as the title says I played my first game of dice masters today. for the most part it went smoothly but me and my friend were a little confused by one thing. if you have a character with a global ability, or a regular ability for that matter, do you have to have a dice fielded for them in order to use that ability?

For globals no need to have those kind of dice fielded, but for everyone else's regular abilites they require the dice to be on the field.

ok, we were having a little confusion about that since it doesn't cover it in the rulebook

I will look in my rule book in a little bit and find the passage for you.

Page 7 of the Rule Book:

- Using a Global Ability
Some character cards and action cards have global abilities printed on them. These effects are always available, whether or not there is a die from that card in the field. Even though you cannot purchase an opponent’s die, you can still use an available global ability listed on an opponent’s card.
During a player’s main step, both players can use any or all global abilities available. To
use a global ability, you must pay the energy cost, moving the die or dice used to pay that cost to your used pile. In many cases, these effects may be used more than once if the cost can be paid multiple times. As with purchasing dice, you can partially spend non-generic energy. If both players want to use a global ability at the same time, the player whose turn it is wins the tie.

- Field Characters
It costs energy for you to send your character dice from your reserve pool to the field,
though in some cases, that cost is zero.
When you field a character, you must pay energy equal to the character’s fielding cost in
the upper left-hand corner of the die. This cost can be paid with any type of energy, even generic. As with purchasing dice, you can partially spend non-generic dice, and you can pay several costs at once to fully spend a generic-energy die. You cannot field a character if you cannot pay the energy cost.
Many characters have game effects that take place when they are fielded. Some of these
effects target dice in your used pile. Such game effects cannot target or select a die that
was used to pay for fielding the character; they can only affect dice that were in the used pile prior to the character being fielded. You are not required to field a die if you do not wish to. Any characters that you cannot or do not field by the end of the main step go to your used pile.

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Most card/character/dice abilities will state if the activate when fielded, while active, when engaged, when they block, etc.

Another quick question. Can you use character dice from different sets, together, even though they are different colors?

Nope you cannot. Locally i allow it but official tournaments by WK say no.

That's not what I wanted to hear. Thank you, though.

Echoing this -no one except WK cares about this.

Before you play at a local event, ask the TO if they care - most likely, they won't. And as a courtesy, make sure your opponent knows that dice/cards are from different sets, so when you pull one storm out he knows it's the other and doesn't do a double take when you make him re-roll something ...

No one but WK cares about this - all dice (so far) have identical faces between the two color sets.