Garou Gifts: Ranking, Thinking, Overthinking

[lbeaumanior]

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.

11twiggins I second this proposal.

I am aware this is a bit of more effort but it will help a lot to check the content.

[11twiggins]

Good point - it's a pain to do it now, rather than as I went along, but sure XD

[Aahz]

Good point - it's a pain to do it now, rather than as I went along, but sure XD

Thanks, looking forward for you to continue the guide.

[11twiggins]

RANK 3 RAGABASH GIFTS

Gremlins: You roll Manipulation + Intimidation, difficulty determined by complexity of the device (simpler = harder), and if you get 3+ successes you scare the spirit of the object into fleeing, permanently wrecking it.

I like this a lot, despite there being far too many tech-destroying Gifts.

There's no cost, no real risk, and the baseline use of the power doesn't demand you prance around hunting the object, you can give it a mean glare. The RP potential of terrifying someone's toaster to death is very funny, and I love the idea of a technician (especially a Nocker, Etherite etc.) puzzling over a piece of equipment that simply cannot work anymore, despite all laws of science suggesting it is in perfect condition post repairs.

If you want a fun artefact in some collection, have a sharp knife that won't cut. Guests are invited to try it out using those gloves-through-the-barrier things.

An interesting potential use of this Gift is to have your Theurge in the Penumbra ready to command or capture the spirit you've banished. Yes, the spirits living inside all objects are relatively weak in most cases, but you could find uses for them. If you need to get a large number of weak spirits, there are worse ways of generating ones no one will miss.

Use this on the vehicles, tools and weapons of enemies, and if you run into a techno-mage or similar you'll have a field day. Outside of Primium countermagic dice, a HIT MARK has very few defenses against this power, and might be shut off permanently by you netting 3 successes on a difficulty 3 check.

Why do I like this more than Jam Technology or Silence the Weaver, or even Power Surge? You can pick a specific target. Simple as that. You can turn off the crazed cyborg without turning off the plane you're in. You can get rid of a guy's gun without getting rid of your own flamethrower. All of those Gifts lost points for being indiscriminate and risky.

Liar's Craft: This one is interesting. It's essentially a better defined and written Glib Tongue.

Roll Wits + Subterfuge, difficulty of the Wits + Subterfuge of the target (or highest among multiple targets); 1 success convinces an individual, 3 successes convince a group.

I like that you roll after you lie, as it adds real risk.

The ability to lie to a whole Sept and convince them all, in theory, is amazing. The ability to con a Pentex rep in a one on one conversation, the ability to hoodwink a spirit, another supernatural, convince a BSD you're a Wyrmish spy, set foes against one another, it's all great. This is one of those Gifts that turns the impossible into possible; you can completely transform a person or organization, a war, with a single lie. Just keep in mind that the Gift has not protections against the target verifying, or others acting on their behaviour regarding the lie. Risks exist, so keep a close eye on whoever you've sent on a mission to save their soul.

One thing we aren't explicitly told is how this will interact with powers such as Truth of Gaia. Truth of Gaia reveals which words spoken are True or False, and you activate it after the fact judging by the wording; "which of the words spoken have been", past tense. Liar's Craft will, RAW, have you utterly convinced. So in theory you wouldn't activate Truth of Gaia unless it was part of a protocol; for instance in a trial a Philodox might have the duty of fact-checking every statement made before the elder council, regardless of whether they seem to be true or not.

Monkey Tail: See the Lupus entry.

Open Moon Bridge*: This Gift lets you open a pre-existing Moon Bridge in a Caern. Since you can do this immediately by spending a single point of Gnosis without a roll, it's a great convenience. It's worth keeping in mind that the Gift is heavily restricted. You must be within a Caern. You must open an existing Bridge, meaning you are opening a path to a specific Caern, of which a Caern may have none, or a limited number. You have to run through the portal and travel the distance of the bridge (which is 1/1000th the normal distance, yes, but still not teleportation).

Again this Gift is highly variable. Do you have access to a Caern? Not in all games. Do the antagonists have a Caern? Is it linked to other Caerns? Will you be invading a Pit? Does that Pit link to a different weaker one you'll find easier to escape from, or enter through? How often will NPC packs have a rank 3+ Ragabash?

If you have access to a Caern which has moon bridges spanning a whole continent, to a variety of powerful Caerns in important locations, then this Gift could be Green. If it's unlikely to come up at all, it could be Red. Overall I'd call this a solid Amber, with a lot of potential.

One aspect of this Gift to keep in mind is that it could, at best, turn you into an invaluable member of a Sept who acts like a sort of boatman. At worst it could make you a put-upon doorman, though likely only if you mess up. If doing a day to day job for your Caern wins you plenty of Renown and favours, this could be better.

Pathfinder*: This Gift makes you harder to track, gives you a swifter route, but notably does not guarantee a safe route. Keep that in mind.

Difficulty 7 Perception + Survival/Streetwise, with 5 successes you half travel time (-50%), and you'll be +2 difficulty to track.

Not too much to say about this one beyond it being good; there's nothing saying you can't use it while aboard a plane, or in the back seat of your pack's van. The RP potential of going "no, you take a left" "what onto that dirt trail?" "yep" is fun. I do wonder how the magic of this Gift... works however. Say you're getting from one end of a jungle to another. How do you cut travel time by 50%? It's spirit magic, yes, but if a Technocrat were perfectly tracking the pack from space... does their weird implausible route bend space? Does it cause them to teleport in ways that they don't notice? Does it reshape the wilderness?

