Design Study - The Witness from Ways and Means

The fourth and final part of my design deep dive into the classes of Ways and Means! This entry concerns the Witness, a bard-alike who just loves to see all the other player characters accomplish their dreams. The goal for this project is to try to isolate the mechanical design from the thematic elements and analyze how the two inform each other, to see what works for me and what doesn't.

Intro

I wrote in my first readthrough of Ways and Means that I am simply not the right audience to be excited about a bard-like class. This is a personal problem, and one I hope to one day rectify. Until then, I confess that I have little patience for or interest in common bard-y tropes. I do not like the singing of improvised songs that empower everyone with the magic of friendship. I do not like the forced horniness. I do not like the flattening of culture and performance and human experience into "oh isn't music just magical?" I find "theater kid energy" to be basically completely repulsive. Despite these character flaws, I am committed to coming to the concept with as little hostility as I can muster. 

Unfortunately, I once again think that the class suffers from a crisis of identity. The pitch we get in the intro is that Witnesses are those folks who persist in the largely discredited tradition of bardic magic, and they persist because they believe there's power in stories, and especially power in the stories one sees firsthand, and that this power is crucial to society, despite the silliness of bards. This pitch suggests to me that the concept suffers from all three of the problems I have had so far with the classes of Ways and Means.

First, and most minorly, this is another class that is its own calling. A Witness is in the Heart to do witness-y stuff; Witnesses don't come down to the Heart because they've been forced to or anything. This is not a major problem; players are capable of being inventive and, since they are forced by the rules to pick a calling, I have every faith that Witness players will find a way to make sense of their Forced background, or craft an Enlightenment calling that appeals. So my problem is not that it is impossible, or even that it is hard - my problem is that I think writing a class from this direction leads to uninteresting or compromised design. I attribute the weakness of the Crawler and the Snail Pilgrim's zenith abilities to this issue, for example.

Second, this class concept is awfully reliant on D&D legibility. I think this issue was responsible for several parts of the Crawler that I found uninspiring. D&D-ism as a foundational piece or design goal seems to lead towards generic design. The Crawler was able to make an identity for itself, but its most interesting ability had nothing to do with thief-y stuff, except in a broad thematic way. Any engagement with trope-y stuff will be a balance of embracing and subverting some of those tropes. In order to be legible as playing in cleric-space, the Heretic must have some fundamental similarity to clerics. But I worry that with the Witness, it's the tail wagging the dog.

 

Third, the concept has very weak fictional grounding. There is a mention of a bardic tradition, and later in the book we get artistic movements - you can build something here. But it's totally lacking the specificity of the core book classes, even the ones that might seem kind of generic at first blush. It's not impossible for a generic, free floating class concept to hit on some interesting abilities or themes in the specifics of the class, so we can defer that worry until we hit the class abilities. Harder to reconcile, though, is the impact a generic class has on my impression of the Heart as a fictional place. One of the things I think is so interesting and immediately appealing about the Heart is that it is a horrible nightmare dungeon that will kill you sooner or later. Player characters immediately have an identity - they're the people with the ability to delve through the Heart, at least for a little while, before it kills them. And in order to do that, every one of the core classes has had to acquire a relationship to power. What happens to a Deadwalker whose death has grown impatient? A Junk Mage whose spell-thievery has caught the attention of the Stone Chorus? What good is a Vermissian Knight after the collective repossesses their armor? When will the Witch's cursed blood claim her mind? Every class lives under their own sword of damocles, which is good booking - it communicates that only sickos and freaks can live down here, because only they are stupid enough or brave enough or doomed enough to have opted into this way of life. If the anybody can just come down with an accordion and sing a few notes about how awesome all this is, that suggests that actually we were wrong, and that actually it's kind of easy to eke out a living. Taken to the extreme, it turns the whole thing into a farce. I'm not a stickler for tone! My games of Heart often do lean into the comedy of it all! But I'm unwilling to give up the stakes.

Just to drive the point home, I think this is an own-goal on the part of RRD. All the class needs is the hint of justification that any of the core classes got. Spin out that bardic tradition into something! Take an actual swing at why there might be singing idiots in the nightmare meat dungeon. It doesn't need to be perfect, and of course it won't really stand up to the classes in the core book who have the benefit of pages and pages of background material in the locations & examples & etc. But refusing to even take the shot is just heartwrenching.

