[2E] Kindred fighting Uratha werewolves

[wyrdhamster]

Disclaimer: Uratha is name for werewolves race from game Werewolf the Forsaken and their 'monster form' is Gauru. On the other hand, Garou is the name for the race of wolfs from Werewolf the Apocalypse. This topic is about those from WtF game, to be clear.

So I'm running game of WtF 2E and planning some fights with VtR 2E vampires in it. As I know WtF 2E rather good as ST, I guessed best would be to ask question on vamps forum for their side perspective and best tactics. Marcus was so nice to give me general guidance from previous Uratha vs Kindred comparisons in other topic.

There is a huge topic, I'll try to find it. Basically someone is agreeing that a Combat focused werewolf (in garou) could have some advantage on a combat focused vampire. But then everything depends on the build. With Mental disciplines you can easily let some werewolf flee or even attack his mates. 1v1 there were a guy that made statistical test, on 5 or ten combat with BP 5 Primal urge 5 focused oriented character and it resulted in mostly win the kindred when he got the initiative, and basically a fifty fifty when the werewolf got initiative.
A must have for the kindred is dealing aggravated damage (like claws of the unholy which was what he used), otherwise the regeneration of the werewolf overcome the damage input, usually.

Try to consider High physical disciplines, maybe coil of the wyrm that increases Defense, Health and speed by your BP, consider + BP from frenzy and always boost your strength with blood.
And this without considering devotions like Bone of the Mountain that allow you to increase effective resilence by your protean and use all vigor and resilence effect for free (spending the devotion cost each turn.
Those are just suggestion, as I said someone made some fight tests in that topic. I'll try to recover it.
Furthermore the Garou transformation last just few turns than he need to back to other shape losing his regeneration or going in Bashu im (for other few turns attacking even his friends). So you could just obfuscate/melt in the ground, becoming mist, waiting for his garou shape to end.

If you are not going to consider a withe room 1v1, you can consider mental discipline, Majesty 4+3 allow a garou to attack her mates without incurring in breaking point, damage. Nightmare 2 allows you to let some werewolves to flee and then focus all the coterie on less target and so on.

What I'm saying is that it's not always an automatic win for werewolves, like it was in masquerade. (Even consider backstabbing popping out from obfuscate, avoiding his defense).

So to sum up...

Protean is best Discipline for fighting Uratha - 1st dot, Unmarked Grave is absolutely must-have to be possible to save yourself in ground. Protean 4th dot, Unnatural Aspect with Merit Claws of the Unholy is needed weapon to deliver any real damage to Uratha in Gauru form with Aggravated damage +0 from Merit. Unless you have other source for doing Aggravated damage - like Silver against wolves.

Some other yours ideas for best Kindred tactics?

[Vent0]

General tactics - bait them into a Death Rage against some throwaway target (with Dominate, if you feel like twisting the knife, make this a more vulnerable Pack-mate). Once they've exhausted themselves, use Obfuscate to get close, then Physical Intensity+Vigor+Frenzy to deal sudden massive damage.

Strategically, if on the offensive, turn their Territory into a conflicted hell-scape to feed problematic Spirits. See if you can find high Gauntlet areas and nest near there. Always use cutouts and middlemen to conceal your involvement.

[Tessie]

Unless you have other source for doing Aggravated damage - like Silver against wolves.

The Crúac Ritual Feeding the Crone turns a vampire's bites into 2A attacks. Best used in combination with Frenzy as vampires can initiate grapple by biting when in Frenzy. The drawback is that the vampire can't feed while the Ritual is active (which is for one night or until the vampire spends a Vitae to deactivate it).

[Marcus]

Just a quick list (if you want to stay with just a Physical plan that's not the best choise):

Obfuscate: first hit without considering defense
Aggravate damages (claws)
Protean 4 to have +4 in grapple
Force of nature (easily +5 at strength but with frenzy you can move more dots)
possibly bone of the mountain (ATYoN): + protean to resilence (even for the active effects and any active effect of Vigor and resilence are free)
Vigor/Resilence/celerity
Coil of the wyrm (+BP to Health and Defense)
Frenzy/ride the wave (+BP to everything)
Boost attributes at the max
Go for grapple so that in the second turn you can avoid to use Celerity to get first in initiative and have 1/2 more vitae (if you risk and avoid to use resilence) to spend in boosting strength for a +4 more dice.

