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staticsamuraiart · 5 years

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Hoo boy, this one's a long one

There's a TLDR way at the end.

I had one of my longer running games come to a messy head last night where a couple of the players enacted a party betrayal. Here is your cast primarily involved so I don't have to keep using full titles to keep everything straight. We're level 17.

The Tiefling Barbarian who's been having a mental breakdown for the last 3 or 4 games as his entire life up until a certain point has been revealed to him to be a lie, thus causing a downward spiral of paranoia and a refusal to trust literally anyone, party members included. Shortened to "The Barbarian" from now on.

The way-too-hard-to-explain Ranger turned Devil Vampire Queen (there's a lot going on here). The character was once a Tabaxi with a hunger for treasure hunting. Now she wishes to ascend to godhood and become what is essentially a god of piracy and treasure hoarding. Shortened to "The Ranger" from now on.

The Undead Warlock/Life Cleric who has thus far been an amazing healer and generally has a fix for everything and is unaffected by most things who gets the most screwed over in this scenario. Shortened to "The Cleric-Lock" from now on.

And the more minor involvements, a Lycan bloodhunter, our demi-god Bard, and myself as the circle of the moon druid. We were affected but not nearly as directly.

The situation! We were in the Feywild and crawling through a dungeon. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting this dungeon because I was under the impression we were gathering allies in the Feywild because our plane is at war with the Devils but that's another story. We split the party (first mistake) because the dungeon has two paths to go through and one team was forcibly separated after a cave in. The Bard, Bloodhunter, and Barbarian go one way. The Cleric-lock, Ranger, and Druid go the other. Party A and B respectively.

Party A proceeds forward. There's pretty much mostly harmless or not at all dangerous traps laid out through this place so they kind of murderhobo on through. They uh.... let's just say an innocent child gets straight up murdered by the Barbarian who betrays them and tries to book it for the item at the end of the dungeon. Shenanigans ensue and the Bard traps the Barbarian in a Forcecage, while he and the Bloodhunter bamf out to continue through the dungeon.

Party B has a significantly easier time, because overall we are the less* murderhobo side (*one of the traitors is in this group, guess whooo). We power through a much more significant portion of the dungeon and make it to the boss room. "The Boss Room" being the room where the treasure is guarded by goblins...

Now to condense the story, the Vampire and the Barbarian for different reasons were trying to obtain AN INSANELY RARE AND POWERFUL LEGENDARY SWORD THAT GRANTS WISHES. Like high tier shit. The Ranger's plan was to trap or kill everyone in this dungeon because she is the reason it even exists. She has been meticulously planning with the DM for months on her ultimate betrayal and finally reached her point. She plays her trump card (although it ends up not being as awesome as expected because she misunderstood a mechanic, nbd) but proceeds to continue. Here's where things get complicated so let me explain piece by piece:

The ranger supposedly had a wish saved from a previous session when she encountered multiple wish granting items all at once (Frankly she's had insane luck in obtaining wishes all through this campaign). Many of us at the table were pretty sure she did NOT have the wish saved, but the DM ruled she definitely did even though the math didn't line up. The Ranger used this wish spell to force the Cleric-Lock to have amnesia.

Clarification; the DM specifically stated there is no save, no counter, no anything to stop this wish. It happened and there was nothing the player could do about it. Now you might be thinking "but you're the druid, couldn't you have still stopped her?" or even "that's not very fair, shouldn't there still be some kind of DC if the wish copied a spell that exists?"

Well to answer the first thought as simply as possible, I am a homebrewed version of an Eidolyn. You know? Those things Summoners essentially make a bond with and can summon out to fight and shit for them? Yeah, it's neat. The second answer is like, wow hey same bro, I agree. That doesn't make much sense to me. DM ruled "It happens because it's not the 'spell' wish, it's like the 11th level bomb ass crazy powerful WISH wish." and personally I didn't agree but DM rules so I wasn't gonna fight it out. Powerful magic is powerful. Other players at the table were incredibly upset over it and the tensions rose.

Back to explanations, I was originally bonded to the Bard, because at the start of the game we were playing a dnd skin of El Dorado but our "Tulio" left left the game early on. Anyway, here's the problem; I wasn't bonded to the Bard. I was bonded to the Ranger.

"But Static, how can that be? you don't just un-bond to your chosen person!"

Yeeeah well, there was a situation where I got petrified and that sucked. I failed my saves twice. The Ranger had a very powerful ally who had unpetrified me, but he also apparently marked me and bonded me to the Ranger. The DM's argument was that because I "died," I was no longer bonded to the Bard, and was open to have a new bond made. Now I'm not mad or anything at the situation, I'm a very flow with the punches player, but my problem is that that seems like something I should have known, right? I didn't though, I had no idea my bond was shifted; no idea I was even remotely connected to the Ranger in such a way. It was well hidden, because we WERE connected BEFORE that situation came about. Devils' rules, souls being traded and shit, partially due to my Eidolyn heritage; it's complicated.