Well, that's enough complaining from me. Obviously, the Witness would have to do a lot to get me back on side. Based on my first skim, I do not expect that to happen. Nonetheless, I am undeterred, and I am trying to channel my brightest, most hopeful and charitable reading ability. Enough theory, let's get into the text.

Core Abilities

Inspirational: At the start of each session, the Witness chooses from among any of the skills, domains, or protections they have. Any player character who stands next to them is granted that skill, domain, or +1 in that protection for as long as they remain nearby.

 

Thematically, this is very much in the popcultural bard space (help out your friends, jack of all trades), and that's what the class is trying to do, so at most I would fault it for being a little boring. I have a much bigger worry about the mechanical effect, which I rate as pretty highly tuned. Access to skills and domains is an enormous part of the dice game; the power to grant everyone extra dice at essentially no cost throughout the entire session is enormous.

 

The fictional lever on the ability (would-be-recipients must stand next to you) offers an angle of attack, but I think it's a difficult one to complicate too often, both for fundamental genre reasons (this is a group dungeon delving game in which players can pretty reasonably expect to delve dungeons as a group) and character identity reasons. The game is communicating that the thing the Witness does is help people by standing near them and singing - I think it's reasonable to expect that those things will get to happen fairly often. 

 

The other mechanical frustration I have here is that the fiction of this ability, standing near someone and being helpful because of your relevant expertise, is already represented in the game with the ability to help people. Can the Witness both sing and help at the same time (potentially granting an additional extra die)? Seems pretty strong!

 

One thing I'm trying to factor into my understanding is that this ability gets less powerful dice-wise as the game goes on and folks get more and more access to more and more skills. At that point, you can start throwing around bonus resistances, which stack quite nicely. 

 

Observer: When the Witness witnesses another delver hit one of their beats, they get to bestow a boon, of power commensurate to the tier of beat (minor, major, zenith). And if the Witness took fallout in the pursuit of that beat, they get to bestow an additional boon. The boons range from refreshing D6 stress to removing a fallout, to gaining a skill or domain permanently.

 

My first instinct is that I'm fairly negative on the metagame-y nature of this ability, but I'm willing to chalk that up to my general frustration with the class - I can imagine being less critical of it if I were more excited about the fiction. 

 

Instead, my real worry is once again about the power of the ability. Imagining a party of four with one Witness, and everyone chooses two minor beats, and the GM ensures that everyone hits at least one minor beat, you're looking at 3D6 worth of healing, equivalent to 3 D6 resources. The Crawler gets a D6 resource whenever it rolls a 10 to a risky delve or discern, something which will happen somewhere between 1% and 2.8% of risky delve or discern rolls. the Crawler's ability is an outlier for how unimpactful it is; the Heretic's is a better comparison, providing a service with identical resource value (clearing a minor fallout) or even a more expensive one (downgrading a major fallout, which costs D8). You also have a little more control about when it happens, but it's only once per session, and there is a (small) consequence to trying it on a delve. By contrast, the Witness is more subject to the whims of fate, but can choose from up to three options to select the most relevant one. And this, to be clear, is the floor of the ability - the boons for major beats include full fallout healing in any resistance, for example. And this is one of two abilities of the Witness - the Heretic's healing ability is their only core ability at all.

 

My concern is not that the Witness's power level renders the game "too easy" or etc - I'm not particularly concerned with hashing out whether there's a "correct" amount of healing to bestow. My concern is mostly that it seems to me like the Witness will outshine most other support characters, and maybe just simply most characters. The ability to bestow mastery and increase their own damage dice means that they'd have a pretty easy time with most skill challenges.

 

At this point, I think the mechanical identity of the Witness is already troublesome. Even if the minor abilities are great, I think the core would need serious reworking before I brought it to my own table.

Minor Advances

Arcane Art: grants the occult domain, the ability to cast one of the spells detailed later in this book, and the option to forgo the spell's material component cost by taking D4 echo stress. That option is a nice bonus, but isn't huge - the text gives characters with the occult domain the option to take D6 supplies stress to have the components. The spells are all interesting and fun, but not particularly widely useful, which I think is a pretty good spot to be in for a minor ability. The Blinding Hex is a pretty sweet pickup, and if you want even more healing you can pick up Abeyance of Blood. Some of the entries here don't lend themselves particularly well to the format. Notably, the Hangman's Game, without material components, becomes pretty trivial to keep up. This one is peculiar because there is also a stress cost (D6 blood), but it seems linked to the material cost (swallow a nail) - it seems unlikely to me that the D4 echo stress should suffice, but on the other hand I kind of love the idea of being an obsessive weirdo who knows this one funny spell to keep from dying. Anyway, there are really not that many spells to choose from, and they're all of fairly specific utility, so this choice feels a little slim. 