The key question is "does cutting your travel time by 10-50% and making yourself harder to track significantly impact the game", and that's more of a question for your ST than for me. If your ST throws you a lot of cool stuff for showing up earlier than you would have otherwise, keeps timings and travel time of NPCs in mind, has competing moving elements running around the world, this is incredible. In real life it would be amazing, of course. So if your ST is simulationist with Packs being tracked, perhaps even the private jets and SUV convoys of Pentex execs being tracked, then this gift is Green. If your ST doesn't track stuff like this (and there will be STs who say they do, but actually don't let it impact the plot or mechanics in any meaningful sense), it'll be a Red. And I reckon in most games this will be Amber. Hence the asterisk.

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4/5 of these might be worth 15XP, depending on your character and what they want or need. If you're constantly just slightly too late, and you truly trust your ST not to just continue that trend even if you arrive in half the time, Pathfinder could be amazing. Open Moon Bridge would be amazing in a game where it's Green, if you lack a Ragabash PC. Liar's Craft is amazing on any Face. Gremlins would be great on any Garou really, but most especially those who work closely with tech (Glass Walkers, Bone Gnawers) and those who fight it (Red Talons).

[11twiggins]

RANK 3 THEURGE GIFTS

For some reason we continue this trend of lists having varying numbers of Gifts.

Exorcism*: To the best of my knowledge this is the only exorcising power available to Garou, outside of the infinite potential of Fetishes, Totem Gift (the Elder Metis Gift), and the potential to acquire a Fera Rite. We can call it the only feasibly obtained exorcising power. With this you can free Fomori from the spirits within, rip Banes from powerful Fetishes you can't destroy, drive spirits out of their prisons to free them and more besides. In theory you could attempt to drive a Caern or Pit's Totem from the location, though you'd likely be killed by said spirit or by its guardian Garou in the process. Many successes would also be required.

Note that this takes 3 turns of uninterrupted focus, and a Bane actually leaving a living creature seemingly takes 10 rounds. In the meantime said Fomori is likely writhing on the ground instead of fighting, however.

If you're part of a pack who care about saving Fomori, such as my own, then this Gift is great to have. You can save people from their endless suffering as Fomori so long as you have a Theurge or Child of Gaia able to heal them.

Note that there is no Gnosis cost, which is pretty good.

Overall this Gift is a solid Amber most of the time, but could be a Green if saving the ordinary people who become Fomori floats the party's boat. Even then you need to deal with them having memories of Veil breaches! Another reason for Green would be if the party were constantly interacting with objects and locations imprisoning good spirits (who they can free) and Banes (who they can destroy).

Note that the Elder Brother Tribe may well be very wary of this Gift being used indiscriminately, given the lengths they have gone to to bind Banes under the earth.

Pulse of the Invisible*: See past the Gauntlet into the Umbra (though not the other way around!) if your Gnosis equals or exceeds the Gauntlet rating. If it doesn't you can do so by rolling Gnosis, difficulty of the local Gauntlet, which essentially makes Peeking as easy from physical to spiritual as it is the other way around. By default such sight would be at Gauntlet + 3 difficulty. The wording also only mentions sight, not hearing nor scent, but it does say you can "interact with" the spirits of the penumbra, which suggests being able to touch them or hear them speak.

This Gift means you don't require a reflective surface to reach the Umbra, and is particularly helpful to the blind. According to the Blind flaw you are at +1 difficulty to enter the Umbra when you find a reflective surface, as you can't actually see the reflection.

With a Gnosis of 10 you'll see past the Gauntlet everywhere, which is pretty great, though getting there will cost you at least 70xp!

The awareness granted by this Gift is worthy of a Green, on the assumption that you have half-decent Gnosis. If your Gnosis is 3 or lower this Gift will essentially be useless. At 5-6 it will function about half of the time. At 7+ it will be working most of the time. Even if you have a Gnosis of 4 or 5, being able to roll to see past the Gauntlet for a whole scene without becoming blind to the world around you is great, especially without a +3 difficulty hike or glowing eyes. So much activity in the Penumbra could catch you off guard without this Gift, and with it you'll be a huge asset to your team.

Umbral Camouflage: Spend a Gnosis, no roll, and for a scene you are invisible to "spiritual senses" - this is also described as being "undetectable" to spirits. So you won't be seen, heard, scented or so on. Long range scanning would also likely fail.

Attacking ends the Gift, of course.

This Gift would be very helpful for exploring the Penumbra of most cities, sneaking into Caerns, ambushing Banes and so on. Note that there's nothing stopping you from enacting a Rite while this Gift is up, so long as it doesn't take longer than "a scene" (or if it does, you might want to spend an additional Gnosis to keep the Gift going). Your ST could be very mean and say that performing a Rite while under Umbral Camouflage doesn't work, as Rites by definition require the attention of the spirit world and you have made yourself invisible to it.

Getting close enough to a Nexus Crawler to prepare a trap, or use Command Spirit or a Rite upon it, could make all the difference. You could also sneak into a location and activate your Battle Mandala, so long as your ST doesn't deem this to be an attack, and force spirits to remain to lose their essence or flee. You can also turn this on in an emergency to escape from a dangerous spirit, or to escape from a spirit who is spying on you, tailing you, and so on. Keep in mind that your allied spirits also won't know your location, which could lead to you dying in a ditch because your Pack's Totem couldn't locate you.

This could also be very useful against Ghosts.

I'm making this Green because while it is slightly niche (just slightly) it does its job perfectly, and if it's in-list for you it will be key to your job.

