White Wolf Publishing

I decided to start a less regeneration focused thread to discuss this. With its time limit, i feel like gauru form needs some degree of power buff. I want to find the right balance though and not go overboard and give them the same combat monster edge over all other supernaturals that the owod Garou had.

1) OWoD stat adjustments. Basically add 1 to the listed strength and stamina bonuses in all forms but hishu.

2) Savage Might from Armory Reloaded applied to combat. 9 again on strength rolls in Dalu and Urshul forms. 8 again in Gauru.

3) Regeneration enhancement. In Gauru form lethal damage heals just like bashing. Damage is removed one at a time from right to left one turn at a time. Essence can be spent to take out additional individual hits of lethal (the healing t hat would have happened also happening) OR to heal (primal urge) additional hits of bashing.

Thoughts? Can all of these stack without it going super overboard given the time limit on gauru? Should i drop the additional stat adjustments?

For balamcing purposes, i am giving vampires the hack that lets them count bullets, blades, and arrows as bashing (the adbantage of not being threatened by organ harm or bleeding out), and they only take wound penalties from aggravated sources.

Tack bulletproofing onto the point of Armor you get, I guess.

Also, what does Primal Form get if 3 is in place?

I'd go with 2 as well. Mostly because my personal opinion is you really ought to be at least a little scared of Gauru if not out-right terrified. And if you're rolling 8 again suddenly your chance of triggering Death Rage gets significantly higher.

Hmmm, I'd actually suggest a different approach. Focus on the sheer terror of being up against such a beast even more than the actual damage it does.

Due to a combination of shock, pain, terror and Lunacy every point of damage done by a Gauru gives a -1 to all actions and Defence for a turn. A reflexive Resolve roll decreases the penalty by 1 per Success. This does not stack, use the worst penalty.

What I like about this is that it encourages a bit of proper wolf-style harassment fighting. One member of the pack goes Gauru and terrifies the target out it's mind, the rest go in for the kill saving their Gauru time to take over.



I'd also give Gauru Aggravated damage.

The problem with Gifts (and this is frankly still true from WtA) is that their utility is extremely variable. On top of this, their thematics aren't very strong. Some Gifts are easily on par with other supernatural powers, and some aren't. Some Gifts are really cool for the WOD idea of werewolves and some kinda feel tacked on.

Gifts are also on the expensive side, while not being on the higher end of the power scale. Contracts cost less XP, have Clauses, and are about the same power level. Disciplines cost slightly more (in-splat is the same, out of splat is higher for vamps) but don't have Renown to deal with, there's a more limited number of Disciplines to buy, and they're a bit more powerful. Spells.... are damn difficult to compare.

Renown is a big kicker here. Renown caps you from higher level Gifts, and it doesn't add to Gifts consistently. A vampire that invests in Dominate gets better at Dominate. A werewolf that wants to get good at the Gifts of Dominance needs to invest in 4/5 of the Renown traits.

On top of this, Uratha don't get enough inherent advantages to make up for this (if that's even something that should be compared in that sense, which I'm not sold on). They are, just comparing innate powers, one of the most ferocious in combat. Nobody else gets the offensive stuff they get. But above average equipment, and easier to access/more potent supernatural powers overwhelm that really quickly.

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All that said, I agree that it would be nice if they could come up with a different model of powers for Werewolf. Mage and Geist both have unique approaches, and Changeling and Promethean variants on the Discipline model are interesting enough to make them not feel inadequate.

I know WW loves the Discipline model as a basis, but it could be interesting to do something else.

But you kind of sum up the problem there KeepItSimple. It takes an ally way, thermal goggles and a silenced handgun to make the gift useful. Now clever thinking and cunning can make some of the owrth gifts good to, but so many of them cost so much and cant even be used most of the time.

Rage Armor for a werewolf gives 1 armor per TWO success's (so even 5 success's gives only 2 armor) and then it only lasts like one turn per success, and takes a turn to activate... Already its seeming far more limited than it needs to be. And then against silver, the werewolves greatest weakness... it is completely ignored! Oh and this is a rank 4 power.

Then theres the one that lets you shift instantly into the shadow... provided your standing next to a Loci.... Its actually good if you can get a portable loci fetish, otherwise its useless. This is rank 4 (with a rank 5 varient).

The list goes on. Some gifts are good, some are ok, almost none are worth the exp.

Another problem with Gharou is its once per scene rule. A player is forced to answer a difficult question at all times "Do I use it now or save it for later?" In games where scenes might be short "you eanter a room new scene, you leave the room new scene" its not a big deal, but in games where scenes are long "your at the old school yard showdown, scene ends when you've escaped." or "Infilrate the base and steal the plans, scene ends when you get to extraction" the one use limit becomes horrible.

I'd let werewolves be able to spend essence a turn per PU level while still each essence spent in this way only regenerating a single Lethal.

Then you have the All Good Gifts revision from the Chronicler's Guide: each gift costs 7 or 8 xp, they dont have levels and you can buy from any list. Starting Blood Talons begining with Savage Rending anyone? Or Irraka with Skin Stealing?

When playing as one of the Urathra i never seem to have any problem kicking the shit out of vamps and changlings and whatnot. I really don't see the problem with their lethality. Can the OP provide some examples of the problem?

You may be on to something there. Many things in the WoD can be ran down and torn appart with tooth and claw. But when a baddie is too tough I use the Wily E Cyote method first. Then apply tooth and claw as needed.