 

Thematically, this strikes me as chomping the Junk Mage's flavor. Actually, this strikes me as a generic advance - why couldn't anybody take this? The name of the ability insists that this is about working magic into music/art/etc, but that aspect is not really in the flavor or the effect at all.

 

Bardic Trivia: the generic domain advance. The Witness has access to every domain via this list, a unique honor.

 

Broad Spectrum Theologist: grants the religion domain. Once per session, the Witness can beseech the gods and pray for something to happen. They get mastery to all their attempts to pursue the prayed-for outcome. Major fallout ends the effect (and using the ability opens you up to a fairly nasty major fallout representing divine displeasure). On the one hand, the fallout is pretty rough (everything becomes risky until you make an appropriate sacrifice). On the other hand, mastery for everything (well, everything pertaining to the thing you most want to happen) is pretty, uh, good. Similar to Arcane Art, there's nothing Witness-y about this ability, really. It seems exactly like the kind of thing that anyone in the Heart could do.

 

Daguerrotypist: grants the technology domain and access to a special newfangled prototype - a camera. If the Witness records someone in the moment of their triumph/etc as they complete a beat,  they get to choose an additional option for the Observer core ability (up to a maximum of three if the Witness also suffered fallout!). I think this is cute. I like the camera, and I'm interested in having a cameraperson on the adventuring team. I have my problems with the effect, but that's just part of my complaint about the core abilities.

Give it a Go: the generic skill advance. The Witness's list of options excludes sneak, which I am amused by, imagining that it's because they're too noisy. 

Live to Tell the Tale: grants the evade skill, and gives the Witness a sort of "negative aggro" - enemies must always chase other player characters, if any are available, before they'll chase the Witness. This has the whiff of zany bard antics to it, and I think I'd say this is another antagonistic ability, and those aren't often to my taste. It also seems kind of nonsensical to me - the Witness seems like the perfect target and they're always singing annoying songs. Wouldn't everyone chase them first? That seems like it could be a fun support ability to me.

Lucky Fighter: grants +2 blood protection, and allows you to, once per session, deflect a max value attack from an adversary (and hit another adversary nearby). I think this is out of place here. This ability is essentially an extra full point of protection in every resistance until you use it up for the session, whereupon you get to inflict a significant amount of damage at no cost or risk to yourself. The GM can use this up pretty quickly by throwing someone with a brutal tag attack but this is still simply the best damage reduction ability in the game, and it's attached to a normal +2 resistance advance.

Have a Good Reckon: grants the discern skill, and the ability to "pick up" a skill you don't normally have, once per session. The skill lasts for one situation, and you take additional stress from using it. This is still pretty incredible - you get the discern skill forever and then the most important skill for the situation. Compare the Snail Pilgrim, who needed a whole major and minor advance combo to get a flexible domain, and it wasn't even that flexible. The increased stress is relevant, but this is still nearly twice as effective of a minor advance. I'm trying to not be too annoying about it, but this is another example of the way the class undersells the whole endeavor. The flavor text is literally "How hard can it be?" and then gives the Witness some of the most relevant mechanical text in the game.

Memento Vivere: grants the mend skill, and once per session, the Witness can turn a resource into a little trinket memento of the journey. Once per situation, a character with a memento can roll with mastery if the memento's domain is relevant. Then, roll the resource die - on a 1, it's used up (the memento breaks or the memory becomes "soured"). I like the flavor, particularly the memory souring, I think that's kind of melancholy in a way I like to imagine. It still seems pretty strongly tuned - the ability to turn a resource into temporary mastery is pretty useful. The Crawler's alchemy could turn resources into bottled skills that do last for a whole situation (or longer, if you spend bigger resources), it's true, but even for a D6 memento you get about four rolls before you're at coinflip odds of rolling a 1, and around eight rolls for the 75% chance. Of course, you could use it once and immediately get the 1, and that would be a bummer, and the utility is limited to the domain, so it won't be applicable every situation or every session. Broadly I like it, but I am wary of how many ways the Witness has to give dice around.

