Dev's Notes: Hex Education 1

Dev's Notes: Hex Education Part One

Hey! I've decided to resume my old practice of posting weekly little blogs to tell anyone who's interested about all the kinds of stuff that's going to be in the next big content patch, which is tentatively been titled Hex Education.
Why is it called that specifically? Well, the last big patch was called The Snake Agenda for what should be fairly obvious reasons for anyone who played through it. In this case, Hex Ed owes its name to the new feature that I'll be talking about this week. That is to say, a brand new party member!

Unlike the recruits you can find scattered around the map, this one is a new core party member. She does not leave the party. She does not have to be rehired. And she's going to have all of her own unique party dialogue/rest events just like Ria, Jameson and Trish do. Her name is Kattelina and the name of her class is Witch.
The following description is somewhat of a minor spoiler, so if you care about such things I'd advise against reading further down.

If you've played through a bit of the pre-existing demo, you might recognise her. Her joining the party is not the first time you'll encounter Kattelina! As a disgraced witch, Kattelina is a Magic/Weapon user and she focusses primarily on two new special class mechanics: Familiars and Hex.
You may have noticed certain 'Familiar' equipment scattered around the game in pre-existing builds, mostly obtained from beating secret bosses. Up to this point, they have had no use! But Kattelina can equip them and make use of them in battle. So with that in mind, let's take a look at her starting skills.

Probably her most important Weapon skill is Silver Bell, one of those rare skills that can be used both in and out of battle. Silver Bell is an Instant technique that calls up whatever Familiar Kattelina has equipped, manifesting it in the battle beside her. This will not only change her in-battle sprite, it'll have a drastic effect on several of her other skills.
For example, the other Weapon skill Brass Bell is highly Familiar-dependant and cannot be used if Kattelina hasn't manifested a Familiar. Use Brass Bell to unleash your Familiar's 'ultimate move', something that the Familiar would have had to have spent 100 TP to use back when it was an enemy. If Kattelina has the Ooze Familiar equipped, ringing her Brass Bell will cause it to use Slumbering Beast. If she has the Drake Familiar, the Brass Bell instead summons forth a formidable Dragonbreath.
Her last Weapon skill, Bodyblock, is a testament to Kattelina's own cruel and cowardly nature. Using this forces your current Familiar to take a hit for you, negating the next instance of damage. But once having done so, that Familiar is de-manifested and cannot be resummoned for the rest of the fight, forcing Kattelina to use her Silver Bell to swap out to another Familiar in your inventory. It's not a very heroic skill but oh well! None of you are heroes anyway.

That just leaves her two Magic skills, Hex Charge and Word of Command. To those who've met Kattelina before, these mechanics might be familiar. When Kattelina uses Hex Charge, she backs away from the battle and lets her Familiar fight in her stead while she gets ready to charge up a wicked curse. That is to say, Hex Charge gives Kattelina a stack of the cumulative status Hex and, if she has a Familiar manifested, that Familiar performs a random technique that it used back when it was an enemy!
But what does Hex itself do? Well, it's a stacking status, like Fatal or Ill. You can have as many stacks of it as you want, though you'll only ever get those stacks from Hex Charge or an enemy using a skill like Mimic Venom on you. At the end of every round, Kattelina gains a small amount of HP and MP for every Hex stack she has. But Hex also matters for her other Magic skill, the one selected in that screenshot above.
Word of Command is pretty simple. Kattelina commands the target to take an action and the target must obey. She can't outright take control of an enemy (yet) but she can tell them to close their eyes (inflicting Blind) or to shut up (inflicting Silence) or, if she has enough Hex, to simply die. But it all depends on how much Hex stacks she has. The more stacks, the stronger and more versatile Word of Command becomes. When you use Word with zero Hex, the only possible option to select is Taunt, forcing the target to focus on Kattelina and Kattelina alone. Use Word with a whole bunch of Hex stacks and you'll find that you can do all kinds of things to your poor target, inflicting a range of Targeted, Silence, Blind, Rage, Poison, Blight or Fatal status effects.

Something you might also have noticed from those above screenshots is that our new Witch friend has a passive status effect like Ria and Jameson do. This is Witch Hunt and it's a passive that Kattelina would prefer to do without. It makes all enemies much more likely to target Kattelina than anyone else. Fortunately, Kattelina is the kind of person who finds joy in people being mad at her so such persecution also lets her regenerate 1% of her max HP every turn. That's not a lot but if you can combine it with a bunch of Hex stacks...

As you may have guessed from that passive and a few of these skills, Kattelina is a tank. She fills a similar role in the party as Jameson does. Though where Jameson focusses on protecting party members, damage resistance and counter-attacking, Kattelina prefers to tank through constant HP regen, inflicting an array of debilitating debuffs and leaning on her Familiars to provide modularity and versatility.
Thank you for playing!