House Rules?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

One canon-friendly way to incorporate a Dreams angel into a primarily corporeal campaign is to have him 1) serve in one of Blandine's many Tethers on Earth (or have just finished such service) or 2) serve a powerful Word-bound of Dreams with a Corporeally-focused Word (the Angel of Degrees or Doctorates might serve Yves/Jean, but the Angel of Graduation surely serves Blandine) or 3) be in service to another Superior who might grant more corporeally relevant abilities (including another Choir attunement).

Good ideas. Maybe, instead of redefining Blandine entirely (rendering my newly-purchased Marches and Superiors 3 books less useful), it would be easier to make some Word-bound angel(s) of Dreams who grant Servitor attunements of particular use in the corporeal realm. (Does that mean more than one character, or more than one attunement for a single character to grant? I don't recall ever seeing a Word-bound angel below the Archangel level in canon that had more than one Servitor Attunement to grant. Maybe I should make up a house rule on that while I'm at it!)

Originally Posted by Acolyte

The Fire Choir Attunements are not unhelpful. They allow instant glance-detection of various types of cruel behavior. They are also not an obligation--the obligation comes from the Word dissonance condition (which all non-Creation angels have), which specifies that every few days they must punish a cruel person.

Yeah, the difference between the attunement and the dissonance condition makes sense (especially if you gain any Choir attunement as a Servitor of another Archangel), but it still seems like an attunement that comes at a price (potentially) every time it's activated for Servitors of Fire. That said, those are some really good points on the actual usefulness of the attunements that hadn't occurred to me or any of my players.

Originally Posted by Acolyte

I would make this Babbling Prophecy a (probably cheap) Servitor Attunement of Fire that her more prophetic-minded Servitors can buy.

Well, conversation has convinced me that I should leave Fire's attunements as-is. Actually, I notice that Gabriel has no additional distinctions (besides Chamberlain, for Sol), so I think I'm going to call this prophetic inclination a lower-level distinction: "Messenger of Fire."

Gabriel imposes this distinction as both a reward and a punishment, depending on her mood and general level of sanity. I imagine most of her Messengers are her own Servitors, though perhaps she has granted it to one of Yves's Servitors upon special request, and maybe to one of Dominic's as a bizarre sort of joke.

Also, I would like to see angels being forced to babble crazy prophecies out loud more often, so I'm going to say that the Will roll to resist speaking it is made at a penalty equal to combined dissonance and celestial Discord.

This should be fun!

[Acolyte]

I don't think it's heretical to say that a powerful Word-Bound (especially an old one) could have multiple Rites/Servitor Attunements, even without a canonical reference. Possibly you could start a new thread discussing some potential patrons for a corporeally-focused Dreams angel--I think that would really be useful for the community at large.

Even in my defense of the Fire attunements, it IS true that the Fire dissonance condition requires that the PCs take actions not directly related to the story line, rather than just refrain from a specific action. However I find this to be less easy to work into the background than, for example, the Wind dissonance conditions (not that these are insurmountable either, just a bit trickier).

I think that turning prophetic babbling into a sideline distinction (aka set apart from the normal hierarchy) is a great plan! Good idea. However, I will say that canonically, Celestial Discord and dissonance cuts someone off from the Symphony (it interferes with resonance and your Essence generation), and so it doesn't make sense that it would penalize your ability to resist Symphonic prophecy. Rather, I would penalize the Will roll by the angel's Celestial Forces, since those represent how tuned into the Symphony you are.