Onward, to Glory!: grants the delve skill, and the first time each situation the Witness would make a difficult check (risky/dangerous), instead they make it as normal. Whew, this also seems quite strong! Obviating difficulty is basically only a major advance level ability in the core book - granted, this is only one difficult check per situation, but that still seems quite potent to me. There's something fun or funny about the Witness as blessedly lucky, but I think that's better expressed through protection / reduction of consequences, rather than increased likelihood of success.

Rhythm of Perpetuity: +2 Echo protection, and if the Witness ever rolls multiple dice and they all show the same number, they may elect to reroll the entire pool. This is kind of a funny ability in that it's more likely to happen when you're rolling fewer dice - 10/100 for 2D10.  And of course some of those doubles you wouldn't want to reroll, so really we're talking about the doubles up through 6, maybe 7. Slightly more common than rolling a 1 on a D20. The ability doesn't specify what kind of dice pool though - this seems great for brutal weapons, since the die size is usually smaller, making doubles more common. I don't have much of a problem with the mechanics, but I am a little wary that the Witness gets two pretty real abilities on the protection advances.

Word Travels Fast: grants the kill skill. In addition, if you have talked a big game about killing someone, you might get mastery against them when you finally meet (dependent on how vulnerable they are to intimidation). This ability doesn't do much for me. I can see the hint of some connective tissue to bard-ly behavior - this is about the power of the spoken word, I suppose. But it neither feels like a good fit nor am I compelled by the theme. it doesn't help that the ability seems quite marginal to me.

Yet Another Good Luck Charm: the generic protection advance. The Witness's list excludes mind protection, which is the most common protection to miss in the core book.

So far, my worries about the muddled identity are unassuaged. Very little in the minor abilities makes much of a case for the Witness that I'm interested in. It seems to me as though very few of the abilities even try to engage in the concept at all! The camera minor ability is the only one that seems at all necessarily or even contingently connected to the concept. I'll grant the memento making one too. If we take out the three generic advances, that's two of ten abilities that seem to me to be saying something about Witnessing. But the problems aren't just thematic! Most of the minor abilities seem to me to be tuned quite high, despite their genericism. 

Major Abilities

A Cast of Dozens: The Witness can choose a stock character from a list of six, and once per session can declare that that character (or a thematically identical character) appears. Upgrades allow you to assume the mantle of one of the stock characters and be treated appropriately to your station, add a second stock character to your repertoire, and changes circumstances so that the character's entrance onto the scene is maximally disruptive (the other word used by the text is "destructive").

 

I think this is pretty fun! For the first time in this class, I would say that the mechanical effect here could be punched up a bit. The fictional positioning piece is always great - having a problem solving a puzzle? Call in your nerd friend! Or a guy who fulfills the same basic position in the universe as your nerd friend anyway. Big monster? Bam, here's a wandering knight! So far so good. But the text doesn't create much of an expectation for what this ability can accomplish - can they grant an extra die for expertise (like a hireling)? Can they solve problems on their own? Should they be able to soak up some stress on your behalf before leaving? A GM can improvise, but the text doesn't help any negotiation here. A player might activate the ability hoping for a major aid in solving a problem, and their GM might take it as an opportunity for a gag. Not impossible to navigate by any means, but I think some text to help adjudicate and get everyone on the same page would be warranted.

 

The upgrades are in a similar space. Getting to assume an identity is certainly useful, but it will be on the player to discover the use, and up to the GM to honor it. I promise I will stop repeating myself but just to be clear, I do not think this is bad design, though my taste is to provide a little more scaffolding in a game like Heart. For example, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to get access to a skill relevant to your role while inhabiting it. Getting access to a second stock character is great, and actually makes me think that the ability could probably start at two, and unlock a third via this minor upgrade. This would wrinkle my idea for inhabiting roles to grant skills - getting access to three skills is probably a little too efficient. Only getting one at a time helps, but you'd probably also need to start litigating how often you can switch, and ugh, that sounds like a drag.

The final minor, turning the arrival of the stock character into a weapon of sorts, is pretty funny, although I imagine you can guess what my objection will be. In particular, I think you could pretty easily have given it some weapon tags or listed some example stress dice or numbers the ability could inflict. And while I think it's cute, and generally like the inclusion, I have a design concern which this ability illustrates. This ability asserts that, if you have the ability, the Witness's conjuring of their stock character will be destructive and/or disruptive. This implies that the standard, un-upgraded ability can not result in the same kind of destruction and disruption. What the minor ability is really doing is carving out a subset of gamespace that the original ability contained within itself already and saying "actually, to access this gamespace, you need to pick up a second ability to upgrade the original one!" It's a design move that I often like, but I think it needs a strong sell, and having mechanical abstractions to help players think of the ability in the game's own terms can help set expectations about what the abilities do for the character.