Why is that important? Well technically speaking, because I was HER Eidolyn, I was HER minion. She ordered me to go ahead and grab her legendary wish sword while the Cleric-Lock was essentially reverted to a mindless Spectre- complicated- and proceeded to possess the Ranger because he still had the general notion that the situation was a hostile one. Ranger failed her save, became a vegetable. I was still following my order. Those Goblins? Used the wishes to wish for Fire toads, and then wished to be okay with fire. AKA they're slowly burning to death on their new Fire Toad mounts as I grab the now innert sword. Okay well it's still a wicked sword, but the wishes were spent.

ALLLLLL things come to a head. The druid goes wild berserk for a while as her "summoner" has essentially been incapacitated, a powerful ally the Ranger summoned whisks the Ranger's body away as the Cleric-lock still maintains control of her body, the Barbarian is trapped in a Forcecage, and the Bard and Bloodhunter bamf the fuck out of there (don't worry we had a sort of anchor that kept the time dilation at bay and they successfully saved on the memory loss thing). Eventually the druid returns to herself, and also bamfs out back to the anchor point with successful memory saves; leaving half of the party essentially wiped and the players for the Barbarian, Cleric-lock, and Ranger will be rolling new characters.

Now this was a lot to go over, because it is a very complicated set of characters with crazy backstories and hordes of batshit insane items and powers because we're so high level and it wouldn't be easy to understand from an outside view if I hadn't provided as much context as I did. The situation with the wish being un-salvagable for the player, combined with the seemingly random entering of a dungeon when our goal was nowhere near such a thing, and the overall out of character tensions that kept rising with disruptive players ended up causing a lot of arguments and a lot of strife; DM and players alike.

What I'm trying to get at is that it's okay to disagree with how your DM runs things. It's okay to think a situation in game was handled unfairly. It's okay to clash opinions. Sometimes DMs are set in their ruling, and sometimes a DM enacts Rule 0: DM says, therefore it is. That is valid. That being said, if you communicate your concerns with [insert clashing opinion here] and you feel you are just butting heads with the DM with no resolution, compromise, or even validation then it is OKAY TO LEAVE THE GAME.

The Bard's player was the most upset with how the game turned out; what with disagreeing with the wish rulings, finding the lack of any possible inklings to our evil players plotting schemes (by that I mean there was only secret conversations with the DM and no in game nuances noted with no rolls involved), and overall finding the betrayal to be from left field and otherwise just an unfair game with multiple examples of the DM railroading certain party members into being or acting some kind of way when they didn't have the chance to save themselves, notice the issues, or generally be involved in the decision that was forced upon their characters (Cleric-Lock and Druid as the main examples). it resulted in the Bard's player deciding to leave the game prematurely. The DM and him got into a heated argument in person and over facebook, and they just couldn't agree and it ended up getting to that point of "well if you want to run the next game go ahead" attitude.

The situation is fresh, so it's still heated between the two people. Maybe they'll make up, or maybe they'll see that they clash and don't even want to be friends anymore. Idk, but I for one see the game as a learning experience. I myself have had reservations about the game and the DM for a long time, and in general just haven't really felt a deep connection with my character or the story. There were moments, but they were pretty few and far between. I don't hate the players, and I don't even blame the ones who took evil routes and betrayed us. I just wish there was a better synergy between us with Players, Party, and DM. Things probably would've been better.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I just wanted a place to unload the story and organize my thoughts on the situation. I want to clarify too that the DM isn't a bad DM or a bad person, in fact he even pre-game warned us that things might get heated and cooked for us while he tried to be as fair as he possibly could be. This isn't a blasting on social media, nor is it a callout post. I just don't like putting these things on facebook because do you see this novel I wrote? Fuck that noise I just wanted to journal it somewhere and voice out that not every DnD game is perfectly balanced or perceived to be handled fairly. He did his best, he made his calls, and he urged us all to make sure we knew we were all still friends after the game was over.

TLDR; Our DM kind of railroaded a couple players and made some questionable decisions on how he handled some PvP scenarios which angered a chunk of the players and overall it was just a bad time. We're still friends but sometimes friends get passionate over the things they have strong views on and arguments happen. It's okay though, humans aren't perfect. We cool.

Thanks for reading. <3

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yekulan-dothkah · 7 years

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Stormblood Live Letter: May 22 discussion

I reblogged a post earlier regarding the live letter summary in quick notes form. I just wanted to express some thoughts and state some clarifications verbally expressed during the stream; because I sat and watched the whole thing and some people are freaking out or assuming the wrong information. There will be some of my own opinion thrown in so keep that in mind.

Job Changes:

Base Abilities: Do not assume all your abilities will transfer over, the original versions of many abilities will show as grey with a red line through them. Many abilities have been reworded, combined with other abilities, or slightly modified. This has been done to help level the playing field while maintaining play style. They appear to have taken a lot of care with new and modified abilities to make the classes represent themselves more clearly, and offer logical abilities that benefit both self and allies. Please be patient and willing to work with the new abilities, and capabilities that come with them, rather than complain you no longer have X ability.

