ratpoison keyboard shortcut conflicts

I recently installed ratpoison as my first real foray into tiling window managers. The first problem I ran into is that the Ctrl-t keybinding used for ratpoison commands conflicts with those of other software, such as the new tab command in Mozilla Firefox (which is also Ctrl-t), or activating the menu in Debian's aptitude. In fact, it seems that even shortcuts with no apparent conflict are also affected. For instance, the Page Up/Down keys no longer scrolls, and Backspace can't bring me to the previous page in Firefox. I saw a sample .ratpoisonrc that changes the Ctrl-t key to "less" but what key is that on the keyboard?? Also, why do some other keys stop working (i.e. like Page Up Backspace, etc.)? Thanks.