Web Walker*: Spend a Gnosis, make a Charisma + Science roll (diff 7), and you get two benefits on a success. You won't physically struggle to navigate the Pattern Web, and you won't be treated as hostile by the various Weaver Spirits that travel along it. These benefits apply to your pack so long as they stay close. The Gift does not that the strands of the web might not lead where you wish to go; W20 describes it as "labyrinthine". A Weaver Spirit with Airt Sense will navigate this web far better than any Theurge, notably, so commanding such a spirit to guide you (perhaps with some Chiminage to avoid upset if a more powerful spirit determines what you did) might be wise.

The Corebook doesn't really get into what the Pattern Web looks like, how it manifests in the Penumbra, where it goes, how one would navigate it. W20 Umbra has this to say:

Anchorheads are the most reliable means of crossing to the Deep Umbra but they are not the only way. Beings knowledgeable of the Weaver’s ways understand that the Pattern Web connects everything except the most chaotic Wyld reaches or most corrupt Wyrm blights. Every area that has a hint of structure or form has at least a few strands of the Weaver’s influence that travelers can use as a thread to cross between worlds — if they can survive the Pattern Spiders who maintain it.

Webs are bridges, Webs are circuits. Webs serve as gates, ladders, or bridges to the Weaver’s deeper Umbral realms. A sufficiently powerful and motivated pack of Garou could fight through and climb the Web to reach Gaia-knows-where in the Weaver’s Near Umbral strongholds. That sounds easier than it is. Every rung of that Web grabs, sticks, pulls, stings. Every few feet, another spider attacks or another monstrosity is ready to pull a werewolf in. Just being close to the Web sucks out a Garou’s Gnosis, with the intent to render her an automaton — another cog in the machine. And in the end, all of that struggle only gets her as far as the door to an Umbral realm. A Web’s other main purpose is that of a circuit, a free-flowing passageway for information flowing between the Weaver and Earth. Electrons flow, spiders carry, and the web reverberates with data constantly. For recon-minded Garou, Webs can provide dangerous but highly valuable information about the Weaver’s machinations. With rerouted information and creative cryptography, Garou can suss out the Weaver’s upcoming plans and projects.

There is much more written in the book, and I recommend reading it yourself! But suffice to say that having access to the Pattern Web is a pretty big deal, even if you have to learn how to navigate it well; those without the Gift have to roll Intelligence + Enigmas difficulty 7 to navigate it, possibly 8 or 9 if they're trying to avoid danger or find a particular piece of web. Presumably someone with the Gift will either pass this check automatically or roll it at much lower difficulty. If your ST runs the Pattern Web as it is written it is an incalculable resource.

It is worth noting that if any part of the Wyrm is still imprisoned by the Weaver, it dwells within a piece of the Pattern Web, deep within the Umbra.

Unfortunately this Gift does get a * due to the fact that the omnipresence and significance of the Pattern Web may vary. RAW it reaches all but the most Wyrm and Wyld controlled places in reality; it won't get you into the Dreaming now matter how hard you try, nor will it reach Malfeas, but you get the sense that it's easier to list the places it can't go than the places it can, since the latter list would be too long.

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Web Walker would be worth 15xp to anyone who loves exploring the Umbra, especially a Glass Walker, but not exclusively. Any Lupus or Metis would likely benefit from Pulse of the Invisible, especially after buying up more Gnosis. Umbra Camouflage could be great on a Ragabash who wants to fully master stealth, or a Glass Walker / Bone Gnawer who wants to wander the streets of a city's penumbra without being harassed.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

RANK 3 RAGABASH GIFTS

Gremlins: You roll Manipulation + Intimidation, difficulty determined by complexity of the device (simpler = harder), and if you get 3+ successes you scare the spirit of the object into fleeing, permanently wrecking it.

I like this a lot, despite there being far too many tech-destroying Gifts.

There's no cost, no real risk, and the baseline use of the power doesn't demand you prance around hunting the object, you can give it a mean glare. The RP potential of terrifying someone's toaster to death is very funny, and I love the idea of a technician (especially a Nocker, Etherite etc.) puzzling over a piece of equipment that simply cannot work anymore, despite all laws of science suggesting it is in perfect condition post repairs.

If you want a fun artefact in some collection, have a sharp knife that won't cut. Guests are invited to try it out using those gloves-through-the-barrier things.

An interesting potential use of this Gift is to have your Theurge in the Penumbra ready to command or capture the spirit you've banished. Yes, the spirits living inside all objects are relatively weak in most cases, but you could find uses for them. If you need to get a large number of weak spirits, there are worse ways of generating ones no one will miss.

Use this on the vehicles, tools and weapons of enemies, and if you run into a techno-mage or similar you'll have a field day. Outside of Primium countermagic dice, a HIT MARK has very few defenses against this power, and might be shut off permanently by you netting 3 successes on a difficulty 3 check.

Countermagick that has to roll an 8 or higher doesn't really stand much of a chance of stopping it, though. Even if each success counts double, that's still an average of only 0.4 successes per die, with a far greater chance to botch with the meager dice pools typically available to countermagick (three, maybe four, typically). It's quite the risk to take, in all honesty.

[11twiggins]

Countermagick that has to roll an 8 or higher doesn't really stand much of a chance of stopping it, though. Even if each success counts double, that's still an average of only 0.4 successes per die, with a far greater chance to botch with the meager dice pools typically available to countermagick (three, maybe four, typically). It's quite the risk to take, in all honesty.