Role Skills: Some cross class "mandatory" abilities may not all be able to be selected because of the role skills replacing cross skills. Role skills are arranged by tank/healer/melee/ranged/caster, and all the role skills have been carefully selected, modified, and tweaked. For example, Goad is now a melee role skill, along with Rampart as a tank role skill; while Quelling Strikes and Raging Strikes have been taken off the list of shared abilities for ranged role skills. The interesting factor this will bring is to playstyle, you can only select 5, and there are about 10 to choose from; many of these abilities are useful and it will be hard to pick the last 3, this will hopefully give playing the variety and choice we've been lacking, while still offering our very job specific playstyle.

Healer DPS/Cleric Stance: Cleric stance is a huge change, to clarify if you've missed the memo, it is no longer a stance and is now a cooldown that gives us a temporary boost to damage, our Mind stat is now also being used for our attacks instead of Intelligence. This is a huge quality of life improvement to all healers, if you've been nervous about dps'ing and healing as a healer, please reconsider after this update because now there's little to no risk of dps'ing and not being able to heal in time; you may even find you enjoy it. 90% of healer attacks have cast times, simply twitch your character in a direction to interrupt casting and begin healing instead. People I don't expect to dps and most of the community doesn't either: People with horrible ping, people who are unfamiliar with the job, people who are "rusty" and are playing after a long break from class/game, people who are new or still relatively unfamiliar with the dungeon and it's mechanics. Simply state something like the aforementioned when you enter the dungeon and everyone will understand; you may also be offered hints, tips, even tricks. Please openly take the advice offered and use it if you didn't know the information before, if you already knew the information, say thank you either way. People who stand there for 99% of the dungeon and don't really heal that much, you're probably going to get some flak from people; if you want not only do the content more slowly, but are not affected by the words your party spews at you, ultimately willing to be kicked and queue again, then by all means don't do anything. Understand however that people will react negatively if you make absolutely no effort to speed/make a mechanic passable in the dungeon/raid/trial up by participating when you literally have nothing better to do; so don't cry me or anyone a river when you get kicked for the 20th time today because you weren't dps'ing when your search information and gear clearly states you are a skilled and competent healer.

Resources & Their Graphics: Resources have been added to classes that lacked a resource, like dark knight and paladin. Some resources have been added to classes that already had them, like scholar and dragoon. All these new and existing resources have User Interfaces (UI) to accompany them, an extra bit you put on your screen to clearly state where you are in your usage or build up of said resource. These are an expansion on the first point that is giving each of our classes a more distinct feel by pushing us to use our combat techniques and a skillful manner to open up opportunities for high utility and damaging moves. To people complaining they've turned PVE into easy mode with the reduced actions and simplicity, this is where the skill level of you end game raiders will separate you from the casual players. People able to fill and maintain these bars efficiently will be the kings and queens of their classes, while still allowing the casual individual to use and play effectively.

Attribute Changes:

Blocking: Blocking is still a shield stat and not increasing from the sounds of things, blocking will now be possible from the sides and backs, deteriorating at a rate based on how far the angle is from your front. Block is also being applied to magic attacks to give Paladins and shield & scepter casters & healers a bit more utility.

Parry: Yes parry has been removed as a stat, but it has not been removed as a mechanic. You will still parry, they stated there will be calculations similar to blocking that allow you to parry based of a set percentage instead of a stat affected number. Parry materia will, as a result, no longer be present; all Parry materia affixed and obtained, will turn into "Tenacity" which I will address next.

Tenacity: Tenacity replaces parry, and the best way to describe it is your ability to wield the weapon both offensively and defensively. This stat will both passively increase your attack, and decrease the damage you take. This is a stat I am very excited to test on all the tanks as the passive damage reduction and increased output will be a boon if the calculations are significant enough.

Accuracy: Much like parry, this stat has been removed, but not the mechanic. Increases to evasion and blinding the respective combatants will still decrease the chance to hit. Attacking something of a higher level will have a reduced chance to hit. However, attacking a creature from the side, and back, will have increased chances to hit. For example hitting someone head on from the front and they are the same level as you with no debuffs or buffs will mean you have a 100% chance to hit, but being a fighter at the flank or rear will increase your chances significantly so even when blinded you can land blows. Likewise your position when casting will be crucial if you are under leveled or debuffed. As a result, Accuracy materia have been replaced with "Direct Hit" just like Parry was replaced with Tenacity.

Direct Hit: This stat will give you more consistent, smaller, critical hits. Say a critical for you right now is 4k, two times your normal damage of 2k, a Direct Hit critical will likely be in the ballpark of 2.5k-3k. What is interesting is this damage WILL stack with the damage of criticals, so if you get a direct hit critical of 3k, if your critical hit triggers at the same time you'll do 6k damage instead of 4k as it will go off the new base damage. Now this is speculation; the is also the possibility your crit could also just be 4k + the extra 1k your direct hit did so it could only reach 5k. Still this is a huge boon to fast attackers like Monks, Ninjas, Bards, and Machinists, I look forward to the science side of our community experimenting, testing, and posting their new numbers thanks to this stat. I am also curious and excited to see how this affects criticals for Scholars, and Astrologian nocturnal sect healing.