I like #2 but I'd tweak it a bit for balance. The other items would definitely conflict with some Gifts and cause serious overlap for players to exploit.

Suggestions:
9 again in Gauru?
8 again in Gauru under Death Rage?

I go with 9 again , I used it in my campaign and changed the game completely , I like Rage to be unstable and insecure and reroll 9 is better for this role rather than reroll 8 . I mean with reroll 8 and the boost of Gauru is almost sure you will have quite good exceptional successful attacks and death rage checks ratio .

I also remove the 1/1 armor and make Gauru ignore bashing damage and add 1 to stamina as well (+3 +1 +3) because I didn't want to have the same stamina with urshul .

I think I will make Gauru roll stamina+primal urge to resist lethal damage , soak like . I don't know ...

1) 1 issue here : it is called Primal Form , whatever change you may do it should not overcome the effects of this gift , make changes to both forms . 2)I would recoment +3 for bite +2 for claw , +4 in Primal for for bite , +2 claw as well .

3)This is good idea . Or resolve . Or even of sum of resolve +stamina+composure +Primal urge , mmm ... too much Iknow....

4)Savage Might and regeneration ara good hacks for Gauru .

5)Nyaaah, the -2 penalty is enough to ruin the session allredy hehehe .

I really think the majority of the Gift problem can be solved just be using the hack from the Chronicler's Guide. Things are cheaper, they cost a flat amount each.... Seems to work a lot better.

Just give Gauru 9-again Strength.

One of the key elements to the tone of the setting is the instability of your most powerful form. Your character should almost (read: almost) be afraid to use it. That nagging fear of what might happen if she loses control, like she did last time, should be something that constantly hounds the character, made all the worse by the power and potential relief it brings. This inherent conflict of interest is what gives Gauru form its flavor.

Mechanically, however, things have to work differently.
It can't be so powerful that it renders your other four forms completely obsolete in combat, but it can't be restricted in such a way that it's not an attractive option.

This sets up a balancing act between player expectations, story themes, and actualized mechanics.

The Frenzy of Gauru form gives it the story element and ensures that your other forms (especially Dalu and Urshul) are viable and attractive in combat. It does, however, limit the player by not giving them much control over a very thematic part of their character's core concept (namely being a werewolf).

Worse, possibly, is that many characters will develop in directions that Gauru form simply doesn't benefit from (read: firearms and fighting styles). Many a savvy player I've spoken to have complained that Gauru form just wasn't perceived as attractive enough at higher tiers of play for what they have in mind. This is a thematic breakdown because you have players who simply don't care about their most iconic form and will actively avoid it for mechanical reasons and not character reasons.

The X rounds in Gauru form per scene thing was used to alleviate some of this by providing the player with a certain amount of time they could play around in this monstrous form. In doing so, however, I think they underestimated how much it disincentivizes a player mechanically.

It doesn't take much to notice that Urshul is only modestly behind Gauru in terms of pure offensive potential, immediately bringing into question the validity of the short time you can spend in Gauru. In this light Gauru form isn't a big, bad monster wolf so much as a slightly meaner mini-rage mechanic. Nice, but thematically underwhelming. I should note that I don't agree with this because the extra health and ability to ignore wound penalties I feel does justify this, but I can whole heartedly see why a player would think otherwise and believe that a minor tweak could offset this without breaking the game.

Giving it the 9-again rule on all strength rolls will have a dramatic impact on all of this.
-Part of it is purely psychological; you can write out the statistics curve for the 9-again rule and it's seriously
not that huge, but to a player it's like game-candy. Gauru form just feels more powerful when you see that 9-again note on your character's combat sheet.
-At character creation the 9-again rule will not be significant enough to unbalance the game, but as the character grows in power their Gauru form will scale up better. This will help keep Gauru form a viable and attractive option to most combat-oriented characters (because admittedly it's still just not attractive to a gun-nut).
-It also makes Death Rage that much more threatening, reinforcing the horror theme associated with Gauru.

If you want more I would suggest reading through War Against the Pure and consider using any number of the adjustments that come with Luna's blessing. There's a whole gamut of ways to bolster your character's gauru form listed from stat boosts (+1 strength, etc) to triggers (gain 1 essence upon going into Gauru form, etc.) to special and slightly overpowered effects (Rahu can use fighting styles in Gauru form, Ithaeur can use non-reflexive Gifts in Gauru, etc.). These are all intended to be signs of Luna's favor, but they can easily just be rolled into your auspice's normal bonuses.

There was also one thing that I saw that I was tempted to include, but it affects more than just Gauru form. Specifically giving Gauru, Urshul, and Urhan the higher of Wits or Dexterity when determining Defense.

I was aiming at a solution that gave the largest feasible change to the widest amount of issues surrounding the problem using the smallest adjustment possible. Your group could feel that werewolves need to be combat monsters with 9-again and 8-again strength rolls, higher natural weapon bonuses, free time in gauru, immunity to bashing damage, auto-aggravated damage, or any number of things. That's up to you and your group.

I find this particular solution the most attractive because it is simple and it addresses all the issues at hand without breaking anything or requiring extra reading.

Among its problems are that it warrants a new harmony sin for using Gauru form against other werewolves, requres a replacement for Savage Rending in the Father Wolf gift list, and makes aggravated damage far too easy to get a hold of.

It's a simple solution that ends up breaking a lot of things. Which is why I wouldn't suggest it.