Yeah I'm not liking their chances - I note that the defensive measure exists, but I'm not saying it's likely to actually save them at all. Even with 10 dice of countermagick and a meager pool from the Garou, it's very much stacked in their favour. And you only need one success to win the fight really - shutting them down temporarily gives you enough time to rip them to pieces or repeat the Gift.

[Heavy Arms]

Something I wish Gremlins addressed, which would also get into how to handle it for cyborgs and such, is that it targets "devices" without really saying if it can isolate part of a system. While it's a bit nitpicky to say, "You can use it on a computer, but not just the computer's monitor," it's worth a lot more consideration if you can target just the pacemaker, or if the human counts as the target and isn't valid as not being a "device." And of course if "device" gets into things with true intelligence.

Honestly, it's a Green to me even if your ST rules pretty harshly against the Gift on these things, but it's a Gift that's ripe for causing debates (damn Ragabash!) when you start getting clever with it.

[11twiggins]

By the way, an important rules matter: you spend Rage to get extra ACTIONS within the same TURN. If something takes a "turn of concentration" or a transformation takes a "turn to complete", it won't be online until the turn has completed. You might run it differently at your table, knowingly or unknowingly, but that's how I'm interpreting the word "turn" just so people know.

RANK 3 PHILODOX GIFTS

Mental Speech: See the Metis entry. Quite important to any role arguably, but suits the judges and lawkeepers quite well.

Scent of the Oathbreaker: Budget Contract (C20). This Gift allows you to spend a point of Gnosis when a promise is sanctified. When that promise is broken by any party, you will know. The Gift implies that you will know which person broke the oath. This alone is helpful, and as an added bonus your difficulty to track their scent is reduced to 4. This is interesting, since it implies that otherwise impossible checks (beyond difficulty 10, depending on how you run difficulty thresholds) become possible; essentially if there's any chance at all of their scent being tracked, if it's even slightly feasible, it will now be difficulty 4 for you. Combined with Lupus form this means you will pick up the faintest trail imaginable, reducing the difficulty to 3, even if there is a +1 difficulty modifier from something such as rain.

This Gift helps you to keep track of all sorts of things, from the loyalty of Sept officers to the integrity of Kinfolk and other Supernaturals, and whether a traitor or double agent is keeping to their word. In roleplay choosing not to use this Gift could be the ultimate sign of trust, or using it frequently could show how jaded a judge has become. One thing I've found invaluable in using Contract in C20 is its ability to make impossible arrangements possible. So many of the barriers and conflicts in the WoD are down to mistrust. Being able to say to the Elder Council "you may find this arrangement worrisome, but if it is broken I shall know immediately" could take the edge off of a difficult scenario. The ability to spare, the ability to trust, the ability to let people live is... well it's good.

Following Exorcism of a Bane from a Fomor by a packmate you might well drop a "swear to me you'll never tell anyone about this, and that you won't go looking for (corporation, cult) again, that you'll get on with your life as best you can and try to forget this ever happened" - it's still risky, but more excusable.

Overall I'm giving this Gift a Green given its unique ability to threaten and manipulate others into compliance, along with its ability to act as insurance. It's great for social control, for information gathering, for helping keep the session moving without you having to track and investigate the random NPC who promised they'd do something. All in all a great utility. When you combine this with Mental Speech... it's even better.

Sense Balance*: Given that the Triat can be quite sneaky, and their influence can pop up in ways you wouldn't expect, and that there are spirits and locations which you could squint and see as one or the other, this could be very handy. There are Gaian/Wyld spirits who you could, reasonably, mistake for Weaver or Wyrm, especially when you get into the weirdest spirits and umbral locations which have only come into existence in the past 100 years or so.

Gnosis cost makes sense, Perception + Enigmas difficulty 8, need to be free of distractions and at peace, and with that you can pick up the Triatic flavour of a location. Pretty handy, especially to provide information to your Theurge.

There are a few things that count against this Gift however. Quite often an 'overabundance' of one of the Triat's influence will be very obvious indeed. There will also be many situations where such an overabundance just gets a shrug - it isn't directly immediately relevant to anything you're doing. Getting an objective set of eyes on that meter is great, but it's still the kind of information which could lure a pack down a very esoteric route when confronted by a very boring, ordinary problem.

I'd invite you to think about a common Garou problem, assume the pack has Sense Wyrm, and then imagine how their response to investigating the location varies between "has Sense Balance" and "doesn't have Sense Balance". If you're doing super weird super esoteric stuff constantly, this Gift might become more relevant. Add to that the fact it'll set you back 9/15xp... not looking amazing.

I'm making this Amber because it provides something unique, so if you need to measure those energies and there's no other way for you to do it (using common sense and investigating, asking a spirit, relying on a Fetish, utilizing Sense Wyrm), this Gift could be worth it. The * indicates that in some games, and some Pack compositions and with some STs, this Gift could be red.

Weak Arm: Analyzing an opponent, you make a Perception + Brawl difficulty 8. Requires a full turn of concentration. Successes can be split between bonus dice to attack or damage against the specific opponent analyzed.

Keeping in mind that you must watch the opponent's fighting style, not their stance, not some spiritual aura or their body shape, specifically their fighting style, this Gift will be hard to activate before a fight. In a series of challenges or competitions you might see someone fight someone else before you get to them. If you're preparing to ambush a BSD who is slaughtering Gaian spirits or other allies, you could callously delay your assault to get the best measure of your opponent. But in a typical fight your opponent will only begin to show off their "fighting style" once the fight has started, and that means wasting the first turn of a fight on a high difficulty Perception + Brawl check. Though in Lupus it could be difficulty 6, notably.

