FAQ WIP: Title Faq

[bustedcasuality]

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+++++++++++++++++++++++ Miscellaneous Information: Witch ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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[Thematic: Secret Forbidden Knowledge BS]
One of the most annoying things about the Witch class is that it’s often assigned as a guardian of forbidden knowledge that’s too “dangerous” for anyone else to know. The Witch ability [LORE TECH: Slam Closed the Sacred Book] gives Witches frankly absurd bonus to destroying forbidden knowledge. I put “dangerous” in quotes since the knowledge isn’t really dangerous in and of itself. However, if that knowledge gets out, the game cheats to fuck you over. In my fourth session, one of the forbidden bits of knowledge was that the Sylph of Time had stolen our Ward’s toothbrush, and had blamed it on the Rogue. I figure “Ok, guess I don’t have to worry about that.” Well, later in the session, our Sylph decided to confess her crime of stealing dental hygiene materials. While the Ward was talking to her, A Colossal -Class underling spawns directly behind him, despite being inside a cleared dungeon, where spawning is disabled. Yeah.

[NOTE: The prototyping thing]
Whatever the Witch prototypes, makes the session massively more complicated. Like Secret Forbidden Knowledge BS, this is enforced by game shenanigans; You can prototype whatever you want, the game will interpret it badly. The game will also nudge the Witch into making bad prototyping decisions, but thankfully it won’t railroad them into being stupid, so you can minimize the damage.

[REVEALED!: The Mechanics behind the Mysteriousness]
Some Witches will be cryptic but mostly understandable; they’ll make you do logic, or they’ll answer in more code or something, but they’ll tell you what they’re doing. Other Witches are just goddamn incomprehensible and never tell you their goal ‘till they’ve achieved it. How much any given Witch will explain things to her teammates strongly depends upon when they get techniques [MYSTERY TECH: Power of Eerie Unfathomablity], [MYSTERY TECH: Virtue of the Unknowable Companion], and [VEIL TECH: Odin Keeps His Own Counsel]. The Odin tech is a moderate bonus when it comes to keeping yourself from letting your words or body language betray your intentions. Alone, it’s not anything to write home about, but it synergizes massively with [MYSTERY TECH: Power of Eerie Unfathomablity] and [MYSTERY TECH: Virtue of the Unknowable Companion]. PoEU gives a very respectable bonus to any action, as long as your targets have no idea about your goal and generally being completely bewildered by your shenanigans. VotUC works essentially the same way, but it requires that the people watching you do your thing be like “I understand Jack shit”. A Witch can apply one of these two techs to pretty much anything she does ever, and between the action bonus and the roleplay bonus, most Witches end up relying heavily upon one or the other.
As you’ve probably guessed, Witches who learn Virtue are going to be more likely to confuse their co-players, and those who learn the Odin Tech are more likely to be confusing period.

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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Witches By Aspect ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Witches of Breath tend to be some of the worst offenders when it comes to prototyping stupid crap on impulse or because they weren’t paying attention. Technically, all Breath players do this, but with Witches the problem becomes a much bigger issue. Also, don’t leave them alone around anything that makes life simpler, like most communications gear.

Witches of Blood can get a lot of mileage by awakening and animating constructs, then sending them on missions. Better yet, having an awakened item explain things for you can let you be straightforward without dinging your Character ARC.

Witches of Rain are very good at bewildering and confusing people, no surprise. The constant roleplay bonus from Rain’s trademark crazy talk really adds up, and Dupliclones are and endless source of confusion, at least until other people figure out the trick.

Witches of Fate are just goddamn incomprehensible. Trust, me I was one. They won’t speak in riddles; they’ll just not tell you whatever they’re trying to do. Fate can be maddeningly obtuse at times and incredibly straightforward at others, so Witches of Fate tend to have role-play issues where Fate isn’t letting them be as mysterious as they should. They can get around this by adding “and they won’t understand what I’m doing until later” to whatever requests of Fate they make. After that, Witches of Fate are even better than rain at being confusing and mysterious.

Witches of Sand get a double duty roleplay bonus for being tricky and lying all the time. However, telling the straight truth once, even accidentally, will utterly destroy they’re character arc, so it’s very easy for a inexperienced player to trash his character ARC very, very quickly.