 

Overwhelm Person: cast this spell with compel+occult. On a success, the person you're conversing with immediately regards the Witness as a friend for the situation. When the spell wears off, the target takes a small amount of stress that steps up each time you cast the spell. Failure to cast the spell, the text notes, always makes the target aware of your intent. The minor upgrades let you cast the spell on  anyone in any circumstance (including violent combat) by taking D4 mind stress; let you cast a version of the spell that renders them helpless with laughter, or cast a version of the spell to give the target a command; they will attempt the command for ten seconds.

The flavor text tries to deny it, but this ability is D&D's charm person.  I have mixed feelings about charm person - I like that it points towards the social mode of the game, and it's always fun to get some time to talk to NPCs. It's a little close to being a solve-social-problems button for my tastes, and it is of course an extraordinarily evil thing to do to someone, but I think on the whole it's an interesting tool to have in the toolbox. It's not the tool I would put in the toolbox - it really is nearly identical to charm person, with the additional "upside" of slowly erasing the target's brain, and I would have liked something a little more particular to Heart at the very least. 

The upgrade to cast the spell on anyone nearby, and instantly, is pretty goofy, and seems like the kind of thing that gives the Witness a button to press during any interpersonal problem. The upgrade that turns the spell into command is similarly not my cup of tea -  I just don't think shutting down GM characters' agency is the way to go, particularly not on demand with no established cap - if the upgrades can't be combined, then the requirement to have a conversation is helpful, but I think not quite enough. The final upgrade turns the spell into hideous laughter, which is kind of in a cursed middle ground between utterly debilitating and kind of useless. The extent of the text here is that the target is "wracked with manic bouts of laughter." So, like - can they do anything?  All in all, I think that the attempt to translate D&D spells into Heart is awkward and not super interesting to me.

Romanticist: This is the bard-y sex-having ability; when the Witness, with this ability, has sex with an NPC, the Witness refreshes D8 stress from any combination of resistances. They can also declare, once per session, that there is someone nearby with a high potential of mutual attraction. It also opens up a unique fallout for the partners to return later to cause problems. The upgrades grant you the domain and a resource from your intimate partners, turn the intimacy into a way to get relevant secrets for upcoming adventures, and grant the cursed domain and grants a special bonus for achieving intimacy with sapient entities/creatures beyond mortal comprehension, as well as a special fallout. 

Ok, at the top: Mechanically, there are some interesting things happening here. I don't know that the particular terminology / idea has been done before where you get to remove a total from across all your resistances - mostly, Heart's system is pretty specific, that healing happens in one resistance at a time. The upgrade that nets you a domain and a resource from the activation of the ability is pretty strong! I do think that, based on the particulars of the ability, I maybe would have stayed away from the resource-acquisition "incentive" provided here, and we'll get to the thematic angle momentarily. I also want to call out the "relevant secrets" ability for actually taking a shot on goal at making a fiction first ability that establishes some expectations. "The secret is always weirdly relevant to your ongoing journey" is a great descriptor that gets the Witness player and the GM on board! Just a little text can help make an ability work! It's not hard to do! Finally, upgrading the ability to go from a D8 stress clear to a full stress clear is maybe a little strong but I don't think it's remarkably strong, so it feels to me mostly like a reasonable reward for investing in the ability and seeking out a rarer use case.

The ability is about sex, which means that a lot of work is happening on the thematic/fictional axis. I think that sex is not out of place in Heart, with its focus on bodies, harm, and horror. The tone of Heart is maybe a little more irreverent than I would most strongly prefer, and in particular I think that tone negatively impacts this ability in its specific expression. It feels a little like lip service to say that theoretically I'm not opposed to sex in Heart. But I do think that this ability is a mistake, maybe top to bottom.

I know we're not doing Apocalypse World here but, like, it just feels so meaningless to me to have an ability that equates to "have sex, get healing." Yes, you also opt in to a "funny" fallout about oops I have an angry ex or maybe even oops I have a kid I didn't know about. But mostly this ability reads like it's here for the punchline. The sidebar on using safety tools even calls out that sure, anyone in the game could be having sex, but only the Witness will get "gain power" from fucking. The upgrades do nothing to improve the tone, or the sense that this is all just an extended joke. The upgrade for being intimate with "a sapient entity... that defies mortal comprehension" comes with a tacked-on echo fallout about getting an STI. I don't think sex has to be serious, but does it have to be this?