Assuming you get the Gift off before the fight starts... and have a pool of 8-10... and you have a difficulty of 6... and you manage to get 3-5 successes... is +3-5 dice against that target (divided between attacking and damaging at your preference) much good? It could be. It could be massively impactful against a ridiculously powerful spirit, or against a far more dangerous Garou combatant, say an Elder Ahroun. Given that you won't be able to get this off most of the time, however, unless you sacrifice your entire turn at the start of a fight (which could kill you), this one is tricky to rate.

How often do you get a chance to watch your opponent fight before you fight them, in the same scene you fight them? You might arrive only to watch them murder an NPC who was fighting them, sure, or interrupt some slaughter, but you should be aiming to get the drop on your unprepared foes whenever possible. Short of having battles to fight in Atrocity Realm or happening upon a BSD who is already in Crinos having a great time, you won't be activating this gift outside of sparring and maybe, maybe more casual challenges done sequentially.

One "offensive" use of this Gift is to have a party member Challenge and NPC, one who prefers fights when challenged, and use the scene to analyze their fighting style. Then challenge them immediately after; technically they can't refuse without losing face, even if they're tired.

Given a combination of how hard it is to activate without sacrificing a whole turn, and the high difficulty, and the other limitations, and this being a 9/15xp Gift, I'm making this one a Red, which is a shame! At a lower level it absolutely would have been an Amber. And of course there's the risk that the foe flees, or someone else ganks them anyways, or it turns out there's a much bigger bad behind them... you get the idea.

Wisdom of the Ancient Ways*: Obviously ancient lore is important to any role, but I would have pegged this as a more intellectual Galliard Gift. The Gift is also a little poorly written. The flavour suggests you can use the Gift to remember "ancient lore", while the system talks about the "answer" you receive, which is more general. It feels like the Gift is missing another sentence which spells out exactly what sorts of information you can receive.

I will read the flavour and description together and come to the conclusion that this Gift allows you to ask questions about the ancient lore of the Garou. More successes means a more precise answer. And of course the stronger your Ancestors rating the better this Gift will be; this Gift shall be very hard to use for Bone Gnawers and Glass Walkers, fittingly, and it's hard to rate given a difficulty curve of 4-9. Given there's no cost listed, no limit on how often you can use it, and no success table for how far back you reach, this Gift is hardly a Gift at all. It's just a vague suggestion of a Gift. STs will be stepping in with "you don't get an answer" "that reaches too far back" and all sorts of responses to questions like "were the original Garou Kami" or "did the Children of Gaia actually end the Impergium" or "did any White Howlers in packs around the world survive the fall" "what happened to them", "what is the secret of Erebus" etc.

Perhaps these questions don't seem too game breaking or perhaps setting-breaking, more importantly, but the Gift gives so little guidance that it might do everything or nothing.

If it were better written there would be guidance on what category of questions might be asked, perhaps with an example, and an example of something you couldn't ask. You can do X, but you can't do Y is a method used by a lot of Gifts. It would also be helpful to have an outline of how far back you can reach, and how many successes are equivalent to what kind of answer, or what distance into the past, or how well hidden or secret the information is.

Given that we're given next to no information and the ST is left to basically create the Gift almost from scratch, possibly to much frustration for them or the player, I'm giving this a red. The * is because it could be alright or even excellent depending on how the ST "reads" it, quotes given how little there is to read!

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Sadly quite a few Gifts from this Rank upwards seem to have not been playtested or carefully edited, or well written. Furthermore many that would have been Amber at 1-2 are Red at 3+. Still, between Mental Speech and Oathbreaker you have a great set of tools to speak to people over a great distance about the promise they just shattered. Both Gifts could be worth purchasing out of list, especially Mental Speech.

Sense Balance might be worth 15xp to a Theurge in a very esoteric game or setting.

[Heavy Arms]

I read the wording on the difficulty of Scent of the Oathbreaker differently: Basically, I parse it as if the difficulty would be greater than 4, it "drops" to 4. I wouldn't let it then be modified further by the lupus form bonus or situational issues like rain. Minor, and I wouldn't change the rating for it, but I think it makes more sense with how it's phrased.

I think a big part of the question of the worth of Sense Balance is that if your ST lets you take Sense Wyld and Sense Weaver from previous editions. If you ST lets these into the game, Sense Balance as written is fairly pointless. Theurges are the only group that used to be able to snag the trio for 9 XP total, and they rolled different Abilities, but IME the trio is more useful and as all Rank 1 Gifts don't really need any oomph like you'd hope Sense Balance gives you.

Weak Arm feels like it should be a Ragabash Gift as written, where you have the stealth chops to stalk and watch an opponent to study them; even then it would be lackluster (maybe Amber?). What I really want out of the Gift to make it feel like a Philodox one would be to allow it to activate against any foe you've seen fight before, with a variable difficulty based on how well you've observed them, including the best difficulty for having fought them in the past. This would make it great for Philodox keeping Ahrouns in line, or to back up Scent of the Oathbreaker when you come in to stomp lawbreakers and traitors. That said, I think you're a bit hung up n the "fighting style" phrasing a bit.