Witches of Heart get a massive roleplay bonus by not revealing they’re true feelings to their coplayers. Not worth the inevitable breakdowns it creates, trust me. They also get an amazing, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-bugged bonus to dealing with complex psychological or emotional situations. If you have a Witch of Heart in the session, designate her team therapist.

Witches of Law will never tell you what the hell her geasa actually are. They’re also absolutely terrible about doing things in a straightforward, simple way; they tend to rule off that possibility in their minds. Remind them from time to time that you can just zap your enemies.

Witches of Space can get an easy roleplay boost by teleporting behind people. Get used to it.

Witch of Light need to be watched closely; they have a tendency to wander into forbidden areas and screw with crap they shouldn’t. One time I got drunk off my ass as a Witch of Light, and managed to get into the Underworld before I'd even woken my Denizen. Hell, I even brought a consort along. This went about as well as you might expect.

If you’re a Witch of Void and your abilities suddenly start getting stronger for no real reason? It means that someone is trying to find you and failing. Also, if you can get a great roleplay bonus by using the magicant as a shortcut and then just smiling egnimatically when everyone wonders how the hell you get everywhere so fast. Also, they’re nearly as bad as Witches of Space about pulling the Batman thing.

Witches of Mist will impersonate you and then not tell you. This is extraordinarily annoying, to say the least. Also, they don’t get a Roleplay bonus if their bugs turn prophecy making into a convoluted mess.

A Witch of Flow who’s very in tune with her class can create disasters very, very quickly. Simultaneously making things more complicated, while making people have to deal with them faster means is a good way to make people panic and make mistakes. The good news is this works even better on your enemies than it does on Co-players. Just be careful.

Witches of Rhyme have issues dealing with Time-sensitive problems. Have your Flow player nag them.


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+++++++++++++++++++++++ Miscellaneous Information: Grace ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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[THEMATIC: Graces and gas leaks]
A Grace is like a gas oven you left on over vacation. Whereas a Waste is a spark that causes an explosion, the Grace is the leaking pipe that fills the room up with flammable fumes, or a person filling up kegs with powered and leaving them places. A Grace primes things to explode. As a result, their style of play tends to be very different from Wastes; Wastes tend to massive, runway spells, emphasizing their element. Graces tend to prefer dangerous traps, or combo tricks that allow a coplayer to wreck incredible devastation; tending toward infusion or manipulation over manifesting their element. There’s considerable overlap with the Smith, and Rogue. Graces are the best buffers, debuffers, and support casters in sburb, bar none.

[THEMATIC: Saving Grace]
Graces are supposed to create a situation that is ripe for sudden, massive, and uncontrolled change. The big secret is that it’s not entirely uncontrollable, nor does it have to be a disaster. I’ve found two logs where the Grace did not seem to cause a massive disaster. In the first, a Grace of Mind spent much of the mid-game fermenting dissent on Derse. Eventually, this resulted in a massive riot sparked by something the queen did at court, which spread to cover most of the planet. Contrary to what I expected, this didn’t result in a ringwraith. A Rogue of Light was at court at the time for unrelated reasons, and ended up making off with the ring in the chaos. The throne got wrecked, but without the ring, this was much less of a problem. By the end game, Prospit was holding its own on the battlefield, thanks to the Black King loosing logistical support from Derse; interestingly, there’s no mention of the Carapace Plague trying to even things out like it normally does. The second instance was with a Grace of Might; pretty much all the players were badly informed, there was a lot of stupid immaturity going around, and only the Grace and their leader, (a Prince of Space) managed to get a decent handle on their Roles. Somewhere in the midgame, the prince ends up dying in the process of ending the Underworld story arc. Instead of falling apart without their leader, they got their shit together like it wasn’t a thing. Over the course something like, a thirty minutes, there were heartfelt speeches by everyone, lots of tears and resolutions to do “what we should have been doing from the beginning”, something like 85% of their angst and mental hang-up were suddenly conquered, and they turned from “can’t complete sidequest without pointless bickering” to working together like a well oiled machine, and generally went from “almost certainly going to die” to some of the best playing I’ve ever seen from first-timers. Not only are Might’s fingerprints all over this, but the grace had been doing a lot of talking to the other players prior to this, and had been in a Union with all of them.