Strength: A change to tanks and no one else, you will have this stat added into your damage calculations once more. It is unclear at this time if you will do more damage for having VIT over more STR, or if STR will be a drastic enough increase that tanks will be willing to skip out on some VIT. Whatever the result is, people, please take a deep breath and calm down. The decision to go VIT instead of STR is the tank's choice, not yours; if they're willing to compensate for the loss of HP by using game mechanics like having more defensive role cooldowns instead of offensive ones and they do just fine, then you have no place to call them stupid for that choice. People will play how they want, and as long as you get to the end of the content I don't see a problem with people spec'ing their stats the way they want, or choosing uncommon skills for role abilities. Please note, you will not be able to equip STR DPS accessories like you could pre-Stormblood, this applies to any classes trying to equip different accessories from their defined sets, so stacking a high Strength stat will be much harder for tanks, hopefully this will prevent extremely low HP tanks while still offering an alternative to materia melding from VIT.

PVP:

Gear: Gear has become 100% aesthetic, this is nor more PVP gear item levels or stats, this leads me to assume that current PVP gear will be reduced to lvl 1 glamours, or lvl 50/60, but not actual equipment for combat. Alternatively they could leave the stats on, and people who use the seals to buy the gear for use in PVE could keep doing so (even if that isn’t optimal it’s probably a lot less coding work.). So go in strutting your best glam and love it.

Stats & Attributes: Everyone will have “comparable” stats and attributes now. What this means is tanks that are going to have more hp that most, then next highest is likely melee dps, followed ranged dps, and casters/healers at roughly the same amount. It appears everyone has the same MP amounts as well, but that is likely subject to change. For examples on this, tank will probably have 15k HP, we know dragoons have 12.5k HP, red mages have 10k HP, and both dragoon and red mage have 10k MP.

Skills & Abilities: Everyone will have “comparable” abilities as well, how this factors in is that everyone has combo’s, and the abilities, even if they go by the same name have much different potency and effects from outside of PVP, this also means we get PVP separate hot bars. Everyone gets between 9-10 abilities and these are your heals, attacks, ect. Next everyone gets 2 PVP abilities that are like the “remove all detriments” or “Greatly enhance evasion” for current examples. Lastly you get 3 passive abilities that are available to all roles, there’s roughly 10 of them and they have things like increased damage types, increased stats, and passive effects judging from what we could see in the live letter.

What this all means for players is a level playing field where actual skill and teamwork are rewarded, instead of playtime and gear. All three of these changes are a huge improvement to a previously very unfair and relatively broken system we have put up with for so long.

Also: PVP can be entered at lvl 30, instead of lvl 50 or 60, minor yet important note.

Shortcuts:

Story: I completely understand this, the story is long and tiring, it's pretty painful all said and done. While it is a good story in my opinion, not everyone has the time to play through it all, and catching up to your friends is fine and dandy. My beef with this is removing the newbie bonus from dungeons affected by story. Should the story dungeon and side dungeons be accessible? Yes. Should the MSQ dungeons be marked as cleared? No. These people join into a dungeon, have no clue what's going on in say, Aurum Vale, and then die because they stood in a puddle. If I see the newbie bonus, I typically ask "Does anyone want an explanation as we go?". Most new people say "Yes please" or "Sure" or "Yeah, it's my first time.". This establishes that not everyone knows the drill, that not everyone is on the ball with what is going on. I could care less about the actual bonus but just knowing "This is someone's first time" makes me and a lot of people I know very understanding of any mistakes. To queue up and get The Vault and have someone who has no clue what the hell is going on with the final, second, or even first boss is NOT doing anyone favors. People who are not forced to run every dungeon along the way have no idea what all the different mechanics look like, they have no clue what's going on or why they're dead. It's not fair to us as players paired up with them, and its definitely not fair to the people who are put in the uncomfortable situation of having no clue. Ideally they do research on the dungeon, but that’s IDEAL, many things that are IDEALLY a good idea fail in practical application as history has taught us. So what is the list of dungeons and trials that are required to be completed for MSQ that will be auto completed? Every MSQ dungeon obviously, but also every primal trial besides: Odin in normal mode and most hard modes, especially extreme modes are excluded. The Hard Mode (HM) of the first 3 primals, and a number of things like the steps of faith, and the final steps of faith; all are trials that are very hard if you have no clue what's going on and can be mechanic heavy that people will have ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKING CLUE ABOUT, but are MSQ required. "What cannons?" / "What does this do? *queue activating mechanic too early*" / "So I stand in the blue AOE's right? They're friendly?" / "Why did we all just die?" / "Healers screwed up?" / "I'm supposed to do what with the adds?". All legitimate questions I've seen or been asked already, and marking these dungeons as "completed" is going to cause a ton of wipes, frustrated players, kicks, and "House rules" that are unfair to new players. Please, mark these as "First time" SE, it will avoid a lot of pain with that simple tiny little message pop up.

On a side note that is related, there is a cheaper shortcut to just do 2.0-2.55 msq of A Realm Reborn (ARR); the other package does ARR plus Heavens Ward (HW) msq content of 3.0-3.56, but is more expensive as a result. This also does NOT grant any levels, you will still be level 1.