I would advocate for Wisdom of the Ancient Ways to be bumped up to Amber just to be in keeping with Sight from Beyond having the same basic issues of how variable any sort of "The ST decides how much info you get" is going to be. Or at least Red or Amber based on your access to Ancestors since difficulty 9 is steep for a Gift that's so unstructured, but rolling a bunch of successes at diff 4 should be getting you something useful. Even, "no Ancestor spirits know anything about what you're meditating on," can be useful as that entails something unique or new to the extent that all the collective ancestor spirits of the Garou have nothing to offer.

[11twiggins]

Small note - I haven't mentioned Pure Breed that often in many of these reviews. Keep in mind that whether Pure Breed and Persuasion apply to a Gift's activation roll will depend on the context and the taste of the Storyteller; generally speaking PB1-5 is a noteworthy buff to many social Gifts, but YMMV.

RANK 3 GALLIARD GIFTS

Eye of the Cobra: Roll Appearance + Enigmas, difficulty of the target's Willpower. I like the Enigmas Knowledge being used here. You're so good at puzzles that your eyes are extra mysterious. This Gift forces the target to come towards you; with 3 successes they are drawn to your side, 1-2 successes get them heading in the right direction.

No cost, a neat effect, significantly overpriced at a 3rd level Gift... but not bad. Handy for a melee Garou trying to lure an enemy towards their pack. It's worth noting that there is no special means of resisting this Gift, outside of total immunity granted by effects such as Shell. Keep in mind that your target can do as they please once they reach you, and that they may well do something other than just approach you on their way to you, with 1-2 successes.

Song of Heroes*: After reciting tales of ancient heroism (Does it have to be ancient? I would imagine many Garou, especially Glass Walkers, would rather give a more grounded and recent anecdote!) for a few minutes. Then the Galliard spends 2 Gnosis, and rolls Charisma + Performance (difficulty 8). Every two successes buys +1 to an Ability for all Garou and Kinfolk (Fera? Non-Garou Kinfolk?) listening to the tale. This bonus then lasts until sunrise, so up to about 24 hours.

Or...

Sunrise. Arctic circle... there are stranger places for Garou and Kinfolk to travel and fight. A months-long duration would be quite neat... and works RAW!

Assuming your ST is sensible, it will last for up to 24 hours. Between the difficulty of the check, and the 2:1 ratio of buffing abilities, this Gift is hard to use. With the right Merits and Backgrounds it becomes much stronger; my pack's Galliard has Supporter, Enchanting Voice, Pure Breed, Persuasion, and in addition to this they could also have Ancestors if they'd bought it in char-gen. With a dice pool of 15-20 (achievable) and a difficulty of 3-4 (ditto) this Gift will pull MUCH more weight. If you manage to average about 12 successes you can add +6 to the Athletics scores of a whole sept, massively swinging a battle by making your side swifter, harder to hit and evade, and more besides. Other standouts would be Firearms, Brawl, Melee...

But do keep in mind that this Gift isn't just for battles. Like many Gifts and mechanics in W20 the flavour suggests you're running into battle, but you could easily use this Gift before a huge crafting project, a hack attempt, a ritual, dance, anything you can imagine. Overall this Gift could be Amber or Green depending on your dice and difficulty modifiers. That's true of all Gifts, but most especially one like this. Hence the *.

Song of Rage: Pick a target, roll Manipulation + Leadership (difficulty of WP), on a success they either fly into a berserk rage, or Frenzy if they are able to. This lasts for one turn per success; we aren't told much about what a human in a rage will do, but we can assume that it's a state just shy of a supernatural frenzy.

This is a handy Gift to debilitate NPCs, humiliating them or potentially freeing them from control, or goading them into fighting. I don't have that much to say about this Gift beyond it being handy. The uses are all relatively obvious, once you get past using it on trapped or controlled allies, or a grievously wounded ally, or an ally who is refusing to fight enemies (though there is a risk they'll attack you if their Rage exceeds their Gnosis!).

Edit: It's worth explicitly mentioning that this Gift is handy against a Pack, or multiple Packs, of Garou enemies. Even if their Gnosis exceeds their Rage (try and target the Homid Ahroun!) they are still at risk of attacking allies other than their Pack! If you use this on a group of BSD packs, or even indiscriminately in a Pit, you could cause a lot of friendly fire.

Song of the Siren*: Charisma + Performance, difficulty equal to the Willpower rating of the relevant targets, comparing with each in turn. Targets who are effected can't act for one turn per success. Targets can spend a point of WP to act for a turn. Furthermore your Pack automatically resist.

This is good... especially when you keep in mind that Spirits do not have temporary Willpower points, they only have dots in the Willpower trait. So RAW this is a hugely powerful anti-spirit power which can stun huge crowds of Banes. This combines well with Howl of the Unseen, the Fianna Gift. A Fianna Galliard could stun huge swarms of Banes from the physical world by singing, while their Pack slowly cut their way through them. In fact, combine with Call of the Wyrm... just make sure you have guards ready to deal with any Vampires or BSDs who show up in the physical world!

Against dangerous physical targets this will consistently drain Willpower points, exhausting enemies swiftly. There is no cost and no limitation to how often you can use it.

A problem arises when you consider that this power used two or three times can turn a whole crowd of enemies into drooling zombies who can't resist, as you apply the Gift over and over.

I would limit this Gift so that effecting a target a second time requires expending a point of Gnosis. Or add a cost. Or mention that if your check "botches" against a target's Willpower when compared, they become immune.

If this Gift is being used against you, deafen yourself, or destroy the source ASAP. You should have a few WP to spend until that's sorted.

Overall my problem with this Gift is that it either does everything or nothing, which is either frustrating for the ST or the players. At least the party are immune, and there are worse written Gifts. It's more a design issue with W20's debilitating Gifts in general; they either stun or remove dice, with very little else on the table.