What I’m trying to get across is that whatever the Grace ignites doesn’t have to be negative. It has to be sudden, massive, and uncontrolled (which means it will almost always be dangerous), but it’s possible to pre-empt the game by priming up some massive change of your own design, have other players change the direction of the chaos, or even change suddenly change a completely fucked situation to a far better one. It’s hard, but its possible. Actually, if you think in terms of a Grace enabling a totally screwed situation to to suddenly change into a far better one, their title makes sense; they can bring the saving Grace that rescues a session.

[genesisArtificer]

(( two things: 1) minor canon breach: you cannot enter prototyping towers, cause you get zapped. 2) please, use spellcheck. It is Sylph, not Slyph))

You forgot a thing or two about Witches, but that's ok, game doesn't advertise this too much.

Witches get a bonus to Transmutancy as a Class skill, just upon entry. This, according to our Scrying is called [LORETECH: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble]. Useful as heck. The second thing is something that most of Witches, except Rain, don't even try. Cackling like a Disney villain (iiiiiii-hIHIHIHIIIII) while casting will skyrocket your Flummoxie. This is a late-midgame skill [LORETECH: Cackle Of The Fire-Touched]. that's one of the many reasons why Witch of Rain is considered one of the best Classpect Synergies in the game.

If you want to collaborate, I can write a section on Seers.

[bustedcasuality]

[Doh. Fixed those things]
Gah, I can't believe I forgot the Transmutancy bonus; I use that all the time! Anyway, it would be great if you could handle the Seer Title; I've never rolled it myself.

Anyway, more updates:

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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Witches By Aspect (again)++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Witches of Might typically get narratives that involve making friends with antisocial people. They also get a roleplaying bonus for keeping secrets; the privacy of a close friendship that no others can intrude upon is the territory of the Witch of Might. They're also stunningly good at untangling bureaucracy, go figure.

A Witch of Time is going to cause that amount of Bizarre Time Shenanigans in your session to skyrocket, no surprise. One little quirk among the class is that by wearing pretty much the same outfit the entire game, they make it nigh-impossible for observers to tell whether they're from the present, past, or future; this will boost your roleplay bonus while time traveling considerably.

In addition to being a source some of the coolest dream-constructs in Sburb, Witches of Dream tend to be very good puzzle solvers; [LORE TECH: Mysterious Mysteries of the Mysterious] may be inferior to its Mage and Tactician equivalents, but the focus of a Dreams player makes up for that; if you have a puzzle that's going to take a lot of long, boring work to untraveled, a Witch of Dreams will do better than a easily distracted Seer or Sage. On the downside, they tend to be crazy-ass lunatics with a fist full of reckless and head full of crazy schemes, so don't pair them up with Tacticians.

A Witch of Doom can actually seal off an small areas better than pretty much any other role by keeping a small building or office complex poisoned indefinitely; tainting the Clerical Offices on either moon, the Smoke-Filled Room on Derse, or the Courtiers Balcony on Prospit will hurt the governments ability to function and make running the moon more complicated as they struggle to find a work-around. It's risky (especially for on Prospit), but if you can do it without getting caught, you can gain a good bonus to character ARC that way.

A Witch of Life can get a decent bonus by declaring someone their apprentice, and then running them through bizarre exercises that only make sense later like a teenage Mr. Miyagi.

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+++++++++++++++++++++ Miscellaneous Information: Page+++++++++++++++++++++++
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[THEMATIC: Kicking Ass and Taking Names]
The good side of the Page class is that you get to a total bad-ass. The Page is the old-style Epic Hero who wanders around doing what he wants and gets in fights with monsters just to show off how awesome he is. [GLORY TECH: Who do you think I am!] gives you a decent bonus to fighting as long as you're boasting while you're doing it. It's best done with a memorized speech; it's easier to recite a pre-made speech while fighting, improv boasts usually don't sound as cool anyway.

[TENDENCY: Why Yes I am Awesome, Thank You for Noticing.]
Pages are second only to Mages in being insufferably smug; the Page class is very good for living out ones action-hero fantasies. On the other hand, they can also be humbly heroic and say "it's what anyone would have done" whenever the kick somethings ass, which I like but can drive other people crazy.