That's just for brute force. Then you may adopt more strategies (depending on the disciplines/gifts):

Mist to heal up and feed from the werewolf to full up the vitae pool.
Mist to wait the Gauru transformation ends (then should be much easier - do not read as easy in general)
You can also use Unmarked grave for the same purpose.

also consider that a kindred get much more chance increasing the BP. It's not the case but consider a BP 7 vampire in frenzy: + 7 by default and 5/6 vitae to boost strength for +12-14 dice). With a BP 5 vampire physically oriented you can reach 35-36 attack dice.

But in this way you are not considering a lot of other alternative involving mental disciplines. Also consider that if you manage to bite a werewolf, spending a WP you can inflict the related condition.

In my experience this kind of threads rapidly degenerates XD
As I said, there were a saint guy that made a withe room series of tests fights but I wasn't able to find the thread.

Edit: also consider Animalism 4 to let the pack going crazy against each other but the vampire.

[Poseur]

Well there's a million threads about this already. But in essence, in a white room, low exp Wolf wins all the time, a bit of exp Wolf wins almost every time, a shit-ton of exp and and a Awooo goes away.

So, unless a straight up pack-attack on the vamps, the vamps will attack by proxy and use any mean to their disposal. It kinda depends if it's a long drawned out war or a quick fight etc etc etc.

So tactics usually don't favor vampires unless agg, vampires can win with strategy.
But this is ofc in straight up fighting. Vampires don't like to fight. Instead win by other means, make the werewolves love you with Majesty, show them what fear really is with Nightmare and fuck up their loved ones by manchurian candidate them into killing their loved ones or any other means. Blood bound their pack and get them to attack the wolves.

So much depends on what and everything in between. There's just to much of local politics and who's who and such and such to consider all possible angles of what might actually happen, and what tactics and strategies would be remotely successful. If the vampires have no clues about werewolves, they probably won't stand a chance. If the characters are Ordo Dracul members whom themselves has studied Wooofs for decades they might fucking surprise the Wooofs when the vampires themselves change into Gauru-form.

[tsusasi]

If the vampire has to flee in order to survive, they already lost the fight. The best tactics for vampires to use against werewolves are ones that never allow the werewolves to come face-to-face with the vampires in the first place.

Animalism 4 can be used to have the pack kill each other and while they’re doing that, use Animalism 3 to summon wave after wave of animals to swarm one of them one at a time.
Animalism 5 can be used to prevent them from attacking the vampire even if in Death Rage, allows commands via Feral Infection (Animalism 4) to be unresistable and assigns a -3 penalty to all actions while within those borders uninvited.

If these vampires all have Protean and an army of Dothraki.. I mean ghouls, then actually give their ghouls Protean 2 have them take three predatory aspects that can work in sync with each other such as wings for flight and porcupine quills and equip them with silver tipped arrows, tip the porcupine quills with a fast acting poison and have them proceed to rain silver death.

Claws of the Unholy requires the vampire to be in frenzy, which limits their actions each turn to acts that can directly be stated as fulfilling the frenzy objective.

Silver is cheaper to obtain than Protean for non Gangrel. (It certainly isn’t rare if the default monetary currency are silver and gold coins) It is an exceptionally simple minded and imbecilic vampire that doesn’t have, at minimum, a silver dagger on their person at all times if werewolves are expected.

Protean also costs a lot of vitae to use effectively and regularly. Eating your defenders on a regular basis means you don’t have efficient defenders.

[wyrdhamster]

Guys, beside Disciplines list, nice touche in vamps having silver daggers with them, all the time. It's obvious once you mention it - but really did not cross my mind. Will give silver weapons to my Kindred as they are 'dark cult in middle of nowhere' in Early Middle Ages ( circa year 800 A.D. )

[Marcus]

Can you give more details/stats or px level?
Then, want you the vampires just fight the werewolves or can they use Animalism/Majesty/dominate?