Levels: This I am on the fence about, right now you are only allowed 1 per service account, that's fine, and most people who shortcut the story will also buy this to make the catch up process complete. Now we will have people with no clue about mechanics attempting to complete content without even going through the process of learning how to play the class they currently are. Thankfully, on Balmung, these people are likely "smurfs" or "alts" and this will be less common as most people have a main trained in everything but they want their OC to be trained as X class. Other servers that are still open to new characters and population are going to be the ones suffering most from this inexperience. Yes we have cross world duty finder but you are more likely to get someone from your own world I find rather than other worlds. Yes they prompt you to "Go to the tutorial level and learn how to not be completely horrible at your job" but it's a poor and painful alternative to the learning you go through doing the dungeons. I would rather SE increase the novice hall's lessons to include more complex tactics as "Bonus courses" but knowing them they will sit there and leave it as it because it's still better than nothing. My biggest issue is the novice hall is OPTIONAL. You don't have to do it at all, and you could choose say, dark knight to 60, and proceed to not use grit when you're the only tank, and not use any aggro grabs because you don't even know what those are; now the dps and the healer are dying, it's a party wipe, and you have no idea why everyone is mad and you, or why you got kicked if it was bad enough. This is bad for the new characters because new people will feel they wasted 50$ buying the packs only to get kicked out of every dungeon and told to learn how to play the game and even insulted. Please blacklist and report people who get foul at others or you like this, but by all means this new player can still be kicked for "griefing" well before the ones who kicked are called on being rude and disrespectful.

Final Note:

Please, as a community it is our job to be patient and willing to teach these new players the basics, or those inexperienced in X job, even those relearning their jobs, especially those performing the experiments that help us understand the game better. If the person is rude to you or others for trying to help them, or rude to you and others for stating you are learning, yes kick and report them as applicable, but at least try to be the mature teachers and mentors we should be to each other?P.S: Don’t be that WHM that uses the leash ability the wrong way, jokes are fine and dandy especially with friends, but with great power comes greater responsibilities.

#stormblood #ffxiv #please ffxiv be a community for 5 seconds and not a shit storm of hate #we have a huge opportunity with this expansion to do great things and some shitty people could ruin it for all of us #live letter ffxiv #ffxiv live letter

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existentialspiral · 7 years

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Classpect Analysis: Mage of Hope

