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[Saur Ops Specialist]

That author also wrote material for W20 Changing Breeds. The reveal didn't happen until about Changing Ways was out.



The material in the breed book swerves into places that get weird, especially with the Rokea being saddled with a need to mate when on land, so that's why I opt not to use it. The basic gist of that was there before him, regrettably, but it was one line in the 2e PG entry....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

That's still a matter of (sunglasses on) calibration than something inherently special about beastfolk. I can see a neomah needing an example if only told "beastfolk", but not if you run through the parameters of what that entails - all the traits of a human, has some extra traits from another animal, etc.



It also doesn't immediately paint you as suspicious to the Realm, because a setting where Lunars are leaning heavily on beastfolk is probably a setting where the Realm rounds up and kills beastfolk regularly where it has the reach and means. That can make...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

It's a problem that stretches back to 1e but whatever....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Though, due to the breedbook author being WW's answer to the creator of Ren and Stimpy, I feel the need to walk Rokea back significantly from contemporary sources....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

The only way I'd accept that as transpiring is if you didn't tell the Maker of Flesh that you had commissioned to make them beastfolk, and they went about indulging... other sensibilities. Beastfolk aren't special. The Lunar Chosen-Blooded a la 1e who could shift between human, beast, and full-on Deadly Beastman Transformation? Those are special, and also capable of far, far more than a mortal hero with some mutations. It's like the difference between the MHA quirks that make their holders godlike vs. the ones with quirks that give them odd faces....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

And I could see the classification of beastfolk getting divvied up into grades between "mistaken for Lunar DBT by the uninitiated" to "strange eyes", but the bottom line is that there's nothing about mutations that would or should make this process all that complicated or difficult. They're still mortal, they still suffer from infections and bleed out, they're still born to die in endless strife. Treating them as anything but any other mortal is a mistake, even if something in the new Lunar book tried to present it otherwise....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Vampire, actually, via Jyhad/VTES, but then I quickly leapt into Werewolf. The Rokea and Mokole were big draws.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Most Garou are bad with vehicles unless they have a very specific reason not to be, so being an automotive or aeronautical mechanic would probably help. An industrial mechanic would be useful for monkeywrenching operations, where said kin would probably find both of the Gifts in the OP helpful....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

If they didn't have those mutations they wouldn't meaningfully be beastfolk. Making something as beastfolk would require mutations. And besides, it's not like being human would logically entitle them to special treatment where the neomah are concerned, any more so than any other type of mutant. They have a few tiny benefits, not God-Blood, a spiritual gift, or Exaltation. This is yet another reason why I loathe this Lunar-beastman proximity error connection, and wish that 3e would have just axed it....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Some of them might have at some point, but the Weaver probably pays more attention to grander and more elaborate results. Tool use alone is probably only a weak correlate, but it's up in the air, as at the time Werewolf was originally written, the prevailing paradigm, or at least as far as common bias understood it, was to eschew ascribing any sort of tool use, social awareness, etc. to anything that wasn't human. So, the setting glides by the issue of chimps making spears to skewer monkeys, or birds tossing burning branches into brush to drive out prey.



Weaver-spirits...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

The first word on them for the WoD was in Rage Across Russia, which presented them as being Garou and Mages.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Old sources for SotGB tend to run into a lot of early installment weirdness with their stats, to the effect of being rather underwhelming. Just make sure that they have physical stats that are impressive even by the standards of a fully pumped-up Crinos.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

A Phoenix rises from the ashes, again and again!...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

If you're looking for the kind of tactical positioning and minutiae of combat that D&D often has, there's also WoD: Combat to sift through. This may possibly include WW's Street Fighter RPG, which was built with similar rules, and by default, elides the to-hit roll to make combat go faster. But WoD: Combat is easily had, while copies of the long since OOP latter title are typically scalped for more money than you would want to pay for even an intriguing campaign premise. But, if by chance you find it for around the cover price or less, it might be worth looking into, even if you might not...