Garou Gifts: Ranking, Thinking, Overthinking

[11twiggins]

11twiggins Love the thread, will you be doing something similar for Merits, Rites and Fetishes?

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!

Fetishes would be top of that list! But still have all level 3-6 Gifts, and maybe the BSD and weird regional Gifts, plus maybe the Fera Gifts...

[lbeaumanior]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!

Fetishes would be top of that list! But still have all level 3-6 Gifts, and maybe the BSD and weird regional Gifts, plus maybe the Fera Gifts...

It honest appreciation, the points you make are accurate and insightful. Some things I had never even considered (Hare's Leap is the main thing that got me rethinking, but there are others).

[11twiggins]

It honest appreciation, the points you make are accurate and insightful. Some things I had never even considered (Hare's Leap is the main thing that got me rethinking, but there are others).

Totally! My PC has a STR+Athletics of 11 in Lupus, so with Hare's Leap he would be able to leap 210 feet, assuming 10 successes on the STR+Athletics check, which is difficulty 3 after all! If you have a specialty, and 12 dice, and spend WP, you could get closer to 250 or 300 feet even.

Hell, if you made a Pack Tactic based on the whole pack doing a running leap together, and you had gifts to support it, you could leap even further...

[11twiggins]

RANK 2 STARGAZER GIFTS

Inner Light: A great QOL upgrade for Stargazers which makes entering and leaving the Umbra far easier. This would be a PERFECT Silent Strider Gift! A replacement for Axis Mundi; accessing and leaving the Umbra freely, while running even potentially (if you got enough sux to cross over immediately), is so important to smooth travel.

Obvious green simply because it lets you do so many things with stepping sideways which would be hard otherwise.

Hiding you have this might allow for some fun surprise escapes, even from other Garou.

Inner Strength: This Gift allows you to meditate and turn Rage into Willpower. Though this is very good, I would point out that Strength of Purpose lets you generate Willpower from nothing once per scene.

This Gift combines well with Primal Anger, of course. But it has dis-synergy with Channeling, which makes Rage a very valuable resource you can spend for bonus dice. The ability to refresh your mind with Willpower before regaining Rage from the moon or similar is handy. I like the Gift, it's a good QOL upgrade, but given that for an additional 4xp you can get a better version of the same Gift it's Amber. TBH I would consider replacing Inner Strength with Strength of Purpose, or the other way around.

Resist Temptation: Great flavour, niche effect. This power lets you use a Gnosis point and a Wits + Rituals roll to make yourself harder to tempt or manipulate with supernatural powers. As a fun bonus, mundane attempts also fail by default when the Gift is active.

Surface Attunement: Wow, the Silent Striders continue to get bad luck! This Gift makes the Stargazers better at the Striders' job than they are.

No cost, only a turn concentrating and an easy roll, and you can cross all natural obstacles it seems, including water, sand, mud etc. without leaving any traces or falling.

This one is still amber, but it's far better than Sebek's. Perhaps giving it to the Striders would be sensible. It's uncertain whether this Gift would let you run across lava, or liquid silver, or Wyrm corrupted waters, but it's at least implied by the power's text.

Wuxing: This is a weird one! It's extremely magical, with no Gnosis cost, simply a regular roll. This means you can realistically use it in combat; action to turn the water an aquatic bane is immersed in into wood or fire, Rage actions to attack other enemies and so on.

Keep in mind, as with Create Element, that a square foot is WAY bigger than you'd think. A duration of 1-5+ turns (Gnosis) is also handy; I'd say that a duration of 3 turns is typically all you need in WOD combat.

Applications which come to mind: turn water into a form of containment, turn someone's shield into water or fire so you can bypass it, turn a door or floor into water so you can bypass it, start a fire, create a safe path through a fire, disable a flame weapon, stop a rite reliant on a flame, possibly interfere with Balefire (uncertain), bypass a stone surface, turn a fire or layer of water into a stone barrier, mess with Elementals (uncertain).

Part of why I struggle with this Gift is that the image of creating a big block of wood in the middle of a pool of water, or a huge fire, feels like Minecraft hacks. It feels fake. I read this and go "nah, that's not true, Werewolves can't do that, you made that bit up" at the book.

