your character sheet. While you have them, all of their stats are available to you. You can have them use one of their stats to help you by damaging that stat. For example, the Elven Archer has the stat "Perfect Shot." You can damage that stat at any time to have them do a single thing that could help you by taking a perfect shot, such as tripping up a charging enemy, or blocking an attack on you, or taking out an enemy sniper, etc.
When you are working alongside a Companion you have Bonds with,
you can always have them take damage in your place, when you would take damage. If a Companion takes damage when all their stats are already
damaged, you must erase one Bond with them.
If you no longer have any Bonds with a Companion, they leave your
services. This could be from their death, or they give up the journey due to the danger, or they no longer want anything to do with you. Your Bonds with them are the only thing holding them to this journey.
Companions who are in Despair cannot use their Moves, cannot take damage for you, and cannot help you. Only the heroes of the fellowship can fight through true Despair. Companions are not put in Despair by having their stats damaged, only from other effects that say so.
Every playbook has the option to have some Companions as part of their Gear. Companions are slightly different from ordinary Gear in that they can become lost forever. When you lose all Bonds with a Companion in your
Gear, you have a choice to make the next time you Recover. You can gain a
new Companion with the same abilities, OR get a new Companion from the same Gear option.
For example, Ardric the Dwarf has a Dwarven Gunner Companion, who dies tragically during the adventure. The specific Gear option that gave him a Gunner Companion reads "A dwarven gunner or blacksmith. You have one Bond with them." When Ardric Recovers, he can replace the gunner with another gunner, or he can get a blacksmith to join instead. No matter which he picks, he has only one Bond with the new recruit.
Gear
Your Gear is that equipment that is vital to the core of your character, and you choose a bunch of Gear during character creation.
Your Gear is separate from just "the stuff you have." Your Gear is not the same thing as
"the things you carry with you."
Every time you Recover, your Gear also recovers, and returns to how it was back when you got it. You get all your Uses back for used up Gear, you recover any damaged or lost Gear, and any Companions who are part of your Gear get healed up, return to you, or replaced. This only happens with your Gear: anything else you pick up along your journey does not Recover.
For example, a player finds some Elven Bread (4 Uses, Food). If you
Recover after eating 2 uses of your bread, you still only have 2 uses remaining.
The bread is not part of your Gear, and it does not recover with your Gear, and it must be recorded separately. However, the Elven Bread that The Elf gets from their starting Gear will return to 4 Uses when you Recover, because that bread is part of their Gear, and is a part of what it means to be The Elf.
Tags
Tags are shorthand rules attached to items or equipment, and they grant certain benefits or penalties when they come up. Tags are a short-hand method for letting you know how something works at a glance.