Is Hunter a lesser template

In the book Second Sight WoD introduces the idea of Lesser Templates which include psychics and hedge mages and I was wondering if being a hunter counts as a lesser template or a greater template? That is what happens to a hunter when a vampire attempts to turn him?

If it's a lesser template than, by the rules, he should lose his hunter specific abilities and instead gain the vampire template. If it's a greater template (such as werewolf) than he would be immune and thus couldn't be turned.

I can't find a logical reason why a hunter couldn't be turned into a vampire (or awaken as a mage or discover they are a werewolf) but I still feel like hunter is a greater template. Plus the hunter template includes all these specific features (such as an extra skill specialization) and it would seem weird that being turned into a vampire takes those abilities away.

Negflar2099:

In the book Second Sight WoD introduces the idea of Lesser Templates which include psychics and hedge mages and I was wondering if being a hunter counts as a lesser template or a greater template? That is what happens to a hunter when a vampire attempts to turn him?

If it's a lesser template than, by the rules, he should lose his hunter specific abilities and instead gain the vampire template. If it's a greater template (such as werewolf) than he would be immune and thus couldn't be turned.

I can't find a logical reason why a hunter couldn't be turned into a vampire (or awaken as a mage or discover they are a werewolf) but I still feel like hunter is a greater template. Plus the hunter template includes all these specific features (such as an extra skill specialization) and it would seem weird that being turned into a vampire takes those abilities away.

technically, he is a lesser templete.

but there has been a lot of debate on the matter and some people say that Hunters are not even a templete at all.

someone else can explain it better.

Hunters are not any kind of Template, lesser or greater. They count as simple humans (although they have some particular advantages over most humans). So, they can stack with any kind of lesser Template. For instance, the leader of Malleus Maleficarum is a ghoul.

Uxas:

Hunters are not any kind of Template, lesser or greater. They count as simple humans (although they have some particular advantages over most humans). So, they can stack with any kind of lesser Template. For instance, the leader of Malleus Maleficarum is a ghoul.

Yes, I was refering to the offical stance about them.
I also think that Lucifuges should count as a template.

I think to remember that some authors and developers said that we were too obsessed with the templates.
I think it has to do with the rule of not-stacking templates. IMO, if minor templates could stack by RAW, most of those discussions wouldn't exist.

It depends I guess on how you interpret hunter. Is becoming a hunter a real metaphysical shift from traditional mortal. Personally, the risking willpower and profession traits both annoy me slightly...
(I don't want to go into this here, it would derail the thread, please PM if you want to discuss this or start a thread)

What I mean is on one hand, those traits hunters get (the ability to risk willpower and their professions) are definetly mechanics wise from the traditional mortal traits. So it could possibly be considered a template.

On the other hand some people see hunter as core 1.5. Here that would mean that hunters basically just mortals with supernatural merits. So a hunter ghoul, would actually be just a ghoul...

Either answer works fine for different groups but it's not as clear cut as people think...

I thought minor templates were stackable though.  Immortals even pitches the idea of slasher blood bathers, and slashers are definately a minor template.  And there's no way you can tell me that tier 3 hunters aren't a minor template.  All the minor templates that I know of (sans Possessed) get all their 'magic' from merits specific to the template, as opposed to aspects or something like the Changing Breeds.  Yes, Valkyrie's agents are just poeple with tech, but even that's pretty supernatural, with lenses coated in fairy dust, and whatnot.

As for the core 1.5 arguement, I feel that its most often made by the people who skip over the 'theme' and 'mood' sections at the beginning of just about every book in the WoD.  Yes, mechanically you're still people, but thematically you're more.

I know at the end of the day this arguement really doesn't matter, but HtV is one of my favorite games ever, and its kinda gets to me when people just call it an update.

namelessIIIEsq:

I thought minor templates were stackable though.  Immortals even pitches the idea of slasher blood bathers, and slashers are definately a minor template.  And there's no way you can tell me that tier 3 hunters aren't a minor template.  All the minor templates that I know of (sans Possessed) get all their 'magic' from merits specific to the template, as opposed to aspects or something like the Changing Breeds.  Yes, Valkyrie's agents are just poeple with tech, but even that's pretty supernatural, with lenses coated in fairy dust, and whatnot.