[Heavy Arms]

That feels a bit generous to Inner Light. Since W20 allows personal mirrors to work (though you might hit a +1 diff penalty if your ST feels that's a bit cheesy), it's extremely simple for most Garou to carry around a reflective surface for hopping into the Umbra, and Pulse of the Invisible (which is, yes, a Rank 3 Gift) negates the need for reflective surfaces and does way more on top of it.

Inner Light feels like it would be Green if it was Rank 1, but at 2, you should easily have access to a dedicated object that's reflective, which reduces the number of circumstances where Inner Light is really going to matter; even if it means a +1 diff from your ST. Inner Light always felt like it only exists for Stargazers to eschew material objects (including dedicating something shiny and reflective to get into the Umbra anywhere instead of meditating in front of a "proper" surface) than it really adds much to play.

[11twiggins]

That feels a bit generous to Inner Light. Since W20 allows personal mirrors to work (though you might hit a +1 diff penalty if your ST feels that's a bit cheesy), it's extremely simple for most Garou to carry around a reflective surface for hopping into the Umbra, and Pulse of the Invisible (which is, yes, a Rank 3 Gift) negates the need for reflective surfaces and does way more on top of it.

Inner Light feels like it would be Green if it was Rank 1, but at 2, you should easily have access to a dedicated object that's reflective, which reduces the number of circumstances where Inner Light is really going to matter; even if it means a +1 diff from your ST. Inner Light always felt like it only exists for Stargazers to eschew material objects (including dedicating something shiny and reflective to get into the Umbra anywhere instead of meditating in front of a "proper" surface) than it really adds much to play.

See I was thinking of situations where having a reflective surface of any kind is hard to pull off, like Lupus and Hispo, and also that a total lack of need for reflections will help optimize an attempt to cross over in the middle of a scene/conflict.

As for Pulse of the Invisible, I checked the Gift and it didn't say anything about helping cross over, so I went "you misremembered twig" - your reply just jogged my memory. The rules specifically mention Pulse, separately, don't they. The advice I was going to write in the first place is "this is less good if you get access to Pulse of the Invisible", which 4/5 Stargazers won't.

But yeah I think it's easy to overlook how cumbersome pulling out and looking into a mirror is. It takes up a hand and also limits your ability to join hands with packmates to help them come with you. A high-Gnosis PC with Inner Light could be a very effective means of swiftly crossing over without giving any warning. After all, "he's pulled out a mirror" is a HUGE tell to most of the enemies Garou face.

[11twiggins]

RANK 2 ELDER BROTHER GIFTS

Coils of the Serpent*: I feel like Clan Lasombra are owed royalties.

You summon tendrils of fog, without cost or special condition, with a DEX+Occult roll, meaning this is best done in Lupus/Hispo funnily enough. They're 30 foot long and have your characteristics, so in Hispo they could have 8/7/8 potentially, and it would be 4/3/4 as a bare minimum.

This Gift has two major uses. The explained effect is to bind a target, or targets (with split dice pools or rage actions) with tendrils of fog. This uses DEX+Brawl. The target becomes constrained on a success, and on their turn they may roll Strength, not Str+Brawl, but Strength alone, diff 7 to break free. They need as many successes as there are tendrils to escape; I will assume that if you are bound by 3 tendrils and get 2 successes, you manage to break free of 2/3.

This alone is incredible, especially without a Gnosis cost; you can summon tendrils every single turn for your main action and attack with Rage actions.

The second use is to create the tendrils and use them... freeform. They're 30 foot long and have physical stats for a reason after all, and that reason to my taste is grabbing objects in your environment, lifting you up to a roof, holding you out of reach of foes, sweeping away Wyrm tainted materials, throwing stuff, holding doors closed, knocking over motorbikes, slamming open doors, smashing windows, and a million other uses. Directing the tendrils is an action, and it seems that it takes up your full action to get them to do one thing, but 1-5 or so tendrils utterly wrecking a piece of the environment in a scene could be incredibly useful. "Pick us all up and lift us up to the roof" would be fun for a pack as well.

Make sure your ST appreciates how long 30 feet is as well; keeping a BSD 30 feet away while you and your packmates pepper them with silver bullets from a rifle is great.

I would genuinely add a Gnosis cost to balance this; with a Gnosis cost you can go wild with the applications. Without it, you may find it does too much, hence the asterisk.