DEFINITION: The aspect of Hope holds ties over possibility, potential, imagination, desire, drive, angels, the infinite, friendship, and the non-capital concept of hope. Hope is an easy enough aspect to talk about, with varied displays, multiple users, and, best of all, several characters speaking with an operative definition of it. As well, it is well shown that Hope has a very specifically defined counter-aspect, that of Rage, allowing us further insight into the aspect. Firstly, on the subject of its heroes, we have Jake English (Page of Hope), who manages two amazingly powerful displays of his power: the Hope Bubble, a literal burst of manifested Hope that somehow contained more energy than that of the Green Sun, and the manifestation of Brain Ghost Dirk. Most obvious is the Hope Bubble, mostly due to its ability to overpower the Green Sun-derived powers of a First Guardian; as a First Guardian can be said to have effective omnipotence due to their ability to harness the limitless power of the Green Sun, then this means that Jake must have been outputting, at a minimum, more power than that of an effectively omnipotent being, possibly even a greater level of infinite power than that of the Green Sun itself. More impressive is Jake’s manifestation of Brain Ghost Dirk, where he not only violates the principal of conservation of mass and energy, but actually creates a living being, with its own mind, memories, drives, and even separate knowledge, entirely because he believed that Brain Ghost Dirk was real (or at least, so long as he was whammied by Aranea into that state). Next we have That Worthless Fuckup (Prince of Hope), who was able to manifest Hope as a destructive force, one capable of overpowering Sollux, something he couldn’t do at any point prior despite having a weapon that has been described as one of the most powerful that the riflekind abstratus would allow (presumably, anything larger or stronger would fall under cannonkind, artillarykind, or seigekind). Most interesting about this display is that, despite That Worthless Fuckup being able to use his power through a wand, the wand in question is stated to be nothing more than an ordinary wand, likely alchemized out of the shitty wands of the shitty wand pile; this implies that That Worthless Fuckup’s wand held power entirely because he believed it held power. As well, as a Prince, That Worthless Fuckup actively destroyed his own Hope, destroying his romantic hopes (by being a stressful genocidal asshat), his personal hopes (by fulfilling his personal role as Orphaner, when an intentional failure would have served him better), and even destroying his hopes within the session (by suicidally attacking the angels of his Land). Lastly is Cronus Ampora (Bard of Hope) and his post-Scratch counterpart, Orphaner Dualscar, who was actually more pitiful (although less miserably pathetic) than his Dancester; unlike That Worthless Fuckup, we haven’t seen Cronus display any hope-related abilities, although it should be noted that, as a Bard, he passively destroyed his own Hope, driving away any potential romance with his slimy personality, ruining potential friendships with his relentless creepiness, and even demolishing his own destiny by abandoning it. Meanwhile, for less-derived and more spoken information, Aranea Serket makes specific mention as Hope being a difficult aspect, due to its strongly-curved growth (that is, it takes a significant amount of time or effort to gain power), but also lists it as possibly the most powerful of all aspects, something borne out by the events of the comic, with the power of Hope being shown as greater than that of Time (and, by mirror implication, Space) with Jake overpowering the young Lord English, who had already gained ‘limitless power’ from his Quest. Lastly, it should be noted that, in general, Hope players tend to be of a rather high opinion of themselves, from the unthinkingly self-important (That Worthless Fuckup) or callous (Jake English) to the outright delusional (Cronus Ampora). As for the powers of a Mage, we really have no solid ground to stand on. Every Mage shown so far has failed to display any active associated abilities, and the Mages in question are all failed examples of their class. However, we can gleam some info from them, through the three shown incarnations of the class: Sollux Captor (Mage of Doom), Meulin Leijon (Mage of Heart), and Meulin’s post-Scratch counterpart, the Disciple (Mage of Heart). More specifically, examining them all gives the following definition: “One who experiences and comprehends one’s aspect.” Sollux notably had comprehension of the ~ATH programming language, a language built on the very concept of doom, and was able to experience Doom in a way no one else ever could, having had both two dreamselves, his original body, his half-ghost body, and his unlife as Erisolsprite in the doomed Game Over timeline, allowing him to die a total of five times, each time experiencing a new expression of Doom. Also notably, Sollux manifested the ability to hear the voices of the imminently deceased, a passive ability that would seem most appropriate for a Seer of Doom, possibly the result of his rejection of his aspect and apathy to his class causing his class to invert, implying an active-passive pairing with Seer. Meulin herself, meanwhile, is noted as having a great deal of skill with shipping, especially in the redrom quadrants, and so can be said to comprehend matters of the heart; additionally, she is stated to have little permanent luck with romance herself, implying that she has dated and been in many relationships with many partners, and thus that she has a great deal of experience in matters of the heart. Lastly, the Disciple is most notable for her relationship with the Sufferer, where it is stated that they fell into every quadrant at once with each other; this unique relationship allowed her to experience the full troll romantic spectrum, the human concept of monogamous romance, the cherub concept of devoted kismessitude, and the leprechaun concept of a “Heart-Moon-Star-Clover-Diamond-Horseshoe-Balloon-Rainbow-Pot” relationship (i.e, a full 3x3 trove); thus, it can be stated that the Disciple was allowed to experience every form of romance, and thus the near-complete experience of the Heart aspect. Now, if you wish for a fuller, more in-depth dissection of the Mage, I recommend preforming one yourself and sharing your conclusions with the community; failing that (or simply wishing to be entertained by my conclusions), I recommend reading my analysis here. With all this, we may now parse the Mage of Hope as, “One who experiences and comprehends imagination, possibility, faith, or hope.” Other Hope players have to rely on a sense of hopefulness and confidence to maintain a connection to their aspect; not so much for the Mage of Hope. The Mage of Hope does not need to keep faith in Hope, because he knows. He has felt the rising joy of his aspect, and known the crushing despair of its absence. Where others are left adrift, wondering what there is to believe in, the Mage of Hope has learned that faith, belief, imagination, these things stand alone, stronger than the weight of ages if you’re willing to keep to them. Sinners and saints, heroes and horrors, the devoted and the desperate, all of these see themselves staring back out the knowing eyes of the