Gauru form too strong?

[Shadowdragon]

I'm struggling to find some drawback that helps balance the massive buffs Gauru form gives to a werewolf. It lasts forever (even the lowest durations last longer than any combat I've ever run in my 7+ years of running Chronicles of Darkness), it doesn't cost anything, and it makes the character much more powerful and nearly unkillable. I don't see why you wouldn't use it in every combat you go into. Maybe if it only lasted a turn or two, or you could only use it once per game day, or it cost willpower every turn, or something, but as it is it just rubs me the wrong way. Has anyone else found this? Has anyone come up with good house rules that help make gauru form a bit less of an auto use all the time ability? I'm guessing there hasn't been any official errata on gauru form.

[21C Hermit]

Don’t remember the exact rules ATM, but Gauru also throws you into rage, during which you break everything and everyone, including anything you like/adore/love. And you can be led into a trap by clever and resourceful hunters, in which you will not be happy when you finally get a hold of yourself. So it’s not always the best option to run with.

[Tessie]

The Gauru Rage, the risk for Death Rage, as well as the once per scene limit for safe usage are the main limits.

On top of that, you could always use antagonists that have tactics for dealing with Gauru (stalling and/or keeping out of reach works great for letting Gauru lapse or go into uncontrolled rage where the werewolf can be redirected to others).

[Newb95]

Gauru has plenty of drawbacks, you can only use it once per scene and up to your hishu form stamina plus primal urge (which means that if you take it when you are out of reach you are going to waste it), for most characters this is 4 or 5 turns, and if you do anything else but attacking something or someone you have to roll and if you fail then it's kuruth time which is a massive problem, especially if you are near people, also while it does make werewolves very powerful, it has diminishing returns in the long run since you are going to face spirits that are far more powerful than you, werewolves who default to gauru to rip and tear don't live long, it is something that must be used when it's the killing time not before.

It is also worth mentioning that gauru doesn't increase your defense that much and short of a few gifts, werewolves don't have many long range options, this means that possessed hosts with silver bullets can and will end you before you can reach them if you are not careful, hunters who know about uratha in particular will purposefuly bait werewolves to leave them defenseless, gauru is a massive advantage for werewolves but it doesn't make them unkillable.

There is also the fact that CofD isn't the world of darkness, werewolves going on rampages and stacking bodies left and right will raise questions, gauru can easily lead to kuruth and if you let your players get away with butchering a shopping mall worth of people because they carelessly took gauru to fight that rank 2 flunkie then you are doing it wrong, the consequences of an hunt can be dire and long lasting and your players should always keep that in mind.

[ArcaneArts]

I'm struggling to find some drawback that helps balance the massive buffs Gauru form gives to a werewolf. It lasts forever (even the lowest durations last longer than any combat I've ever run in my 7+ years of running Chronicles of Darkness), it doesn't cost anything, and it makes the character much more powerful and nearly unkillable. I don't see why you wouldn't use it in every combat you go into. Maybe if it only lasted a turn or two, or you could only use it once per game day, or it cost willpower every turn, or something, but as it is it just rubs me the wrong way. Has anyone else found this? Has anyone come up with good house rules that help make gauru form a bit less of an auto use all the time ability? I'm guessing there hasn't been any official errata on gauru form.

Why wouldn't you use it in every combat? What, are you always trying to kill anyone and everyone who feels like they have to bodily stand against you?

EDIT: I really need to do that combat thread.

[Heavy Arms]

Also:

"Too strong" is a comparative construction. Too strong for what? Compared to what? In what context? What is the baseline that you want Gauru to be lined up against to confirm that appropriateness of its levels of strength?

[Serpent Axis]

No, it's not "too strong".

A werewolf chronicle likely provides an array of adversaries for the werewolves which is composed, at least in part, of incredibly powerful entities.
Take a peek in the Prey chapter and have a good read of the Horrors and Wonders chapter in the Chronicles of Darkness book.

That's what werewolves were designed to contend with, and that's why the nerf hammer needs to stay the fuck away from Gauru form.

Don't be afraid of moments where the PCs get to demonstrate just how powerful and terrifying they can be when compared with regular mortals or lesser adversaries. There's plenty of powerful stuff that can threaten a pack.

Also, it's the Chronicles of Darkness. It's okay to be "too strong" every now and again. Being "too strong" can be a source of horror for the characters and players as well as the storyteller characters.
A werewolf entering Gauru at an inopportune moment and falling into Kuruth can result in a lot of regret for the werewolf when she comes out of it and looks at the corpse of a loved one or a bystander.