Fetish Fetch*: Too expensive... typically. Could be anything from Red to Green depending on context.

You set up a hiding spot by spending Gnosis. You summon your Fetish by spending Gnosis. You send it back by spending Gnosis. Simply remove the cost to dismiss your Fetish; it can return on its own if you dismiss it.

A fun application of this Gift is that size isn't referenced. A ship or car that's a Fetish will come to you, including in a small space. Being able to summon and banish your car is also hilarious, like a magical mount in an RPG. If you have a super useful Fetish which is too awkward to carry around with you, like a huge weapon or a big rifle or something evil looking or Wyrmish, or a car or motorbike or boat, or something so precious it can never leave a hole in a sacred ultra well guarded Caern, this Gift could be anything from Amber to Green. Generally speaking it will be Red. I'm going with Amber as that's what it will average out to, if you bother to buy it; you wouldn't buy it if you didn't have a Fetish worth using it with.

EDIT: This being compatible with Magpie's Swag, however, is a huge boon to a pack. You've found the sacred egg, you just need to escape unnoticed... summon your bag, put it inside, dismiss your bag. Spending 2 Gnosis to skip the "get the precious object out without it being stolen back, tracked or destroyed" step is pretty amazing! You could also summon a bag full of gear, explosives, weapons, Talens, silver, food and drink, sensitive data, a ransom, whatever you like!

Shadows at Dawn*: This Gift has solid utility and lets you delete a memory from a foe with a semi-reliable check. You only get one attempt, so using this Gift is inherently risky. You could trade secrets, test the waters for revealing a hidden bit of lore which has been kept secret... and that's it. The Gift is lore-specific. No revealing you love your packmate just before sunrise with this Gift to see how they react.

It's really annoying that this Gift has been so thoroughly niched. Furthermore unless the Gift's existence is 100% a secret, people may recognize it and guard against it. Even if someone is entirely ignorant, between receiving the secret and dawn coming they could write it down, tell another, make plans to go somewhere or do something which they might follow through on even forgetting the reason why... "huh, I searched up a specific Native American myth on my phone last night and can't remember why I did that" is catnip to many Garou, including most Theurges.

The main purpose of this Gift is being selfish, which also loses it points, or potentially hiding something that can't be revealed... in which case why are you risking it with a Gift that might fail? A Gift which helps you to do social PVP with the Theurge in your party, or mess with a neutral/allied spirit, is all well and good but if it's revealed it will make you wish you hadn't wasted 6xp on the "everyone hates me" power.

The * is because I don't think this Gift is irredeemably bad as a piece of lore, or as an NPC power! It's bad for a PC to invest in. It's too niched, not 100% reliable for how niche it is, and generally speaking is best used to mess with people who are in theory on the same side as you. Carrying on a longstanding tradition of not trusting the rest of the Garou Nation doesn't help your PC out; it's the very thing the Tribe needs to find a way to outgrow, little as members of the "Wyrmbringer" Tribes may deserve it in some cases.

If you're going to be consistently RPing with outsiders with mystic knowledge, from Arcanum to Hermetics, this becomes better.

Spirit of the Bird: Flight is amazing. There are very few places you can't reach with it, and a Crinos form flying around like a bird is simply terrifying. Leaps are all well and good, but relies upon moving from platform to platform. With flight you can simply navigate spaces freely.

The +1 difficulty to combat moves while this is turned on is annoying, but you can offset that with a low difficulty weapon, or with point blank shooting from just out of reach, or with Gifts like Razor Claws.

The Gnosis cost is very fair given you are flying. 20mph with hovering is pretty handy, though it's notably less than half the running speed of a wolf. Basically in the world of Garou and Fera this is clumsy, slow flight. Corax may make fun of you, especially if you think this Gift is going to let you catch them.

Against foes who aren't fleeing, kiting or similar, and don't have a means of outflying you, this is pretty great. Your capacity to carry others is also potentially noteworthy; I'd rule you can carry another if you can take their weight while walking, so Crinos could carry two Homids or so, with worse difficulty spikes and lower speed.

This is also a great remedy to falling, and lets you visit a lot of Umbral Realms which would otherwise be totally inaccessible. The potential for defense, offense and navigation means that this perk is so general it's wonderful.