Spur to Greatness: once per situation, when the Witness helps another character to add a D10 to that character's pool, they do not need to have the relevant skill or domain. If the Witness does have a relevant skill or domain, their help adds 2D10 total, rather than only one. In addition, the Witness suffers only half stress from any consequences to that help roll. The minor upgrades turn failure into learning and a source of the skill or domain for the remainder of the situation; grant +1 mind protection to allies within arm's reach and with the Witness's attention; bestow a D6 refresh if the action the Witness helped with turned out to be a success.

My first instinct is that the Witness does not need more ways to pass dice to other players. But I think a once per situation bonus to helping doesn't seem unreasonable. This one in particular has made me wonder "why is the Witness better able to help than anybody else? What power are they drawing upon to grant this extra die sometimes?" Here, the lack of fictional grounding makes the ability read as being kind of fake, an invention for game design purposes.

I like the gist of the minor upgrade that grants the relevant skill or domain on a failed help, although the details are tricky. For one thing, depending on how long the situation lasts, and how many dice the Witness rolls, failure potentially rewards a lot more bonus dice than the original roll could have granted. Also, can you pick up knacks this way? Domains are probably much more valuable to grab than skills for a situation, since each situation probably will retain the same domain for each roll. Getting a mastery die to every roll you make, after failing the first one, and you only took half stress... It's powerful, and it's a little more dice math-y and complicated than I'd want it to be. But the core of the idea is cute. Probably it could just grant the die to one or two rolls. The upgrade that grants mind protection seems to me to be very fiddly and annoying to adjudicate, and I think the ability should probably be scrapped and reworked.

Troubadour: passively, people will gather around the Witness to hear stories. But also, grants a spell like ability; when the Witness performs in a landmark, roll mend+occult. On a success, each listener removes a minor fallout or downgrades a major fallout to minor. The upgrades give access to a kill spell for attacking people with music, unlock a targeted performance spell option that reduces the target's difficulty for as long as the Witness is playing, and acquire a special resource representing the growing exploits of your legend, which scales in size based on the Witness's latest exploits.

The effect of this spell is nearly a strict upgrade to the Heretic's core ability, since it can hit fallout of any resistance. It might not be as simple as I'm making it out to be; the Witness's ability here requires a roll, and neither the skill or domain is part of the Witness's core, so it does cost you a little bit to get this to the 3D10 dice pool. Also, unlike the Heretic's ability, the ability seems to specify that the performance only works in a landmark, so you can't do any emergency healing while on a delve. Both of those are relevant enough drawbacks that I can understand the design thought here. There is one small upgrade to the Witness's ability, by comparison - the Heretic's ability specifies player characters, and the Witness's ability does not. My assumption is that if hireling rules had existed when the core book was written, the Heretic's ability would have included them; I don't interpret this as an intentional healing bonus specially given to the Witness.

I still think it is a little too close to drinking the Heretic's milkshake for my comfort. I also need some flavor here. How does a musical performance cure someone's echo or fortune fallout?  I think it probably shouldn't cure echo. It would be kind of cute if it fixed supplies and fortune fallout though, by working mostly/entirely via the social angle of it all. What if it wasn't magic, just good music?

The weaponized upgrade is unclear to me - the trigger for the weapon spell is "when you perform, roll kill+occult instead..." - is this an alternative version of the landmark-only performance? Can you not kill people with music on a delve? It's not a very good weapon either (only D6, spread, loud). I'm unclear what the design thought is about what this upgrade is intended to accomplish, or what it's meant to be adding to the Witness's arsenal.

The upgrade to turn the performance into a crowd work comedy routine, and thereby negate one crowd member's difficulty (risky and dangerous both become standard!) is odd to me. Fun if you can contrive your adversary to come to your concert and then your friends beat 'em up. I think the power level is appropriate to the specificity of the utility, but I think it's maybe a little too specific in use for me to get excited about. The final ability, which turns word of mouth into a resource is pretty cool. I like the idea of splitting up grand stories into little components of the tale (the process for splitting large resource dice into smaller dice insists that it only works for things that make sense). I wish the ability didn't go for the deflationary maneuver - D12 resources are for the biggest adventures of all, but the example for the other end of the scale, D4s, is "coming back from the toilet." Like, come on.