Where the fight is supposed to take place? In a forest? In such case animalism 3 it's a very big weapon (Bears, wolves and flocks of crows - swarm rules are very heavy).

If your purpose is just a brawl/weaponary fight then it's true that low px werewolves have a stake against low px vampires, but such advantage the most px both have the most it decreases till nullify and eventually tip over.
So if you can provide us some more details I can try to tell something more precise.

[nofather]

You'd want one of the abilities to stay up during the day without issues and some sort of shelter system so you aren't stuck in one place during sun-up. Most of the conversations about it seem to ignore that, but here's the vampire thread mentioned in the first post.

01-03-2016

It was before the supplements came out for Vampire or Werewolf, so both have more options and werewolves have lodges like Eaters of the Dead.

[wyrdhamster]

Can you give more details/stats or px level?

After years of Storytelling, I threw out of window all concepts of XP power levels - I gauge them by myself now. So stats that needed to provoke PCs werewolf ( about 10 XP after chargen Uratha ) and not something totally unbeliavable.

Then, want you the vampires just fight the werewolves or can they use Animalism/Majesty/dominate?

Main goal of vampires is stealing one of Wolf-Blooded from Uratha pack amidst of circa 30 vikings team in pre-kingdom nowdays Russia. Vampires want's to snack Wolf-Blooded to have digest it's special Blood for them and their Underworld god.

Using mental Disciplines is all usable - only those are Pijavica proto-Ordo Dracul vamps ( they use variant of Coils themselves ).

Where the fight is supposed to take place?

Pre-kingdom nowdays Russia. It's before any real civilization, it's now collection of Slavic tribes amidst forests and clearings, near lakes and rivers. Really rural setting, deep in forest.

In a forest? In such case animalism 3 it's a very big weapon (Bears, wolves and flocks of crows - swarm rules are very heavy).

Confrontation will probably take place in forest, as it's where vampires resides ( in ground ) and steal people to them. Where are described Swarm Rules to CoD games?

If your purpose is just a brawl/weaponary fight then it's true that low px werewolves have a stake against low px vampires, but such advantage the most px both have the most it decreases till nullify and eventually tip over.

Going over level of 'vampires makes real good problem for Uratha, but not killing them all (maybe one of them, max)'.

[Marcus]

After years of Storytelling, I threw out of window all concepts of XP power levels - I gauge them by myself now. So stats that needed to provoke PCs werewolf ( about 10 XP after chargen Uratha ) and not something totally unbeliavable.



Main goal of vampires is stealing one of Wolf-Blooded from Uratha pack amidst of circa 30 vikings team in pre-kingdom nowdays Russia. Vampires want's to snack Wolf-Blooded to have digest it's special Blood for them and their Underworld god.

Using mental Disciplines is all usable - only those are Pijavica proto-Ordo Dracul vamps ( they use variant of Coils themselves ).



Pre-kingdom nowdays Russia. It's before any real civilization, it's now collection of Slavic tribes amidst forests and clearings, near lakes and rivers. Really rural setting, deep in forest.



Confrontation will probably take place in forest, as it's where vampires resides ( in ground ) and steal people to them. Where are described Swarm Rules to CoD games?



Going over level of 'vampires makes real good problem for Uratha, but not killing them all (maybe one of them, max)'.

Cool. I can see different approaches. Since they are 30 vikings (how many werewolves?) and since they seems to have the initiative I would say the vampire will try to isolate him (and something could go wrong for them). Here some example:

1) Follow the wolf-blooded with obfuscate until he is alone or just at the border of the pack: "A man standing against a tree with a weird but charming smile. He shouldn't be there but before the wold-blooded could ask who he was he vanished like in a dream. Maybe it was just a beautiful dream indeed". At night, while everyone is sleeping, the vampire could summon him (Majesty or Dominate 4). "A compelling, inaudible call, like a siren chant, is demanding him. His eyes wide opened. He left the camp in the silent night, but someone, from the dark, was looking at his weird behavior"

2) Animalism 4: Suddenly, a strong metallic smell fills the air. Canopies of tree shattering and feral cries from the deep of the forest arise. The vikings stare at each other; homicide fury in their eyes, gnashing teeth, hand at the weapon. In an sudden instant everything degenerate in a crazy rage escalation. Mate vs mate, friend vs friend. Everyone, in that chaos, is crazily attaching the other. Wolves, Deer, Rats and flocks of any kind of bird emerge from the forest devouring anyone. The wolf blooded stands in the middle of the chaos but seems no one cares of him (touched using Obfuscate 2).

