Werewolf 5th Edition information in Crimson Thaw

[werewolf43]

By the way is there any release date leak?

[Damian May]

By the way is there any release date leak?

No. I mean H5 is coming out first and we don't have a release date for that either last I checked.

[heinrich]

Wow. With that tiny amount of Rage regeneration how do the Garou PCs in your games even survive against jaggling Banes? It seems like a single short combat would potentially leave them without much in the way of resources. I mean it would be an interesting play experience but would certainly mean that a lot more Garou die during relatively minor Monkeywrenching or your average Umbral quest.

Well, spirit combat has it's own problems. But, spirits can't spend Rage, Gnosis or Willpower, so they are limited to one action. If they don't have the Armor Charm activated, they are down to soak damage with they Willpower score, solely. So, their high Essence, which is their Health too, they last relatively long, but against a pack, they are pretty weak - because they have just one action. As it should be.

Fights among garou often work like this: The non-combat-oriented characters spend no rage, for they want to use Gifts with Gnosis or they want to keep their rage. The combat-oriented characters spend the maximum amount of Rage they can, on offence mostly, but some defensive actions, for the enemy does the same. Then, the first initiative round handles all characters and after that, there are two to three rounds only the characters with extra actions do stuff (unless one of those character who doesn't have any extra action gets hit and needs to soak).
And since the characters are pretty combat oriented, their attacks have plenty successes, targets don't have actions to block/parry/dodge, therefore a lot of successes turn into dice for damage. Damage needs to be soaked and this can lead to non-combat characters being incapacitated without a means to do anything about it.
And, even if that doesn't happen, the players have a lot of time their characters can't act, because all the additional actions of the other characters need to be handled first.
It is just not a practicable game mechanic in my opinion.

Besides that, there is rarely combat after combat after combat, and a level up after 4 and a half encounters of an appropriate challenge rating, for that is d20-style gaming. So, for the way I would ST werewolf, there would be plenty of other things to do, besides combat, needing some time, therefore leading to regaining Rage by seeing the moon. Also, the occasional regain, do to botching a roll with at least a moderate relevance to the story. And, in most cases, my PCs are the ones doing the attack, so there is one Rage for the anticipation of combat. I would also grant that, if they stalk through enemy ridden ware house, for they might be attacked at any point, but not, if the combat is really a surprise, like being attacked by a banquet at a Shadow Lord sept.... well....

[werewolf43]

Some idea appeared. What if Ghost Council tribe is Croatan?

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Some idea appeared. What if Ghost Council tribe is Croatan?

Then the EoS would be punching through into the physical realm again, so probably not that.

[werewolf43]

Wasn't Kaine the Eater of Souls or some aspect of him? With all Gehenna war ans Sabat crusades maby he's coming once more so the Croatans return? Don't know. Just Ghost Council made me curious.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Wasn't Kaine the Eater of Souls or some aspect of him? With all Gehenna war ans Sabat crusades maby he's coming once more so the Croatans return? Don't know. Just Ghost Council made me curious.

Whomever or whatever the first vampire was, it was resonant with the EoS, not its direct manifestation.

[werewolf43]

All right. Is it mentioned somewhere in the books? Just curious.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

All right. Is it mentioned somewhere in the books? Just curious.

Apocalypse page 32 notes Caine as EoS, specifically as a suggestion rather than hard equivalence.

[werewolf43]

Thank You! So I guess my idea about Croatan isn't possible. So Ghost Council could be Uktena or something new,

[Lyrics Of War]

The theory is ghost council is uktena. My person thought is maybe it’s the remnants of the not fallen wendigo and the uktena merged. I only assume the wendigo due to their name being blacked out in the comic.

[Lyrics Of War]

Well, taking a look at the Celerity for V5, if Rage is kept as a peer of it, Garou could have the pants-shitting capacity to just blink through the air and appear in front of their foes. This, in addition to bullet time dodging, better chasing capacity, or comparable powers etc.

Honestly what I’m thinking will happen.

[Banu_Saulot]

Rage I see as working more as a Blood Surge than a discipline power, or letting you use full dice pools against multiple foes (or get a bonus for a single one, or get a bonus you use as you want, either singly or dividing through opponents). But I got no clue honestly, may there will be really different uses, either for damage, dice or speed (which in a combat without much importance to initiative order is mostly a penalty cutter for minor actions).

But I'm interested to see how they do this one.

[Baaldam]

Coyotes are as similar to wolves as jackals, while the Thylacine isn't even next to the Canidae. Yet jackals and thylacines are Garou tribes, but coyotes aren't.

Sure...

Indeed. If jackals get a tribe in the form of the Silent Striders and we can have Bone Gnawers & Glass Walkers playing hopscotch in the blurry lines between wolf and dog, it's only fair for the Nuwisha to be a Garou tribe. Never actually got to ST anything set in Australia, but dealt with this in some (very, very) old notes of mine by making dingoes and related species in nearby islands into an aboriginal garou tribe, with the thylacines as a Fera breed of their own that was strongly connected to the Bunyip tribe until their destruction by human and foreign Garou competition.

By the way it's in the text I thinking it is less that a tribe left and more that it is quieter among the Garou, which is different from what the Stargazers did.

Truth be told, sometimes i'm divided on the matter and half tempted to keep the Nuwisha as they are and make them and the "dingo Bunyip" into a set of "apocryphal tribes/breeds", along with some homebrew groups based on dholes, african wild dogs and maybe some other canines.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Nuwisha are a separate breed because development decisions wanted them to not have Rage and hence think in a way that was dramatically different from the wolves. Are you a warrior that's kind of a trickster? Ragabash. A trickster that wears a lot of hats to get things done? Nuwisha.

Perhaps the two ended up fused as a retcon in 5e, and the lack of the Garou mating with Garou prohibition is a result of it, as the Nuwisha didn't play like that. This could also play into Rage working very differently. That, however, is kind of a radical departure from the past, so I wouldn't find it too terribly likely, even given the first tenet of the litany getting axed.