Veil risk is only a tiny downside - you might not want to fly to a Pentex board meeting for an assault with this Gift... though if you're in Crinos, the Delirium might cover for you, depends on context.

One thing to keep in mind with this Gift is that both running (on all 4s in Crinos, in Hispo, in Lupus) and leaping can be faster than it; so try to mix up your movement to be as confusing and difficult to fight as possible. If you don't need to be in the air, stick to the ground. Surprise enemies. Lure them off cliffs. Go for an impossible leap, hope foes follow, and hover in the air. Fake a fall to your death and return for an ambush. Grapple someone, drag them a mile up and drop them.

It's also worth remembering that almost all spirits can fly by default, so this Gift is very useful for chasing spirits.

Spirit of the Fish: Spend one Gnosis, do a Stamina + Animal Ken, swim at Hispo run speed (very fast) and breathe underwater for 1 hour per success. Not restricted to a particular kind of water, either.

Underwater missions aren't going to be super common, but if you do need to swim or go underwater this will be great. Drowning is one of the few mundane ways you can reliably kill a Werewolf, assuming you submerge them in Homid form and keep them busy (transforming once submerged doesn't grant you extra time, and if you're forced to fight you have a matter of turns, not minutes).

This Gift is pretty perfect at what it does, and allows you to escape from many foes using water. If you use this proactively you could fight underwater where you have the advantage. Your Pack lacking this isn't ideal, nor is the Gnosis cost, but if you are able to drive the engagement and choose how it plays out this Gift is pretty great.

A solid Amber, but would be Green if you were playing in a setting filled with water (a city like Venice, a lake district, a region of small islands, a local Caern is underwater etc.).

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Are Coils and Bird worth buying out of list? I'd say yes; Coils is great on any concept with good Occult (my Ahroun would have a pool of 8 for Coils' activation, and if he had it I'd buy more Occult too, plus his Dex+Brawl is amazing of course), Bird is good on anyone with Gnosis to spend. Earning these Gifts would be the tricky part.

[Heavy Arms]

Shadows at Dawn was always something I thought was mostly for using on non-Garou targets; aka characters highly unlikely to be prepared for what any Gift's specifics are, not just this specific one Part of Older Brother's whole thing is willing to go to mystic players other Garou don't to learn occult secrets. It's the kind of thing you use on other supernaturals that aren't going to expect this sort of thing coming. IME red vs amber is highly dependent on if you're facing NPC antagonists stated up using their official rules, or approximated versions. If you're tricking a Namer out of some magical secrets you don't have to worry as much about it backfiring compared to a mage that has Time magic to go back and magically see what happened according to Mage rules.

[11twiggins]

I realized that Fetish Fetch could be used with a Magpie's Swag, and updated the entry!

As for using it on Mages/Thaumaturges/Sorcerers/Arcanum types... I can see that! Still a bit niche, but it's a good angle on the Gift.

[11twiggins]

RANK 2 YOUNGER BROTHER GIFTS

Cutting Wind: Spend a Willpower, roll a Dex + Occult with difficulty based on ranged weapon rules (which is fun), those hit by the winds lose 2 dice from their pools for 2 turns; there are definitely worse debuffs. The Gift also can throw people into obstacles or traffic etc. though how this plays out mechanically is anyone's guess. The wind lasts for a number of turns equal to your successes, but it's unclear if you can manipulate it after it is created. Like many YB Gifts this doesn't feel particularly playtested. The flavour text mentions that they can "direct it at will" but this could be referring to directing the wind when you make the initial attack.

Begrudgingly this is a Green. The ability to slap a whole pack with -2 dice to all checks for 2 turns, very reliably, is pretty great. I don't have to like it though!

It would have been neat to make this Gift an advancement of Call the Breeze, upgrading the power to add an immediate debuff.

Claws of Frozen Death: See Get of Fenris entry for Fangs of the North.

Salmon Swim:Replace this with Spirit of the Fish. Salmon Swim only works on natural freshwater bodies, and lets you swim as 'easily as a fish' (no idea whether this means you're as fast as a salmon, or a wolf running) and walk on water. Useless in pools, artificial lakes, sewers, seas and so on.

The Gift has the advantage of allowing you to leap like a salmon from freshwater body to freshwater body, which is neat, but I'd rather have Hare's Leap. It's only 5xp.

