Playing Psychomortis // A Limerent's Guide to Tactics 001

A Limerent's Guide to Tactics // Team Compositions

    In my myriad of playtests for this game, I have found that players (and GM's!) alike struggle in a great many ways when it comes to playing the game efficiently. Despite being a tabletop roleplaying game, Psychomortis is an experience that demands a lot from its participants, and one of those things it demands is skill and mastery.

   It is also a very team-based game that requires a lot of work and communication between people. A single powerful character can only carry a party so far, and by around the Citrinitas stage of advancement, this tactic stops working almost entirely.
    In my mission to aide those who are struggling, I plan to be writing a small (maybe) series (maybe) of short (maybe) guides on how to create teams, build a character, construct adaptive tactics, and the various ways in which you can use your tools to your advantage.
 
    Nothing in these guides is absolutely NECESSARY to play this game efficiently. Consider these to be stepping stones to developing your own deeper understanding of the game. Consider these to be COMPANION PIECES, written with the assumption that you have access to the rulebook when reading.
 
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//

    The Job of Your Class //

    If you find yourself wondering where to even start, lucky you, because today's topic is going to touch on the first step of playing this game "efficiently". (of course, the definition of "efficient" play is subjective in this context, and some might argue that playing in the manner implied here is actually detrimental to your experience. There is a legitimacy to that statement that I will not elaborate on.)
 
    This game comes with 8 Classes. While your character's Class isn't the foundation of their personality nor' their being as a person, it matters in this conversation specifically because a character's class forms the groundwork for their tactical and interaction based gameplay.
    These classes are as follows;
  1. The Courser    /| Satellite, Control
  2. The Bravierre  /| Anchor, Utility
  3. The Outrider   /| Control, Utility
  4. The Agent      /| Satellite, Intel
  5. The Surveyor   /| Support, Intel
  6. The Confessor  /| Support, Utility
  7. The Troubadour /| Control, Support
  8. The Templar    /| Anchor, Support
    They are organized somewhat strangely, however they each fill a specific role. Their details are elaborated in the book, but what matters here is exactly what they can do for their team.
     Written alongside them is a title for their role.
Satellite characters are meant to orbit around their party in the battle-
field, creating space for their team by moving aggressively against their enemy.
Anchor characters serve as the central weight point for their team, being the safest character to stay near for all of their allies. Where they go, their team goes.
Control characters fulfill a similar job to their Satellite brethren, but instead of creating space through lethality, they create space through distance and power at range.
Support characters fulfill a similar job to Anchors, but instead of creating safety through their presence, they create safety by providing aide to their allies directly.
Utility characters don't fulfill anything in specific, but rather provide various, miscellaneous bonuses and aide to those around them through different mechanics or specialized systems.
 
Why do these gameplay jobs matter? Don't be stupid on purpose, please.

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//

    It's About Composition //

    An ideal team size for this game is 4-5 people. This means that on average, you can have at least one person on a team fulfilling each of the available jobs. This is good for rounding out a team and making sure it has few weaknesses, but it also means that if a specific player is incompetent or has a bad build, the entire team suffers and there's nobody to pick up their slack easily.
 
    A good team composition usually has at least 3 things.
  1. The aggressive guy
  2. The defensive guy
  3. The supportive guy
    You can find any number of potential class combinations to fulfill these roles as your party desires, but this is the bare minimum requirement to succeed at higher levels of play. You might recognize a pattern there, in the "DPS / Tank / Support" triad. That isn't a coincidence, as I have failed as a designer to escape the clutches of that horrible triangle of doom.
    However, there is something crucial and debilitating in this lineup // it lacks any amount of backbone. It is a fundamentally incomplete party, and it will fail at one or potentially many things if not built to the absolute most precise of specifications and most stringent of guidelines.
 
    A team like this would break down when put under any real pressure. The aggressive guy cannot handle more intense fights alone, and will need to rely on the defensive guy to help him take out targets. The defensive guy will then be needed to play more mobile and aggressively, which they struggle at // a job they fundamentally do not do as effectively as other options. Because the defensive guy needs to play more aggressively, the supportive guy will need to be more aggressive as well or risk being caught out of position and dying // which means fewer AP will be spent on actually helping their team and more AP will be spent on movement, survival and self preservation. Self preservation that will inevitably be snuffed out as they are targeted and slain, due to a lack of;
  • Numbers
  • Information
  • Spacial control
    These three things are crucial when going up against a "real" encounter or fight in Psychomortis. Of course, a GM should always adapt their encounters to the table and players, so the Numbers concern is lesser than the others. But A single character cannot fulfill so many duties as to cover all of these holes together with only 3 people. A lack of information will lead to ambushes and traps, which will swiftly lead to a TPK, and a lack of spacial control means that the party will become victim to the manipulations of the control entities of the opposing forces, with no way to counter or defend themselves.
 
    The more characters you have, the more room you have to be more specific with your jobs. A good team composition with an ideal number of players would look something like this;
  1. The aggressive guy
  2. The defensive guy
  3. The controlling guy
  4. The intel guy
  5. The supportive guy
    Of course, many classes can fulfill a variety of these roles themselves. For example, a team that fits this well is;
  1. Courser
  2. Bravierre
  3. Troubadour
  4. Agent
  5. Confessor
    But your options are fluid. Lets say your team has a Surveyor on it, which means that he can pull double duty as both the intel guy AND the control or support character. This means an extremely highly optimized team might look something like this;
  1. Courser (Satellite, Control)
  2. Templar (Anchor, Support)
  3. Outrider (Control, Utility)
  4. Agent (Satellite, Intel)
  5. Surveyor (Intel, Support)
    These different classes all demand different kinds of resources. A team full of caster characters will inevitably suffer when trying to supply them with the appropriate amounts of Adrenaline resources, Batteries, and even Spell Nodes. There can only be so much loot in a dungeon indeed. Whereas Outriders and Agents might require ammunition for their specialized weapons, which alone might be rare and expensive. A team with 4 of them would suffer intense droughts.
    These droughts would not be felt by a team where there's a single or only two characters that demand Adrenaline items, a team where one character gets to hog all of the armor and defensive resources, etc.
    Nothing can ever be perfect, and you will always suffer a drought // as is intended by the game, but variety can help prevent an exacerbation of these problems.

    It is important to understand that the tools you have at your disposal in the forms of these classes allow for a lot of flexibility in what you can accomplish, depending on your chosen character builds. Always build for what your team needs, and what will help you fulfill your gameplay duties as best as possible.
 
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//

    Recap & TL;DR //

     Your team composition matters a lot in this game, and although it's not a game that's ABOUT that composition, it is an important step to the journey for success. As a general set of rules;
  1. Coordinate and communicate with your party on where to direct your character builds to fulfill different jobs and duties.
  2. Remember that usually a well-built character of a particular class can fulfill multiple jobs at once. Use that to pick up some slack from failing teammates or fill in roles that are lacking due to lower player counts.
  3. Always pick what you want to play FIRST. Because each class can usually fulfill multiple roles at the same time, having multiple of the same class isn't always a bad thing.
  4. RELY ON YOUR FRIENDS AND ALLIES TO HELP YOURSELF SURVIVE. They are IMPORTANT, and you should never be afraid to reach out for aide.
 
 
 
 To gain access to the current version of the rulebook, it is free to download on the game's Discord server;
https://discord.gg/cyqYQt7Cgr

Alternatively, contact me on Bluesky;
@calicovisions.bsky.social
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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