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None of these stand out as obvious picks for non-Galliards; if you wanted these Gifts chances are you'd be a Galliard! Still, if you're playing a performance-heavy non-Galliard Song of Heroes would be an excellent addition.

[11twiggins]

Given that the Garou basekit is a huge aspect of what makes them so powerful (if you compare splats, a starting Garou PC vs an advanced Garou PC are closer together than, say, a starting Troll vs an advanced Troll, Gangrel vs Gangrel, Akashayana vs Akashayana and so on), it's really important that some of the Ahroun Gifts genuinely advance your combat potential.

RANK 3 AHROUN GIFTS

Combat Healing: Every turn if you want to regenerate you need to roll Stamina, difficulty 8. On a success you regenerate a point of lethal or bashing, on a failure you don't, on a botch you lose your regen for the whole scene. In many fights your regeneration will be critical. Even with a Stamina of 7-8 you will botch the Stamina check roughly 3-5% of the time!

This Gift is boring, and you won't want to spend 9xp on it, but it's eating your vegetables. Ultimately it will come in handy, and not having to roll Stamina at such a high difficulty every round is a nice QOL upgrade. This makes your regeneration much more reliable, and I like that a lot. If you have this Gift it's in your best interests to ensure that there are no breaks or pauses in combat, as your foes will be relatively advantaged by a chance to catch their breath and freely regenerate, while you need no such breaks.

Heart of Fury*: Roll Willpower, difficulty of your Permanent Rage, and for every 2 successes you increase the difficulty of rolls to Frenzy by 1. The 2:1 ratio makes this tight.

Best case scenario you roll 8ish dice difficulty 5, get 4ish successes, and are at +2 difficulty to Frenzy. Given that you have 5 points of Rage, and let's say it's a full moon and you're in Crinos so difficulty 3 to frenzy (base 4, -1 from Crinos, -1 from moon matching Auspice, +1 from Rank 3), you increase that difficulty from 3 to 5. At difficulty 3 your chances of a Berserk Frenzy are 53.2%. At difficulty 5 your odds are 27.2%. So this isn't awful by any means.

However if you ever increase your Rage, the difficulty to activate the Gift goes up. And as you increase your Rank your difficulty to Frenzy increases regardless. This Gift will wind up being obsoleted, essentially, and if you have even a single Homid or Child of Gaia packmate they can use a Gift to calm you. This is before you consider that you can immediately halt a normal Frenzy by spending a single point of Willpower as it starts, and wasting a turn. Or that the Gift makes you Frenzy at the end of the scene anyways (though it does let you spend a point of WP to stop it).

Given that the Gift winds up obsoleted, and that the worse your Rage problem is the harder it is to use, despite you need it more rather than less, and that unless you're at risk of Thrall of the Wyrm you shouldn't have too much problem anways... unless you have low Willpower... which you need to roll well for this Gift anyways... yeah it's a bit of a complicated mess. It isn't awful, yet at 9xp it winds up Red. Know why? For the same cost you could increase your Willpower by 1. That's one Frenzy ignored per session, right there. You could even buy Calm Heart for 9xp, with the right justification!

If you're rewriting this Gift, I'd suggest adjusting it. Make it so that while you are fighting, and letting out your rage, you need additional successes to Frenzy or enter Thrall. That fits the Ahroun flavour and role well, and means it contributes something semi-unique. It helps explain how a Rage 10 Ahroun could function well at Ranks 3-5, theoretically, as while they are fighting their threshold to Frenzy is relatively high.

Silver Claws: Absolutely incredible. No cost, simply a Gnosis roll (diff 7). This does slow down your Rage attacks getting going, so try and do this before the fight.

• Your claw attacks are silver, meaning they ignore the soak pool of Garou in most forms entirely, override many defensive Gifts, and are resistant to many forms of healing and regeneration even compared to normal Aggravated damage.
• Your claw attacks deal Aggravated damage to all targets, potentially overriding any obscure features which downgrade damage from claws.
• You gain a point of Rage every single turn.

So long as you don't let your Rage exceed your Willpower, which should be easy as you can spend 3 points of Rage each turn, this is hugely useful. If you have a low Willpower, make sure your Rage pool is depleted before you activate this. In a long fight this Gift will ensure you can get at least one bonus action off each turn!

Good uses include fighting Garou and Fera and generating huge amounts of Rage over time (including outside of battle) to spend on various Gifts. There's no reason a Stargazer Ahroun can't fuel Channeling with this Gift after all.

Wind Claws*: Spend a point of Rage, ignore all armour the target is wearing for the rest of the turn. You could hit 3 times (main action + 2 rage actions) without a target having any special soak from their powerful armour. This is nice to have since it could remove up to 5 points of soak from a target, but it's potentially overkill. If you're going to be fighting Technocrats, Sidhe and Nockers, this could be a Green, but typically it will be Amber. Those few Fomori, BSDs and executives who are wearing some form of armour will be a tad easier to target, but even then the Gift lasts for a turn, not a scene. Simply bypassing the 5 dots of soak a target gets from their insane Fae/Matter/Fetish armour is a fun idea, and it will feel great when it does happen.

If this Gift ignored all forms of bonuses outside of Stamina, from Fortitude to "armour Gifts" to Powers and the Armour Charm etc. then this would be much better.