Speak With Wind Spirits*: Depending on execution this could be much stronger or weaker. I find the flavour a little weird since wind spirits would move around over a large area, but instead they are accurately specific to the area you're stood in. It'd make more sense if they, you know, followed the wind.

Being able to "automatically speak to wind spirits in the umbra" is a weird one. Can people not normally find and speak to wind spirits? Is this meant to refer to overcoming the need for spirit speech?

Being able to speak to Umbral spirits from the real world without a Gnosis cost, or a Gnosis roll, or a difficulty based on the Gauntlet... is odd. But still. The Gift is the Gift. And it could be very useful if the ST lets it be; it falls into this issue of whether wind spirits know or care about human murders, whether they can see through the Gauntlet (especially in thick areas).

Super strictly RAW a spirit could just go "yeah so I can't see through the gauntlet here, and I'm not really that interested in these 'humans' you speak of - but I know a fun rumour about some storm clouds down south!" This Gift seems to have been written for the spirits of a different setting. It would make a lot more sense if this Gift let you ask questions to wind spirits about events which took place upwind. But then the Gift wouldn't be useful.

Basically this Gift is a headache; it's meant to be a "ask the ST for a clue" power but the flavour gets so mangled it isn't really ideal.

If there were much chance of anyone ever using this Gift I'd care more for a deep dive; I get the impression that Elder Brother are more likely to be played, and more likely to actually reach rank 2 as a character. Perhaps there are really committed Younger Brother fans out there, but I've yet to meet anyone who is a HUGE FAN of YB, the way people are fans of EB, Get, GW, CoG etc. Depending on implementation this could be Red or Amber, or even potentially Green if these wind spirits are omniscient (despite their "short attention spans").

True Fear: See Ahroun entry.

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Hope I'm not coming off as actively biased against the YB - they just need better written Gifts that don't feel like afterthoughts!

This finishes level two off! Level 3 is where things will get a little trickier; 9 or 15 XP is a big enough investment that a Gift genuinely needs to shine to be worth purchasing at all. So some Gifts will likely be Red simply because they don't cut a cost of 9XP.

[11twiggins]

RANK 3 HOMID GIFTS

Calm the Savage Beast: Cancel a frenzy within 30 feet by spending a WP and passing a reasonably difficult roll. For a second WP you can end the frenzies of Vampires, Fera and so on.

This is a great power for Homids and CoG, and definitely worthwhile to prevent Veil breaches, save allies from harming their loved ones, dragging an NPC back to conversation and so on. It's hard to really give examples where it's useful; there's only one example. Someone within 9m is frenzying and you don't want them to be.

Cowing the Bullet: +2 soak dice to all weapons not made of silver is a neat upside. If it were passive it would be pretty great! But it costs a point of Gnosis, so it's just... eh.

If you want this Gift to be worth a level 3 spot, consider removing the activation requirement and making it entirely passive, or buffing the effect, such as adding your Crafts rating to all soak against weapons not made of silver, which would suit the flavour. The more objects fear your talents and authority over them the less they will dare harm you.

In a world where Jam Weapon exists this is even more silly.

Disquiet: Without a cost you can roll Manipulation + Empathy, difficulty of the target's Willpower, to make them become depressed. This can stop Rage being gained (great against Silver Claws, Gurahl defending something they care about, Metis using Primal Anger etc.) and also prevent people from focusing on extended actions. The RP impact is also decent. Making a security guard decide there's no point investigating noises is a fun example of the power in use, but it's hardly one that fills me with great excitement.

Ultimately against any real threat this Gift won't do much; they'll go from killing you to killing you while feeling bad. Your enemy needing to schedule a therapy session after cleaning you off their claws is cold comfort.

If you regularly face foes who recover Rage mid-scene or who engage in extended actions during a scene, this is alright. Generally speaking Red, though it would be Amber at lower levels.

Reshape Object: I...

A Homid Garou can make shelter out of a tree already. They have Apecraft's. A Homid Garou is a weapon themselves; they don't need to turn antlers into a sword or whatever. The transformation lasting for one scene per success is horrible, and needing 5+ successes for permanence feels really bad. In addition the Gnosis cost being 2 to make a weapon Aggravated for a scene is just bad.