Templates don't really stack at all unless there is a specific rule that circumvents it (IIRC there are a couple examples in Demon of exceptions).

Example: One cannot be a psychic and a ghoul by the RAW.

Hunter really blurs the line between template and mortal. I believe the official party line is that they are not a template and are therefore capable of assuming any template. The Vigil is treated as more of an aspect of who the person is. I would generally rule that they are no more of a template than Wolf-blooded (who are just people with a merit). They also get none of the automatic benefits of being supernatural (such as an immunity to Lunacy).

I was under the impression that you could stack minors, but maybe that's just ST discretion?  Any given book gives little more than a sidebar to the topic of templates and whatnot, so maybe we really are over thinking it.

My biggest gripe, template or not, is people arguing that Hunter isn't a game unto itself, but I suppose that's not what this thread's for.

In my mind only Lucifuge may be considered a template as said before oh and the can't remember the name but they have holy blessings and what not they were mentioned earlier I could see them as minor no stacking templates and I've been considering giving them a power trait  Infernal Blood or something for one and Faith/True Faith for the other, but anyway the others all are just  mortals and can stack with anything else though they might loose the ability to take merits I mean a valkiery member gone werewolf more than likely wont get a refresh on his witch hunter ammo

namelessIIIEsq:

I was under the impression that you could stack minors, but maybe that's just ST discretion?

Alright I'm sold.  I do have to agree with Dr K about the 'Fuge though, because Inferno introduces L'enfants Diabolique, which are 'metaphysically' exactly the same thing as the 'Fuge, just without the whole drive for redemption (or whatever drives your particular demonling).

This has already been debated to death.  It seems to me that the devs just dropped the ball on this, leaving it vague and contradictory.

QualitySteel:

This has already been debated to death.  It seems to me that the devs just dropped the ball on this, leaving it vague and contradictory.

QualitySteel:

leaving it vague and contradictory.

Chuck (the Hunter developer, the rest of us are freelance writers) standing up and saying "Hunter is not a template" is vague and contradictory?

Okay, that's me making an uncharitable reading of your words because you accused me of "dropping the ball". Because from my perspective, there's no ball to drop. Let me try to explain. For the longest time, "template" was just shorthand for "shit you get over and above the basic bluebook character", and that's still ingrained in the rules: witness the character creation chapter where it says "Apply Hunter Template", rather than "Apply Hunter Shit You Get Over and Above the Basic Bluebook Character". The former reads a lot more professionally than the latter, if nothing else.

The only baggage the term picked up from there was the idea that no, you can't stack templates. As in, you can only have one set of shit you get over and above the basic bluebook character. For the first five games, that made perfect sense, but thanks to Second Sight, Skinchangers, and some other books the term got overloaded. And like a student playing with C++ operator overloading, that's roughly when it went to shit. Because in the general sense, a template worked like it did before. But all of a sudden we want to do something a bit different, and because the term's been overloaded it doesn't work like we thought it would, because all of a sudden templates themselves have systems and interactions that players take far more seriously than we do as writers.

So let's be clear. Hunter's template is not a "template" for purposes of other systems that interact with templates. It's a bunch of extra rules over and above the basic bluebook character, but as with so much of the Hunter rules the template actually just expands on those basic human capacities—it's a direct expansion of what it means to be a bluebook character, rather than something over and above. Hence hunters can become main-line supernatural creatures, can become Ghouls or psychics (or vice versa), don't have any protection from Lunacy, et cetera. As long as players are willing to use a bit of common sense, it all holds together: treating the Lucifuge as already having a "minor template", for example.

But that's for the group to decide between itself by talking about what kind of game they want to play and what kind of characters they want that game to feature. Because not talking to your group to gauge their expectations is the only sure-fire way of Doing It Wrong (as they say on The Internet).