[11twiggins]

I read the wording on the difficulty of Scent of the Oathbreaker differently: Basically, I parse it as if the difficulty would be greater than 4, it "drops" to 4. I wouldn't let it then be modified further by the lupus form bonus or situational issues like rain. Minor, and I wouldn't change the rating for it, but I think it makes more sense with how it's phrased.

I think a big part of the question of the worth of Sense Balance is that if your ST lets you take Sense Wyld and Sense Weaver from previous editions. If you ST lets these into the game, Sense Balance as written is fairly pointless. Theurges are the only group that used to be able to snag the trio for 9 XP total, and they rolled different Abilities, but IME the trio is more useful and as all Rank 1 Gifts don't really need any oomph like you'd hope Sense Balance gives you.

Weak Arm feels like it should be a Ragabash Gift as written, where you have the stealth chops to stalk and watch an opponent to study them; even then it would be lackluster (maybe Amber?). What I really want out of the Gift to make it feel like a Philodox one would be to allow it to activate against any foe you've seen fight before, with a variable difficulty based on how well you've observed them, including the best difficulty for having fought them in the past. This would make it great for Philodox keeping Ahrouns in line, or to back up Scent of the Oathbreaker when you come in to stomp lawbreakers and traitors. That said, I think you're a bit hung up n the "fighting style" phrasing a bit.

I would advocate for Wisdom of the Ancient Ways to be bumped up to Amber just to be in keeping with Sight from Beyond having the same basic issues of how variable any sort of "The ST decides how much info you get" is going to be. Or at least Red or Amber based on your access to Ancestors since difficulty 9 is steep for a Gift that's so unstructured, but rolling a bunch of successes at diff 4 should be getting you something useful. Even, "no Ancestor spirits know anything about what you're meditating on," can be useful as that entails something unique or new to the extent that all the collective ancestor spirits of the Garou have nothing to offer.

First point makes sense.

I'm aware that Sense Wyld and Sense Wyrm existed in old editions, and they ARE in W20, but only as Fera Gifts; I believe Ratkin get a Sense Weaver, and some group get a Sense Wyld. So these Gifts existing for Garou is at least feasible, but you might need to discover, rediscover or link up with Fera to learn them etc. And absolutely, if you have access to those Gifts, Sense Balance becomes even more of an expensive waste of time.

I agree that Weak Arm has some Ragabash vibes! Your suggested changes make sense and line up with some of my thoughts; having studied the foe in the past would suit the "judge and executioner" role of the Auspice quite well. RE the 'fighting style' thing, I read it as meaning you need to get a glimpse of how the target fights, in the scene, before you activate the gift. So you can't just stare at a BSD standing with their arms crossed. Seeing them firing a gun would be enough, it isn't super strict, but it makes it very hard to activate before a fight starts.

Sight from Beyond is vague, but it's intentionally vague; you get visions from the Storyteller. Since it's ultimately decently well written, and the question of whether it's useful is down to whether the ST gives Theurges visions regardless of whether they have the Gift or not (I know many STs will give a rank 1 Theurge visions to prompt missions), a base of Amber, but could be Red at your table, feels fair. Wisdom of the Ancient Ways is in a similar situation, absolutely, but it's meant to be something you activate at will and the wording give us next to no idea of how that should work. It could be Amber, or Green, depending on context, but Red feels like a reasonable baseline given how little you have to work with. With so little concrete info you could easily make it Amber, sure, but the rating is almost meaningless. You can imagine it as "unrated" if that helps, in fact I might even change it to "Black" when I edit, i.e. no rating given.

[Heavy Arms]

It might fall under "obvious uses," and I'm not sure it really changes the overall value of the Gift, but I'd point out that Song of Rage is great for ruining attacks be multiple enemies. If you're being attacked by a BSD Pack and other Wyrm forces, even if they have enough Gnosis to not attack their packmates, they might take out some fomori for you. If you're facing multiple BSD packs, you have a decent chance of a tactic I call "Frenzy lock," where you send one enemy pack's heaviest hitter at their own allied pack. A worst, both enemy packs are disrupted for a bit trying to deal with that and your allies counter attack, at best your target hits one of their own allies hard enough that they roll to Remain Active... sending them into a Frenzy as well, and potentially sending off a chain of Frenzies within their own Ranks if they don't have enough characters with the ability to shut it down before it starts.

It's still very niche, but one of my PCs killed six enemies with on roll via a Frenzy chain between three packs thinking that just coming up 20 strong as one group meant they didn't need better strategic thinking.

[11twiggins]

It might fall under "obvious uses," and I'm not sure it really changes the overall value of the Gift, but I'd point out that Song of Rage is great for ruining attacks be multiple enemies. If you're being attacked by a BSD Pack and other Wyrm forces, even if they have enough Gnosis to not attack their packmates, they might take out some fomori for you. If you're facing multiple BSD packs, you have a decent chance of a tactic I call "Frenzy lock," where you send one enemy pack's heaviest hitter at their own allied pack. A worst, both enemy packs are disrupted for a bit trying to deal with that and your allies counter attack, at best your target hits one of their own allies hard enough that they roll to Remain Active... sending them into a Frenzy as well, and potentially sending off a chain of Frenzies within their own Ranks if they don't have enough characters with the ability to shut it down before it starts.

It's still very niche, but one of my PCs killed six enemies with on roll via a Frenzy chain between three packs thinking that just coming up 20 strong as one group meant they didn't need better strategic thinking.

That's actually great to hear about! Honestly it's mad that I didn't explicitly mention such a use - it was in the back of my head but it's very pertinent. It's one of those very swingy things where if you get lucky you could do insane damage to a Pit.