What you can change shape is relatively limited (once living materials only), and if you want to make anything interesting the difficulty will be very high. A canoe, not a super complex object, is difficulty 8. Basically the Gift is proof against you trying to make it do something good, by default.

When I think Rank 3 Garou I think mighty powers, not "can turn a stick into a walking stick". If you want to fix this, remove the base Gnosis cost, and have making a weapon Aggravated cost one Gnosis. Then it has utility in arming Kinfolk; for 3 Gnosis you could give three Kinfolk warriors Aggravated damage polearms.

This Gift is red for the same reason as Prey Sense; it solves a mundane problem a regular human/wolf could solve using their skills alone, and the problem is one that a Werewolf should find to be a cakewalk.

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A shockingly bad turnout for the Homids! Calm the Savage Beast is worthwhile on anyone who cares about diplomacy or peace, so Metis/Lupus who aren't CoG might enjoy buying this out of list for 15xp... or they could rely on a homid packmate! It's pricy, but could be worth it if you desperately need it.

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RANK 3 METIS GIFTS

Chameleon: This is weirdly good, even for an invisibility power. Anyone trying to see you needs to pass a Perception roll (JUST Perception it seems!) difficulty of your Wits + Stealth, which could well be 8-10. Unless you're fighting enemies who can reliably detect your exact location using only sound or scent, or footprints in the snow or similar, this will give you -2 difficulty to most combat checks and give your enemies +2 difficulty to theirs most likely, if they can strike you at all.

Once you've attacked the difficulty to see you drops by 3, but that's still potentially a check enemies won't pass first time.

This is good in combat, and for sneaking around. It has a Gnosis cost, but as a Metis at Rank 3 you'll have 4+ points to spend most likely. If you stay still and have little scent, or even suppress your scent entirely with the Ragabash Gift Scent of Running Water, you'll be next to undetectable save through magic means.

Green on the assumption that you get a good Wits + Stealth pool, and 99% of your encounters aren't with Daredevil.

If you are worried, you can combine this Gift with active stealth, rather than walking around freely. It depends on your skillset and how concerned you are by enemies knowing you're around; even if they can locate you, it's hard to fight a transparent blur. Speaking of Blur, combine with Blur of the Milky Eye, which weirdly effects all Perception difficulties to locate you and not just the ones for sight RAW, for best results. It might feel like the Gifts would be a waste together, but if anything they combine very well.

Eyes of the Cat: At will your eyes can turn green (though I'd permit another cat colour, so long as it's obviously a Veil breach) and permit you to see perfectly in the dark.

My Metis is blind, so he won't bother with this one.

Still, this Gift is good! No roll, no cost, which is what level 3+ Gifts often need to be relevant. There are a lot of lower level Gifts which handle this topic somewhat, and you'll probably have a better outcome with Scent of Sight (10xp out of list, vs 9xp in-list for this).

Mental Speech: Either you need to know your target (presumably including acquaintances, but not someone you met in passing) or have something of theirs. Charisma + Empathy diff 8, spend a WP, 16KM range per success. This is a great power for communicating with allies and enemies alike.

Found a human body savaged by what looks like a Garou? Drop a message to the killer informing them that they are in your Sept without introducing themselves, and shall do so immediately. Even if they tell you to piss off, now you know for sure they're within a certain range, and you might know their voice or learn other details about them. You can play lost and found, harass a murderer and make them think they're going insane, give instructions to someone prone to religious hysteria or mental illness, coordinate a conspiracy without ever meeting in public, taunt or mislead a foe, arrange meetings, do secret back door diplomacy, apologize safely from afar, threaten someone... the social options are endless.

Pretending to be God to manipulate a bunch of humans to go after Pentex holdings sounds like an immoral yet fun gambit; I can imagine a PC getting in touch with a megapriest, telling them to fight against environmental destruction or suffer an eternity in hell, only for this priest to go "my master has promised Set shall protect me! begone angels!". This Gift combines well with good social abilities, and I love that. It is a bridge for you to use your whole sheet, not simply a power which goes "and then X happens". Those are cool, but getting a means of using your whole social repertoire in a fun way is amazing.

Anyways between this and Sense Wyrm anti-Metis sentiment becomes more and more self destructive for Septs which lean into it.

Shell: Roll WP, difficulty of your Rage. With a success you become immune to all mind-altering magics for the whole scene. You can't get successes on Empathy, Primal-Urge or Rage rolls, or spend Rage however.

