Weather Sense vs Weather-wise

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
1

Here’s something I’m thinking about:
Weather Sense is a 2 point Die Trait that lets a player make Perception tests against a set of obstacle to dictate the weather. It’s on page 353.
On the other hand, I COULD just use Weather-wise to say that I know, for instance, that the clouds in the sky right now are exactly the sort that show up when the day will be mostly bright and sunny.

To get Weather Sense, I have to persuade the rest of my group to vote for it in the trait vote. (I’m not sure if I’m talking about the game I’m in right now, or hypothetically. For the former case, “the rest of my group” is just the GM.)
To get Weather-wise, I have to learn it via Beginner’s Luck. Maybe more reliable, since I can control it more directly, but I’ll likely have to, er, weather a lot of terrible thunderstorms before I get it.

Weather Sense offers an easy source of Perception tests and probably has lower obs, depending on how the GM calls things for Weather-wise.
Weather-wise can FoRK and be FoRKed and is more broadly applicable.
Having both would get all the benefits of both, but there would be a weird, uncomfortable thing where Weather-wise would do me no good whatsoever for the Perception rolls. (Unless I did a linked test? I have no idea what that would even look like. How would I use Weather-wise to set up for the Perception roll without just basically having it be for the same thing as the Perception roll: “I look at the weather and figure out what it is”?) Of course, it may be that the rest of my group (AKA the GM) would want me to learn Weather-wise before voting for the trait anyway.

Also, I should mention the Almanac skill, so here goes: There’s also the Almanac skill.

My question, for the sake of giving this topic some purpose beyond my own idle speculations, is which would you go for, if you had to pick one? This isn’t entirely academic - I’m thinking of going for this with my character one way or the other. Depending on how relevant and interesting it ends up being in the context of the game. So thoughts and suggestions are useful.

2

I love wises, so I would go with that. However, could you tell us about the setting? Traits earn artha, and in many ways tell a lot more about the character than skills do. The Almanac skill likewise opens up other avenues of use which may be interesting to pursue in certain settings.

-k

3

We’re pre-first session right now, so there’s not much to say yet, really!
It’s an archipelago in a shallow sea - extremely shallow, so that people can easily hike from island to island across the sandbars. My character lives in a fishing village on the coast of one island. He’s an ex-sailor. At present, the game is about him slaying a titan near his village so he can sell its brain and pay the king’s tax for the village. (Inconveniently, the villagers worship the titan.)

As for my character, the weather stuff could tie nicely into his interest in the stars, his terrible luck, and the fact that he’s an ex-sailor.

4

I would go for the weather wise, write belief about it, (maybe even an instinct), and play them along with the almanac to earn that trait vote.

5

As noted in my first post, either option is fine. My preference would be a -wise, but a trait can work excellently. My line of reasoning runs as follows:
Is your characters ability to predict the weather a special sense, or just something anyone can do. If it is something anyone can do, it is probably a wise.
Is the characters Weathersense the source, or somehow indicative, of the power that will defeat the Titan? If it IS that something special, it might very well be a trait.

Looking over your character, I think he looks pretty cool. I’m not sure what a ‘Titan’ entails in your setting, but you’ll have your work cut out for you! As someone who has run a fair number of 1on1 sessions in BW, I advice you lobby for helping and advantage dice wherever possible. BW is harsh on the lonesome.

Ken