Old Character Creation rulings:

For posterity, here are what were going to be my house rules for some 
things in the beta that weren't quite clear.  They were all subsequently 
either obviated by the new version of chapter 5, or clarified on the 
mailing list:

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There's some question about what the techniques that come with 
Portmanteaus are.  Here's my house ruling:  In general, the Fortes and 
Techniques that are listed under a Portmanteau are things that the 
Portmanteau 'turns into' when you need it.  So if you have 'Dread 
Pirate#', you can use it *either* as (say) a 'Brawling' Forte *or* as an 
unchained 'Sea Legs!' technique, but not both.

The exception to this rule is that sometimes there are Fencing chained 
techniques that come with a Portmanteau (or at least, techniques whose 
names look like fenching chained techniques).  If this were a real 
campaign, I would declare that these count towards the chained techniques 
that you get free with Fencing ranks anyway.  (And, as such, you could 
swap them out for something you like better if you want.)  But since this 
is a beta-test, and the example character on page 201 clearly does not do 
this, I guess they'll just be free extra Techniques (though I'm unhappy 
about that).

If this were a regular campaign, I would tell everyone "Take exactly one 
Portmanteau".  Since this is a beta-test, it might actually be nice to see 
what would happen if one of you took two and someone else took none, to 
see if it really is as unbalancing as it looks like it would be.

[Portmanteaus are now gone entirely, and now everybody gets exactly one 
'swashbuckling forte'.  So my house rules were pretty close to the 
eventual rules!  Go me.]

Likewise, in a real campaign I would say, "Make sure you have Fencing", 
but for this beta-test, if someone wants to help out by seeing what 
happens without it, please do.

[This might actually still apply, though there's a rule we made up that 
Chad personally endorsed that we'll probably try.]

Taking a 'Poor' Forte:  There's nothing at all in the manual about this, 
so I'm going to extrapolate and say that it costs 1/2 as much as taking an 
Average Forte (or 1/4 as much as a 'Good').  Justification:  it still 
gives you damage slots (the same number as you get from 'Average' and a 
bit more than taking a 'Good'), it's a good source of Training Points, and 
it gives you more screen time.

[This was clarified:  'Poor' Fortes are Foibles.]