Mage of Hope. ABILITIES: The Mage of Hope, as one with comprehension of and experience with Hope, functions as a Jack-of-All-Trades, able to fulfil any needed role the aspect of Hope could allow, which (with Hope being the aspect associated with possibility, potential, and imagination) is essentially every role. Having practice and understanding of his aspect, the Mage of Hope can inspire, manipulate, destroy, assume, or wield Hope itself. This pairing of an extremely varied and viable class with an extremely varied and powerful aspect results in the interesting result of a player who can not only fulfil any actual role, but can actually succeed in any role that doesn’t outright require a specific aspect, or which doesn’t require the specialization of a specific class (such as Thief or Muse). In video game terms, it’s easiest to think of the Mage of Hope as an upgraded Red Mage-Mario; that is to say, someone with access to most, if not every, ability, albeit usually at the cost of generalized weakness (the Red Mage) combined with someone who, while not specialized in anything, is instead passably good at everything (the Mario). Put in raw stat terms, think of other classpects as having a set of stats ranked from 1 to 10, with most classes having 9 or 10 in one or two stats and the rest averaging out to about 5 or 6. In this, the Mage of Hope wouldn’t have a 10 in any stat, but instead would have 7 to 9 in all of them. In more mortal terms, the Mage of Hope is a less-physical SBURBian Superman. At lower levels, it seems likely that the Mage of Hope would be able to access some useful powers of their aspect, likely along the lines of magic attacks or other related abilities, making them an effective lower-level striker, along with their already burgeoning understanding of their aspect’s nature allowing them to help inspire their team and help them with their own issues, such as despair and misery or overconfidence and arrogance; meanwhile, as a learner class, they would be expected to do everything they could to learn more of their session, to tear the lore apart in search of whatever they’d need to bring their session victory. Through their understanding of Hope and its associations they could be expected to come up with some daring plans of action, to accomplish the seemingly impossible, to be generally good at things they set their mind to, and to discover the important secrets and hidden goals of Skaia’s Game, all while also helping to prevent the team from falling to either overconfidence or hopelessness; in other words, a Mage of Hope is probably one of the best possible candidates for a team leader, one rivaled only by most Blood players and some Heart, Mind, Breath, Space, and Time players. This, though, could be countered by their classes influence on their fate, forcing them to experience both the good parts of their aspect and the bad, resulting in spectacular failures and truly hopeless losses. However, while this tendency might be directly problematic, it does serve the triple purpose of both A: teaching the Mage more of his aspect, B: keeping the Mage’s feet on the ground, averting a definite issue with Hope players, and C: helping the rest of the team to not see them as someone ‘beyond’ them, in either status or ego, and so allowing them to actually help and inspire the team to greatness, at least so long as these failures don’t seem to overcome the victories. In other words, “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” Upon reaching God Tier, the Mage of Hope experiences a less dramatic increase in direct power than other classes, but an infinitely starker increase in utility; no longer limited to their mortal abilities, the Mage of Hope can directly affect changes they intend upon the world, and with their comprehension of their aspect, they can use their more-limited but wider abilities to far greater effect than others, as well as being able to better use their understanding to help their team, inspiring the doubtful and taming the doubtless, and also being able to divine ever more information from the world by their greater understanding of Hope, including its associations with all that is possible (and thus, impossible), with potential (and, thus, all that merely could be), with imagination (and all that isn’t so conceptually concrete), and with goals (and, by implication, what those goals need to be fulfilled; goals like the breeding and growth of a Genesis Frog). For more direct abilities, sky’s the limit; the power of Hope is essentially limitless, being shown as more powerful than Time, and is directly associated with things such as imagination, so the actual limits of someone who can truly comprehend Hope are difficult to guess. Feats such as the manifestation of imaginary objects, the healing of the injured or despaired, the direct weaponization of Hope, the open manipulation of their power, the free manifestation of Hope itself, these and more all seem to be possible. Any actual limits would likely be psychological, either due to the Mage losing hope or confidence, or due to the Mage simply not yet understanding just how much their aspect can accomplish; in other words, the abilities of one who comprehends Hope are limited by their hope or comprehension. At highest level, the Mage of Hope is closer to a full-fledged deity than almost any other God Tier player, having abilities far in advance of some entire classpects, or even entire aspects. Being someone with both power and comprehension of imagination, possibility, faith, potential, and the infinite, the actual direct abilities of a Mage of Hope at their absolute upper limits are less, “awesome magic powers of amazing strength,” and more, “localized and absolute control of reality.” By this point, the Mage of Hope can be said to not only have as much power as they can get, but also as much understanding of Hope as is possible, and so any actual limits on their abilities are purely in relation to the level of power they can output; as the power of Hope (albeit channeled through a Page, THE most directly powerful class) was able to overcome the outright statedly-limitless power of the Green Sun itself, it is %100 possible that a full-fledged and conceptually fulfilled Mage of Hope is truly omnipotent; if one were to establish limits they would likely be in the area of power, leaving the Mage as only being able to use their power limitedly, either as full omnipotence within a specific area, or as only being able to realize one effect at a time, or even only being able to manifest their effects limitedly (such as being limited in the size of imaginary objects they could conjure, or in the actual joule output of their Hope Beams). Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that a Mage of Hope is unbeatable. As their abilities are directly tied to their imagination, they are also limited by their imagination: if the Mage in question can’t think of a solution to a problem, then all the power in the world isn’t going to help. Also, as the power of Hope is implicitly tied to friendship, a Mage of Hope is likely going to need the support of their friends to use their power fully; indeed, as Hope is so heavily tied to belief, self-image, and positivity, any disbelief or negative emotions and thoughts could have limiting or even outright depowering effects. Also, while the power of Hope is great, greater than any other aspect, it cannot actually do everything; no matter how powerful a Mage of Hope becomes, he can never travel backwards through time, or change the lines of other’s thoughts, or manipulate luck, or breed the Genesis Frog, or to truly create something from nothing. Lastly, the greatest weakness of a Mage of Hope at the top end of their power is that, while they have something close to omnipotence, they would not have omniscience; “It doesn’t matter how fast you are, how good you are, ‘cause it’s always the bullet you didn’t even see that gets you.” QUEST: We aren’t actually shown any proper Quests for a Hero of Hope, or for a Mage; Jake’s Quest was never shown, and neither was Sollux, Meulin, or Cronus’, and That Worthless Fuckup actively sabotaged his own Quest. However, we can gleam some information on the very little presented to us. On the side of Mages, the only thing we have to go on is his Land, the Land of Brains and Fire, which ties directly to the source of his power (Sollux’s “hiideou2 mutant brain”) and his suffering (the “cacophony of phy2iical paiin [his] hiideou2 mutant braiin cau2e2”), although that is, unfortunately, the only real information we have on his land. On the Hope side, we have the lands of both Jake and That Worthless Fuckup, the Land of Mounds and Xenon and the Land of Wrath and Angels. Jake’s land’s name is, unfortunately, worthless due to his status as Noble of a Void Session, and its actual environment is mostly worthless, being both filled with explorable burial sites (like all Void session Lands) and marked with an X, possibly as a reference to Xenon starting with X, and possibly a once-removed reference to his relationship with Dirk by way of Plato. Lastly, we have That Worthless Fuckup’s Land and Quest, which do provide some information. Firstly, as the Land of Wrath and Angels, it references both Hope and Rage, Hope’s counter aspect. Next, looking specifically, we can note that, with That Worthless Fuckup being a Prince, he seemed to better embody his counter-aspect, destroying his own aspect within himself, displaying his weakness right alongside what her needed to overcome it. Also, while we don’t have any direct observation of his Quest, we do have some info presented to us. Specifically, the info presented by Doc Scratch, who states that That Worthless Fuckup was taught by the angels how to destroy hope with their light; indeed, with that as context, it becomes far more difficult to decide if That Worthless Fuckup was supposed to talk with the angels like in a normal RPG, or if he actually was supposed to slaughter them all, with his growth as a Prince being hampered by his use of a top-tier weapon, or even if it allowed both options. Taken together, I shall posit that the Land of a Mage of Hope would likely have to do with something related to Hope, such as Angels, Joy, Imagination, Crosses, Crescents, Salt, Sanctuaries, or Imagination, and something to do with the character in question’s suffering. An example would be the Land of Loss and Souls. As for Quests I may only speculate, but knowing that the Quest is intended to help players become more complete people and to better fulfil their roles as Heroes, I’d guess that a Mage of Hope’s Quest would purposefully expose them to constant hopelessness, while also showing that sometimes things really are hopeless. To give an example using the above posited Land: the Land of Loss and Souls is home to the wandering ghosts of passed consorts, forced to haunt the land because of the actions of the Land’s Denizen, as well as the living consorts who were left behind. The player’s goal is to help the ghost consorts to move on from their present state, at first by helping them personally, then by completing the grand challenge imposed by their Denizen. As well, the Mage of Hope will have to learn that, while they can fulfill some of the ghost consort’s requests (such as being able to see their long-lost child one last time), some requests are truly impossible (such as a request to have been able to start a family of their own blood, ghosts obviously not being able to sire or birth children). The only denizen shown for Hope players is Abraxas, who becomes less clear as you inspect him. Abraxas is one of the only two Denizens to have a name from a mythology besides ancient Greece, the other being Yaldabaoth. As Yaldabaoth is supposed to be the strongest Denizen for the strongest player, it can also be implied that Abraxas is the weakest Denizen for the weakest player, although this is difficult to judge. As such, until Hussie either shows us Karkat’s Denizen, or shows us the Denizen of another Hope player, we shall have to mark Abraxas as a ‘maybe’. Also, I state now that, as the past section notes, the Mage of Hope is also a character with the potential to be essentially omnipotent; if that isn’t enough to justify the appearance of Yaldabaoth, I don’t know what is. VERDICT: Top. Fucking. Tier. The Mage of Hope is, at its higher levels, one of the best classpects period, and at the height of its power could probably solo a session except for the Frog Breeding; if it weren’t for the ticking clock mechanic, a Mage of Hope might even be able to solo a Dead Session, without any Leprechauns to help. The only thing which curbs it from being unstoppable is a possible power limitation and its dependence on positive thinking, the exact kind of thing that would likely doom a Mage of Hope from actually soloing a session, Dead or otherwise. As it is, the Mage of Hope is still a force to contend with, able to comprehend Hope and so use Hope in almost any way they wish; the only real limits to a Mage of Hope come from a lack of understanding on their part. As well, it seems incredibly unlikely for a realized and dangerous Mage of Hope to ever have any actual loyalty issues, being that comprehension of their teammate’s hopes and dreams is well within their remit. Either as an inspiring leader or competent teammate, it is very hard to do much better than a Mage of Hope. The Mage of Hope needs little in the way of support, being so outright capable with the actual doing of deeds, and so outright requires few things beyond positive attitude. To this end, a Sylph or Bard of Mind, Light, Heart, or Blood would be all they need to keep themselves at the height of their power. The Mage of Hope doesn’t really need much in the way of leading, possibly being the leader themselves, but in the situations that they are a follower, a Breath or Blood player of most classes would do best. For synergies, the Mage of Hope works incredibly well with most classpects, able to adapt to most needs, so the best possible pairings are with most players of Time, Space, Heart, Mind, and possibly Void. Lastly, in the unlikely event that the Mage of Hope goes rogue, you’re in for a bad time. Actually fighting a Mage of Hope requires one to either be resistant to the Mage’s power, or to be able to attack in a way they can’t counter. Witch or Prince of Mind would be a definite, if unsafe, option, as would a realized Page, Prince, or Knight of Rage, and possibly a Knight of Space. Possibly the safest, if not most effective, counters would be a Prince, Thief, Rogue, Witch, Maid, or Knight of Heart, these being generally safe classpects, but still able to fight back against a Mage of Hope.

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