In a recent battle, we were fighting lots of kobolds swinging for "5 normal," and one of them ripped free from my Confine. I found it hard to believe that the kobold actually had that much monster strength so I asked the Marshal to check his card. the Marshal said that she wasn't willing to interrupt combat to check the card and that I had to wait until the end of the battle.
(It turned out I was right - it was a new NPC who didn't understand the rules. The marshal gave me the Confine back, which didn't end up being much consolation as I spent the whole battle not using any of my binding magic because I thought these kobolds were special somehow and could rip free, and the only other battle later that day was against monsters who were healed by binding magic.)
But I was very surprised by the ruling that you have to wait until the end of the battle (or a lull in combat) to check the card. It doesn't say anything about that in the relevant rulebook section (page 34, "checking tags") and by the end of the battle it seems too late. (The only recourse after that would be an adjudication in the case that the battle led to resurrection, but it seems like trying to adjudicate "We would have won that battle if we had used our binding spells, but we didn't because the NPC's mistake gave us the wrong information" after the fact would be a lot harder than just stopping combat for a few seconds to fix the problem in the first place.)
Is this ruling correct? Is it true that you can't stop combat in this situation? (Also note that on page 36, it says "A hold may be called if you are unsure about a rule that has an immediate impact on the battle", and this is a clear case of a rule that has an immediate impact on the battle.)
(It turned out I was right - it was a new NPC who didn't understand the rules. The marshal gave me the Confine back, which didn't end up being much consolation as I spent the whole battle not using any of my binding magic because I thought these kobolds were special somehow and could rip free, and the only other battle later that day was against monsters who were healed by binding magic.)
But I was very surprised by the ruling that you have to wait until the end of the battle (or a lull in combat) to check the card. It doesn't say anything about that in the relevant rulebook section (page 34, "checking tags") and by the end of the battle it seems too late. (The only recourse after that would be an adjudication in the case that the battle led to resurrection, but it seems like trying to adjudicate "We would have won that battle if we had used our binding spells, but we didn't because the NPC's mistake gave us the wrong information" after the fact would be a lot harder than just stopping combat for a few seconds to fix the problem in the first place.)
Is this ruling correct? Is it true that you can't stop combat in this situation? (Also note that on page 36, it says "A hold may be called if you are unsure about a rule that has an immediate impact on the battle", and this is a clear case of a rule that has an immediate impact on the battle.)