[THEMATIC/Glitch: Why am I doing this again]
One of the narratives Pages get stuck with is looking with things beyond your own glory. You're supposed to look beyond yourself and find your own true reason for fighting or something. Unfortunately, this narrative tends to get in conflicts with the Knight Syndrome narrative, the general Page Narrative of "Become an ass-kicker who makes his own decisions". Your personal Maturity narrative (which is about you specifically growing up) is also glitched for pages, and doesn't communicate any or the narratives like it usually does. The upshot of all this is that Pages have a serious headache sorting out what exactly Sburb wants them to be, since the game never really makes up its mind.

[WARNING: Knight Syndrome Sucks twice as hard as a Page]
With Pages, Knight Syndrome (the collapse of the will to fight) isn't nearly as sudden but is a lot harder to work out of. It stems around the fact that the Page title demands it's holders want to fight; getting a Knight back on his feet is all about reaffirming his duty and discipline, or giving him a cause. For a page...it's a longer project, making someone want to fight again. The good news is that the signs are visible earlier; if your page starts looking listless or turns up quests he would have taken before, send in a friend or the therapist.

[GLITCH: Broken Combo Move]
[WAR TECH: Knock me to the Moon] is a specific tech that requires you to knock aside an opponents weapons/arms, then close with the target and give them an uppercut with the handle of your weapon. It's supposed to send your opponent flying, but a bug means the hit doesn't do any damage and your opponent won't move at all. You can still just punch people with your fist, though.

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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pages by aspect ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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The first thing every Page of Might needs to learn is that every great hero needs a sidekick. The Pirate consort is absolutely wonderful for this due to his near invincibility, but he's hard to get. The Heroic Consort (y'know, the one in the stupid costume) also works well, especially if you have a Life or Flux player in your session; the little guy starts out weak, but his NPC echladder is so massive that by Late-game he becomes one of the more useful NPCs.

Pages of Stars tend to have issues reconciling their title and aspect; kicking ass and acceptance takes a little work to figure out. Plus, Achieving victory through inevitable attraction means they're more vulnerable to Clockwork Sorrow and other fatalism-related disorders (nothing can prevail in the face of the stars, yadda yadda).

Pages of Hope are probably the best class for winning hopeless fights; they is very helpful, but they're also likely to end up under-leveled since they can fight so well when the odds are against them.

Pages of Law get a unique bonus if they use a spear, but they also develop a Irish accent. Go figure.

Pages of Light take warning. Just because you CAN win a fight, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Same goes for Pages of Mind; Also, HOW you win a fight can be more important than whether you actually won or lost. Sometimes the easiest way to win isn't the best.

For Pages of Fate, trust your instincts. Even if they were crap before, they've gotten an upgrade.

Pages of Time almost always try an develop a freestyle ability to punch people into next week, then use it on everything. Just to warn you.

Pages of Sand need to fight dirty; feint, kick people in the balls, divide and conquer, and break your opponents weaponry. If you're stuck at a "puzzle boss" that can only be beaten in exactly one way, send these guys; they're amazing at finding weaknesses.

Pages of Mist tend to run through their Pluck awfully quick thanks to [Reverberata]. Try and end fights quickly, even if it means using costly abilities; it's more efficient than wasting Pluck taking hits.

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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Graces by aspect ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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A Grace of Life tend to have issues in play; Life likes long term improvements, but Grace wants sudden and uncontrolled. One way to get around this is to save various NPCs by healing them, then when things are terrible, send out a general call and have them all stampede to your rescue. This can very easily backfire, however. Also, Grace healing ability work better the closer the target is to dying, but don't cut it too close.

A Grace of Heart tends to trigger sudden, massive changes in Identity. At it's worst, this means instant PKer. At it's most benign, someones spending the rest of the session the wrong gender or something. In addition, the Grace title abilities tend to encourage players to use Heart abilities the wrong way (huge-ass personality rewrites) so be careful.

Graces of Blood should use [Eruption of Logorg] to animate their own army whenever the need one. It's amazingly awesome, BAM, instant army. Just keep an eye on whatever items they Awaken; they tend to blab things they otherwise shouldn't, or refuse to work at the worst moment.

A Grace of Void sets up disasters by removing things. Keep an eye on collateral damage, they have a tendency to kill important NPC's, particularly the Secret Consort.