Obviously I have not been dishing out much praise here; mostly, I think these abilities are pretty bad. I would say that the majority of major abilities just don't do very much mechanically, in contrast to the core abilities and minor abilities. The result is a little funny - it does make sense, I suppose, for the Witness to avoid trying to complete their calling journey and so stick to mostly minor beats. There has been basically no attempt at defining the Witness as anything other than the D&D trope'd bard. I would go so far as to say that I think the design here has a powerful insecurity about it. It abandons nearly all of the specificity and interest of the core classes in what seems like a desperate bid to give the D&D tradgamer a familiar reference point to latch onto. I would like to be more evenhanded about this, but I hate it! Let's wrap it up.

Zenith Abilities

A Grand Tragedy: Die while mid performance - you combust into a memetic virus, which compels the infected to act out a theatrical version of your life, and then themselves ignite, spreading the virus further. Uncontained, it will spread to Spire and become a new artistic movement.

I do like a memetic virus - why isn't anything about artistic movements and memetic viruses in the earlier abilities? I think this is pretty good thematically, but the text is pretty vague about any kind of effect that you can depend on from activating the ability. For example, are people nearby more likely to suffer infection? Are player characters? I think it's too bad to not give the player any assurances about what will happen if they choose the character death option. It also doesn't read as particularly tragic to me, compared to what the rest of the classes get up to.

Swansong: Play a song so beautiful that it capture the heart of anything, sapient or otherwise. It will follow you as long as you continue to play. When you're finished playing, it will kill you; the choice is yours whether you stop just in time for everyone else to escape, or wander off into the dark, to play forevermore.

I also like a big dramatic self-sacrifice option. This one I think does a better job at communicating what's at stake / what the ability can accomplish. I still don't love it - where does the incredibly beautiful song come from? And it feels still kind of "game-y" that using this ability always is a death sentence.

I'd also note that we're two zeniths in to thinking about the Witness's "performance" and neither of them have referenced the Witness's role as record keeper or photographer. Your companions get a passing mention in Grand Tragedy, and you can keep them safe with Swansong. It's not feeling like a very core part of their identity, here at the end.

Time Gentleman Please: Create a combo dining establishment / performance space. Future adventurers can visit it once per game of Heart (not session, game) and get a full heal. You're functionally immortal within the premises, so why would you ever leave...?

I like the final sentence, complicating the little slice of heaven you made for yourself. I'm not crazy about dinner theater being the ultimate reward, but the recurring location is cute, and the ability earns extra points for me for referencing "orcish chronobarbarians from dark futures." Hell yeah I want to meet an orcish chronobarbarian. 

Pretty interesting that none of the zeniths here have an immediate effect expressed in game mechanics. Only Swansong seems to do anything in the moment, and it's all left up to the world of the fiction to hold it. That's fine! I'm mostly a fan of the zeniths, which I think hit some resonant tropes but also are fun in their own right. Being the wandering minstrel with an Angel in tow, or an earthquake, or operating a weird bar, or becoming a memetic virus - all of those are pretty sweet endings! They do seem mostly out of alignment with the idea of the Witness as a stenographer to the soon-to-be-legendary. At this point of the class, that angle seems a little tacked on - it's in one of two core abilities, and then the camera minor advance, but it isn't in much of anything else in the class. Strange! Oh well!

That takes us to the end of the Winess, and the conclusion of this little design study. Standing on this side of it, I think I'd say that my biggest takeaways on the Heart design that works for me are 1. the design needs a compelling vision and coherent identity, and, in my opinion, that requires a gesture towards a grounding in the fiction of the world. 2. The mechanics of the ability don't need to be too rigorously balanced, but it's helpful if they reinforce the thematic work and don't outshine (or drastically undershine) core classes. 3. the calling / class divide is maybe not impossible to breach, but it does seem like it has had some implications for the classes in W&M. Mostly in the zenith abilities, and that is a pretty minor aspect of the design, I think, all things considered. But I think it can have an adverse effect on the presentation of the class's concept & core deal.

I've enjoyed doing these so much, and I think it's only fair to turn the boring machine on myself, so I'll be back next time to do a deep dive of this nature on the Xanthous Zealot, the class I wrote for the first issue of the Heartsong fanzine!