A key vulnerability of a Garou is that they are very dangerous bodies who can be puppeteered by powers like Presence, Dominate, various Arts, Magick and a bunch of Gifts, along with Spirit Charms and Fomori Powers. If you were to go through the WoD, look for powers that can mess with a Garou and render them helpless, I imagine it would be about half of them. After all you don't want to be sobbing on the floor begging for forgiveness or killing your party members because that sexy stranger with the curves told you to.

The only powers I can see overcoming this Gift are Charms of Incarnae and other singularly powerful Spirits, Level 9-10 Disciplines, Unleashings, Level 6 Gifts etc. It does after all give a very clear cut and absolute protection. Immune means Immune.

Even if you ignore the semi-niche situation of defending yourself from effects which Shell protects against (True Fear, Howl of the Banshee, most deceptive Gifts etc.) it also stops you from winding up Frenzying, which is great! There are also a lot of locations in the Umbra which are inherently cognitotoxic. The despair of being forced to labour in The Scar, the terror of your ancestor's crimes in the Atrocity Realm, the overwhelming nostalgia of a Tribal Homeland... being the PC who can opt out of being fucked around with by the haunted house, or the Wyrm-tainted temple of Urges, is great.

Perhaps, arguably, this Gift even shields you from the subtle innate manipulations of Pure Breed... just a thought. Is it a mind-altering magic? Would the mystical or psychological barriers of Shell defend a Metis against the impulse to obey the pure blooded? Who knows! Interesting thought though.

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Any Ahroun would benefit from Shell; is it worth 15xp however? Maybe. Depends how severe your Rage issues are, and how good your Willpower is. Mental Speech could also be handy for any Pack, but again 15xp is pricey!

Chameleon is good on any Ragabash of course, given the combination with Blur working well.

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RANK 3 LUPUS GIFTS

Catfeet: Immunity to falls of 100 feet or less. Perfect balance even on the most slippery surfaces. Body slams and grappling at -2 difficulty. No cost, no activation, no roll.

This is good enough to get a Green given how good grapples are.

A creative use is to body slam someone into a 100 foot drop; you won't be hurt, they will. Up to 9 dice of bashing damage, or even 10 dice of lethal damage, could hit them, while you'll be just fine. Against a Garou enemy this isn't amazing, but it's good.

This is also good for frauds, playing dead, luring people down into a dangerous position to help you or rob you, and all sorts of fun hijinks. Simply stepping off a rooftop, landing next to your car and driving off is also fun in RP. The ability to ignore a bunch of things you'd otherwise have to roll for is great; it may save you having to split dicepools or spend rage, or risk rolling at all.

Monkey Tail: An automatic prehensile tail, without cost, in all tail-having forms is pretty neat. To the best of my knowledge this is Crinos, Hispo and Lupus.

Hang from the ceiling, hide an object behind your back, hold a light source, carry a cub, drag someone by the ankle, fight without having to worry about your footing, zipline down to places, hold the wheel steady while you fight the monsters in the back seat.

RP wise being able to grab something with a lengthy tail is pretty neat; partial transformation to activate this Gift might be your friend. Is it worth 15xp? No. But 10? Perhaps. If you have a means of hovering, or manipulating objects without your hands, this becomes pretty pointless. It's a nice upgrade to 3/5 of your forms, just nothing too special.

Sense the Unnatural: This is a budget combo of Sense Magic (very Tribe specific) and Scent of the True Form (relatively Auspice specific). That said, for 10xp you could get both of those out-of-list. This Gift costs 9xp in-list. Just a thought.

This picks up supernatural presences, and gives you kind of vague feedback. It can handle locations, targets of powers, sources of them, and supernatural beings. Its range isn't defined. It also has no cost. Ultimately it's very similar to Sense Magic, with the added aspect of having a budget Scent of the True Form. This is a good Gift, it's a handy catchall source of clues and information, it could solve any number of problems... and given that the two Gifts which outdo it when combined are hard to get off list, I think it's fair to say that they don't make this Gift bad. For most Lupus this Gift will be good.

Do I relish spending 9xp on it? Not particularly! But it still manages to be Green for its broad utility and its ability to provide you with clues you'd otherwise never get, like realizing an NPC is a well-hidden Vampire, or that a person is haunted by ghosts or being pranked by Fae etc.