You play monsters here.
Monsters should be scary.

[Serpent Axis]

Another point in relation to what I said earlier: it's also ok to let the players be powerful every now and again, and not always with obligatory horror or fallout.

In the Chronicles of Darkness, we get to play monsters and powerful characters. Those monsters have a lot of problems they contend with, they have enemies - powerful enemies - and face dangers that most action heroes would soil themselves over.
But power is part of the appeal here.

You didn't just choose to play a werewolf because you thought that's how you'll get the biggest boot on your neck all game. You wanted to play werewolf because you also want, every now and again, to pin a motherfucker to the wall and give him a growl full of fangs and fur that makes the sorry bastard wet himself.

They're powerful? Let them.
Let them be powerful.

Let the vampire player get ambushed by an entire street gang and their mother, only for the same player to then make the leader her bitch just by looking into his eyes.

Let the demon player dispatch an entire SWAT team like something out of Equilibrium or the Matrix.

Let them be powerful and give them their moments of unbridled, supernatural power.
It's part of the appeal of the game, part of the reason they're playing Werewolf and not Call of Cthulhu. It's their brand of horror, where sometimes the source of the horror is the players themselves.

Trust me, there's enough challenges and powerful enemies in any CofD chronicle to go around. In my opinion, it's like a rollercoaster - and every rollercoaster should have highs as well as lows.

[Newb95]

Another point in relation to what I said earlier: it's also ok to let the players be powerful every now and again, and not always with obligatory horror or fallout.

In the Chronicles of Darkness, we get to play monsters and powerful characters. Those monsters have a lot of problems they contend with, they have enemies - powerful enemies - and face dangers that most action heroes would soil themselves over.
But power is part of the appeal here.

You didn't just choose to play a werewolf because you thought that's how you'll get the biggest boot on your neck all game. You wanted to play werewolf because you also want, every now and again, to pin a motherfucker to the wall and give him a growl full of fangs and fur that makes the sorry bastard wet himself.

They're powerful? Let them.
Let them be powerful.

Let the vampire player get ambushed by an entire street gang and their mother, only for the same player to then make the leader her bitch just by looking into his eyes.

Let the demon player dispatch an entire SWAT team like something out of Equilibrium or the Matrix.

Let them be powerful and give them their moments of unbridled, supernatural power.
It's part of the appeal of the game, part of the reason they're playing Werewolf and not Call of Cthulhu. It's their brand of horror, where sometimes the source of the horror is the players themselves.

Trust me, there's enough challenges and powerful enemies in any CofD chronicle to go around. In my opinion, it's like a rollercoaster - and every rollercoaster should have highs as well as lows.

I couldn't agree more, I will also add that Werewolf is also a game about feeling powerful, you are a monster designed to hunt and kill gods, you are supposed to be the one with the biggest dick in the room, the problems and the horror of the game are in the aftermath because realistically, there aren't that many occasions where you will be seriously threatened, I mean yes, rank 5 spirits will wipe the floor with the pack if you are not careful but most of the time, you will be dealing with things far more manageable.

Human hunters will be a joke for the most part (yeah, silver bullets are much more common in real life and can be bought online but you are not supposed to throw silver at your players like candy anyway) and spirits will go down similarly easy if you do your research, which is actually what most of the game will be about, you are an hunter, you will spend most of your time investigating events that might or might not involve spirits, you will search for clues, look at crime scenes and do honest to god detective work most of the time then, after you think you will have gathered enough clues, you will hit the books (methaporical or literal ones) and start researching about that one particular spirit that is fucking up your territory, you will look for it's weaknesses, it's strengths and whether or not it has allies, you will go on until you literally know life, death and miracles about your fucking prey, then, at that point, you start making a plan, you isolate your prey, cut it off from it's support network, remove it's ability to fight back, leave it at it's most vulnerable, you will chase and harry it until it can no longer stand up, until that one moment it will know how incredibly fucked it truly is, then you go gauru and it is over in seconds.

As you can see, gauru will only come up at the end and it won't last more than a couple of turns at most which is by design, werewolf is a lot more than go gauru and rip and tear, you are the ultimate predator and should act like one, the horror comes when you fuck up the hunting part of the game and end up ripping apart a young girl you thought it was an host and have to watch her while she chokes on her own blood and with her guts hanging out because you were too much of an incompetent fuck to properly identify your prey or when you lose control during an hunt and the world goes black only to wake up and find out that you killed a few wolf blooded members of your pack, gauru will not save you from this stuff.

