bladekindeyewear:

— A Kid in King Arthur’s Court —

tacosnitram asked you:

I don’t know if you’ve answered this, but is there any chance you could explain your reasoning for Page being passive? It makes such a good active-passive ratio and it fits the shoes, I know, but it’s just bugging me that the class talked up as “weak, but with enough untapped potential to become really powerful later” ends up being passive all along. What’s the point of the entire theoretical Page character arc if a Page with realized potential is still only a background player serving others?

I’m so glad you asked!  I’d been waiting for an opportunity to clarify this, and copy over some discussion I made on a forum a while earlier. :)

Even if Andrew hadn’t mentioned that the two ‘most passive classes’ tended male, there are still good reasons to believe that the Page fits as a passive Exploit class.  Or rather, reasons to believe that a passive counterpart to the Knight fits the explanation of the Page class we’ve seen so far.

First, let me talk about Knights.

ARADIA: the knight of time is not necessarily the tactician 
ARADIA: he is a powerful warrior class which exploits the flow of time as a weapon 

Contrast what Aradia did with what Dave did. Aradia spammed timelines en-masse, “Creating Time” if my role assignments have merit. Dave, however, “Exploited” it.

What did this entail? Establishing ridiculous stable loops: rigging a stock exchange on the scale of super-trillions of boondollars, compressing weeks of frog breeding into a matter of hours, and shoving multiple coordinated time-selves into a single fight… without dooming himself! He wasn’t creating, destroying, or changing Time. He was just making the maximum possible use of the Time he had!

The “Exploit” class-pair are thus masters of their aspect’s use. A Knight takes their aspect and apply it in ways, or with skill, that nobody else would conceive. If the Page is its passive form… then they invite others to practice similar mastery, and eventually allow the aspect itself to be applied to its largest, most shocking potential! No wonder they’d be a slow, eventually tremendous class.

Especially slow because:

UU: while the more passive bard coUld be seen as “one who allows x to be destroyed, or invites destrUction throUgh x,” as if by the will of the aspect.

Their understanding of the limited amount of the aspect they have at their disposal is only granted by the opportunities at which it shifts and flows, reveals its whims and influence naturally.  A Knight would grab their aspect and grind with it immediately, sharpening up rather fast.  The Page must wait, and it’s a worthwhile price to pay.

(Vriska, who couldn’t wait, ended up tearing the Page in half.  She robbed him of mental clarity time after time when he’d just been building up adventurous courage, like the incident at her quest bed that left him crying and sleeping for most of the session, and eventually punched a hole through him and tossed him into a pit like garbage.  Thief: Tear into Page.  Paper puns.)

Here’s how I’d look at it:

• Give a Seer her sword, and she’ll show you how to hone blades sharp enough to rend solid rock asunder.
• Give a Mage his sword, and he’ll apply it in battle like a surgeon, twisting himself around other blades as if their attacks had been announced beforehand.
• Give a Prince his sword, and he’ll shatter it in a king’s heart.
• Give a Bard his sword, and whole armies will soon be swinging and breaking blades against each other.
• Give a Sylph her sword, and she’ll mend both her allies’ swords and the allies attached to them.
• Give a Maid her sword, and she’ll craft five dozen more.
• Give a Witch her sword, and she can swing it as an axe against one to her right, then thrust it as a dagger against one to her left.
• Give an Heir his sword, and others’ swords will bend, reshape, and move around him as if he were a nexus for their essence.
• Give a Rogue her sword, and ally and enemy alike will find themselves with or without their swords at her whim.
• Give a Thief her sword, and she’ll use it to hunt down a vast collection.
• Give a Knight his sword, and he’ll cut down foes, mend armor, scale walls, unlock doors, perform alchemy, fell drawbridges, dice vegetables and stir stew, jumpstart cars, unclog his plumbing, clog an enemy’s plumbing, and perform circus entertainment… all with the same, solitary, unchanged sword. And when it finally breaks in half, he’ll use the hilt as a dagger and the tip as a doorstop.

And finally, if you give a Page his sword, he will train slowly.  Driven by the opportunities life hands him to use it, he’ll get better, stronger.  And as he does, he will share his enthusiasm with others, allowing his skill to encourage and bolster the wills and talents of his allies with their swords.  Given enough time… he will lead not just an army, but an army of Knights!

That leadership is involved is the key distinction, here.  Pages may be a very passive class focused on inspiration, but in the sense that leaders are inspirational and powerful as well:

He would rise through the ranks of the cavalreapers and assume command, having proven the most skilled and fearless of them. He would exhi8it a remarka8le pup8tion, the sort only recorded in myth, growing, or perhaps simply revealing, a striking pair of wings. His army thus inspired would spearhead a major re8ellion.

Given time to mature, the Page is much, much more than a Knight.

The Page, you see, is King Arthur!