Silence the Weaver: Howling, spending a point of Rage and rolling a Manipulation + Primal-Urge lets you destroy sensitive electronic instruments. The range of 20 yards per success is pretty great! The distinction between simple and complex electronic instruments is a little vague, but the general gist seems to be that smaller, more portable and less robust objects are sensitive.

To be quite honest there are too many Gifts that destroy machines. They've worn out their welcome. But let's compare.

Jam Technology has a Gnosis cost, but lets you choose a level of complexity to ruin. It can do anything from MRIs to knives. Gremlins, which will be in the next post, has no cost at all. Silence the Weaver is just... kinda meh? Given that a non-Ragabash non-Glass Walker Lupus won't have any other anti-tech options in-list, I'm giving this an amber, but it's hardly excellent. Taking out all the mobile phones in an area is helpful enough, often enough, that I don't mind it too much. Just keep in mind that howls draw attention!

Strength of Gaia: By spending a Rage point you can increase the bonus Strength of the Lupus form to 4. This makes Lupus a decently strong form to fight in...

For Homids and Metis.

For Lupus, you lack regeneration in Breed form, and you don't deal Aggravated damage either. If you want to make this Gift worthwhile, add Regeneration and Aggravated damage, along with full Garou soak, to the Lupus form. Weirdly this Gift is better on a Metis or Lupus.

Red on the basis of it being so pricey for what it does, having a Rage cost, and not being innate, along with its very weak and somewhat niche power. If you want to fight in Lupus, chances are you can fight in Lupus too.

If fighting in Lupus is a big advantage to you for some reason, say preserving the Veil while you "savage dog" someone with a disguise such as Guise of the Hound, great. But even then it's +3 Strength to help you fulfil some niche purpose. 9+Sux dice of Lethal is better than 6+Sux dice, of course it is, but a target you intend to kill in Lupus, swiftly and believably, is probably one you can handle without super strength.

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Two good options, which is ideal. The others will depend on what you like, how much XP you get.

[Heavy Arms]

Strength of Gaia jumps up to at least Amber if you get Guise of the Hound and Catfeet: Tackle, Jaw Lock, neutralize your target without breaking the Veil. Lethal for lupus instead of Agg isn't that bad. Lots of things can't soak lethal,and most things that can soak lethal in WtA can soak Agg too. Going for the immobilization makes the lack of regen and soak less important: if your target has to try to get free to attack you, and will take a lot of damage if they try.

This is also pretty nasty for Lupus from high Pure Breed Tribes (though drop the Guise of the Hound part) when in comes to challenges by combat. Petition for the fight to be in lupus (you're not trying to kill them after all!) and then do the Jaw Lock of doom on them.

[11twiggins]

True, but it's kind of annoying for the Gift's greatest potential to be in the hands of a non-Lupus! Veil-protecting murder with dog disguise is an angle I hadn't considered though, thanks!

[Heavy Arms]

Yeah, though I think it slots in with things like the pack tactics boosting Gifts where the issues are things outside of the Gift's design that drag it down.

In my games we house rule the damage and soak differences by Breed significantly (everyone soaks lethal in any form, everyone does lethal in lupus). It makes it way easier to remember in the middle of combat, non-lupus can engage in wolf-dominance contests without worrying about Agg-murdering lupus*, and it creates an interesting tactical choice for homids and lupus when they know the enemy is packing silver weapons (revert to breed form for some soak dice but weaker stats, and no general regen but you can't regen silver anyway). As you can imagine, that alone makes Strength of Gaia way more popular for my groups.

* - One of my PCs in a large persistent chat game had to stop a homid cub and a lupus cub who decided to have a play fight to help the homid learn more about fighting in lupus because the players were new to WtA and didn't have these minutiae down, while the narrator (kind of an assistant ST to help run scenes when the full ST can't be around if you're not familiar with this kind of play) was of the mind to "let them learn the hard way," since neither PC was experienced enough to know about these quirks in the rules either. Fortunately I had Spirit of the Fray so there wasn't really a question about making sure I could interrupt.

[Aahz]

11twiggins could you add titles like "Rank 1 Homid Gifts" to your posts, that would make it later much easier to navigate, when using this as a guide.