[Professor Phobos]

Even in gauru form being outnumbered or up against heavy weapons is a tricky prospect. The system is very hard on the outnumbered character; multiple gunmen focusing fire on the same target can overwhelm the gauru form's healing surprisingly fast.

[Heavy Arms]

It is worth putting an asterisk on that because "nameless mook brigade" vs. "squad of experienced monster-hunters" is a huge difference when it comes to overwhelming Gauru with numbers. Harshest Lunacy, Primal Fear, and full defense against firearms makes Gauru fairly resistant to trying to wear down with a horde of mooks: a lot of them are going to lose their nerve and run, and forcing them into Down & Dirty roll offs helps counter the system's bias towards numerical superiority. A squad of hunters that are going to have the stats to resist Lunacy, not be too hindered by the increased defense and small penalty to their actions, and aren't stuck dealing with Down & Dirty are going to easily win out over Gauru form's regeneration and raw stat boosts.

The difficult part about any idea of addressing "too strong" is that this is a narrative differentiation rather than a mechanical one. The hunters don't need radically better stats than the mooks, just the narrative weight of being serious foes.

[Professor Phobos]

The difficult part about any idea of addressing "too strong" is that this is a narrative differentiation rather than a mechanical one. The hunters don't need radically better stats than the mooks, just the narrative weight of being serious foes.

Yup, that about covers it pretty well. It's actually in a pretty good place, I think - a SWAT team has a reasonable chance of coming out on top, or at least with a few survivors, and the National Guard can probably put you down in a pinch, but Gauru form is absolutely no joke against anyone not very heavily armed or ready for werewolves.

[Lashet]

How does it lasts forever, if your typical werewolf-newbie with Stamina 2-3 aand PU 1 can keep ot only at 3-4 turns.
Anyway, pretty mich every splat has it's own broken tricks. Vampires have barely unlimited Bloodbounds, Changellings can run away into the Hedge., etc. etc.

[maryshelly]

I think the Garou warform is one of the most innovative features in roleplaying and has sparked debate since the game was released. Oceans of ink have been used on this topic.

Yes, the Garou form is extremely powerful, how is it a curse? The threat of Kuruth takes away agency from the player. You are basically giving the car keys to a raging monster. We can explore ideas such as causing it aggravated damage, evading Kuruth, the consequences of Kuruth, and how it can violate the Oath of the Moon.

Causing Damage.

There are numerous cases of how heavy weapons can cause enough damage to "roll over" and fill the track with aggravated damage. Arm 12 humans (cultists...claimed...hunters...ghouls...etc) with automatic rifles and you can probably destroy an entire pack in Kuruth in 1 roll. Look at the devourer hound in the prey section and one can challenge an Uratha, while 3 or 4 can probably destroy the war form in a few short rounds. A level 2 spirit can pump up his stats to a degree that 3 of them can roll over lethal to aggravated quite quickly.

This is before looking at vulnerabilities like silver. I reckon $20.00 can buy on ounce of silver shot to put in a shotgun. Arm 10 hunters (ghouls, cultists...) and you have a major issue to face. Remember also that uratha can cause aggravated damage by eating essence so remember that when facing the Predator Kings.

[maryshelly]

Evading Kuruth

if you can't cause damage, just run away until the timer ends. Various powers include turning to mist, amplifying speed, running up a wall, melting into the earth, flying away, dematerializing, etc. I would imagine a spirit in twilight can just watch and materialize after the carnage. Alternatively, you send a wave of expendable flunkies on a suicide mission to provoke Kuruth (cultists, claimed, ghouls, followers...) and then move in after the Kuruth ends

Consequences

If a packmate succumbs to Kuruth, does the pack follow him ( potentially dooming the pack) or restrain him? Imagine an Uratha trying to fight the war form without succumbing, that would be a scary battle. I think about the final episode of Witcher Blood oath which shows a pack dealing with a pack member who fell into rage.

Oath of the Moon

Finally, Kuruth can lead to violations such as killing other Uratha, eating human flesh, or exposing the People to humans. One of the hunting grounds in the main book is Tokyo. Can an Uratha go into Kuruth in Tokyo and not be noticed? Doing a sloppy job of keeping the herd ignorant can expose Uratha to hunters not only in your region, but globally with the advent of global media.

Much more can be explored on this topic. This is just a brief thesis