3) Brute force ambush. A Gangrel staring at the vikings, pending from a tree branch like a spider; yellow, glowing eyes in the dark night. While the pack become aware of that deformed man-animal shaped being, with impossibly long claws and legs bent in the opposite way, from the leaves burst tens of ghouls, ambushing the vikings assisted by the forest animals.

These are just some ideas on which you can work on if you like. If you prefer one on the other tell me and I could furnish you more details.

About the swarm, I use the rules from Demon the descent, where it's specified that, this rules apply to any kind of swarm, even natural one or created by other creatures with similar powers:

(Demon the descent p. 179) Animals of Size 1 are generally best represented by swarms, flocks and other groupings of the animals. Swarms are measured by their radius in yards. A swarm inflicts one point of bashing damage to anyone within its radius. A swarm can inflict more damage by condensing. Every time the swarm condenses to cover half of its full area, it inflicts one additional point of damage per turn.
Therefore, a swarm of eight yards in radius inflicts two bashing damage per turn if it constricts down to a four yard radius, three bashing if it halves that again to a two-yard radius, and four bashing damage per turn it if condensed itself down to a one-yard radius. Though condensing doesn’t usually happen all that often in nature (save in the case of creatures such as killer bees), it is an easy enough thing for a being with supernatural powers to command them to do so.
Armor is effective against a swarm only if it covers one’s full body, but even then it provides only half its rating. In addition, targets are distracted by the swarm, suffering –2 dice on all rolls while they are within the radius, even if they’re not specifically attacked.
Causing the Tilt: The Swarm Exploit can cause this Tilt, as can similar powers from non-demonic sources. The Tilt can occur naturally if someone disturbs a nest of bees.
Ending the Tilt: The swarm cannot be attacked with fists, clubs, swords or guns. Only area-affect attacks such as a torch affect it. Each point of damage inflicted by a flame or other applicable attack halves the swarm’s size. Once the swarm is reduced below a one-yard radius, either all insects are dead or the few remaining disperse.

There is also a version on vampire the requiem, related to a devotion, that it's also stronger but I would say to leave it to the specific user of that devotion:

To activate this devotion, the vampire must spread her Vitae
over an area no larger than a small house or an alleyway. Once
activated, every animal of Size 2 or lower immediately swarms
with the speed and intensity of the vampire’s Celerity and
Vigor (persistent effects only). This includes any vermin, cats,
birds, and insects. They wash over the area, tearing, chewing, and destroying. Everything in the area but the vampire takes
lethal damage equal to the vampire’s Animalism dots each
turn. This ignores any non-magical armor. Characters moving
in the swarm move at half Speed.

In a while I can provide you some vampire example, maybe a coterie of 4-5?

[wyrdhamster]

In a while I can provide you some vampire example, maybe a coterie of 4-5?

Five Pijavica vamps would be great! I was going to stat them, but did not what to do. Thanks for advising.

[Marcus]

Honestly I'm not really aware about Pijavica. I read something about them in a book (can't remember which one) but I'm not very aware what their specialties are supposed to be. Would be normal vamps stats fine as well?

[wyrdhamster]

From what I remember Thousands Years of Night, Pijavica works more or less as Gangrels - with the same Disciplines spread.

EDIT: Checked TYoN - Pijavica trait are those:

• Favored Attributes: Stamina or Wits
• Disciplines: Animalism, Protean, Resilience

Clan Bane is negligible as it's 'momentary' Attributes change that can change with life of vamps. I personally use my own version of Pijavica Clan Bane.

[Live Bait]

You should consider giving them a bloodline so they have easy access to a fourth discipline, going Claws of the Unholy is the best option I can see for harming your players with the three they have at the moment.
That said I'm not read up on 2e Werewolf so I can't really speak with authority on the subject.