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Raendyn
2010-09-21, 05:50 AM
Yeah,someone changed the subject :)

Well, i am gona join a nWoD game where we will all be mortals that will find out they are werewolves!It's an urban fantasy / Horror, campaign.

I have played geist & changeling before but it seems werewolves have their own spell system.(i can hardly call it system, its so... unorganized)

To get to my point,we are an "Auspicious" party. my future werewolf is a Rahu/Bloodtallon. (tribe can change,auspice can't). I was thinking to take my full moon gifts, & inspiration gifts to start. & later dominance & after that i'll see... ( i had not the time to brainsap my shelf with werewolf books)

If any1 is familiar with nWoD & Werewolves plx add a comment on my "wanna be" build. & add any suggestion.Just for the record i am allowed to use any wod book.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Fouredged Sword
2010-09-21, 08:41 AM
What do you want your character to do with the powers you get. The roll of person who kills everything is less needed in werewolf becuse everyone can kill everything.

That being said there are options. The best combat power comes from the luna gifts. The last power is killer and is hard for anything to stop. The ability to do ag damage with your claws at low power levels is also powerful if you don't mind the harmony loss. This set is very useful if you take the wolf form fighting style that got printed somewhere.

Otherwise look at getting into the lodge of arms with a powerful klave weapon. It is easy to push your attack rolls into the 10-20 die range.

Selrahc
2010-09-21, 01:59 PM
The ability to do ag damage with your claws at low power levels is also powerful if you don't mind the harmony loss.

It's uh... pretty horrible. Doing aggravated damage to werewolves alone, and causing your harmony to plummet to levels where you are dangerously insane in no time. And what's more.. it is basically the equivalent of buying a silver dagger! Scraping together the cash to buy a small easily concealable silver weapon, or spending 15xp on the same thing is not a tough choice. If you really don't care about the social stigma or the dangerous insanity then just buy a weapon.


Otherwise look at getting into the lodge of arms with a powerful klave weapon. It is easy to push your attack rolls into the 10-20 die range.

If the original post is right, then they are going to find out they are werewolves in play. Joining lodges is a bit advanced for a starting character.




One of the things I find helpful in creating werewolf characters is specialities. Survival (Shapeshifting) or Weaponry (Dalu) can make a character better able to contribute without wasting character points. Taking at least a single dot of survival is almost mandatory for werewolves to reliably change shape in combat. A speciality in your chosen combat form(probably Dalu or Urshul) is also handy, as you'll be doing most of the more dangerous fighting in that form.

Heavy optimization isn't really needed to be able to contribute in combat. It's a good idea to take a few other skills to a decent level, as the game probably won't be massively combat based.

If you're going for a relatively combat focussed build then this is all that is needed to form the core of a melee combat character

Attributes:
Strength 3
Dex 2
Stamina 3
And for skills either:
Weaponry 3-4 (Specialities in Dalu form combat, and for whatever your primary weapon is, probably something good but easily concealable, a chain, an ice pick, a machete or a knife of some sort. Maybe a staff if you don't mind doing bashing)
Brawl 1
or
Brawl 3-4 (Speciality in Urshul form combat)


That gives you around 11-12(L) dice to roll in combat without using willpower which is pretty deadly, as well as 10-11 health coupled with werewolf regen to keep you safe. That core design will mean you will be able to contribute handily to almost any combat, enough to be the one of the primary attackers. You want to screw around with proper optimizing(Using a proper melee weapon rather than an easily concealed one, boosting strength to 4 at the expense of stamina, adding another dot of either weaponry or brawl, getting a Klaive, investing in one of the fighting style merits) and you could definitely get more powerful, but this is a no fuss approach that keeps you useful but lets you flesh out your character beyond that.


Gifts wise, I don't think there is anything that is really must have that makes you that much better in combat, available early on. There are some nice gifts available to you however. Luna's Dictum is really handy. Crushing Blow is great if you went for a bashing weapon, or are brawling outside of Urshul or Gauru. Mask of rage can be good for scaring off strong willed humans while sticking in Dalu or Human form and Partial Change is a good all around gift.

Raendyn
2010-09-22, 05:58 AM
thank you for your advices guys.

As Selrahc said. i don't think silver fangs is something i will go after..
As Rahu bloodtallon, i am some kind of leadership portrait in my pack. i am the guy that will go in the first line so my siblings won't get hurt,shelf sacrifice is my concept.

Also my ST did not allowed more than 3 dots anywhere. ( although i convinced him to let me have 4 presence so i can get inspiring merrit)

i am a guy that plays guitar at bars at night. i also have some connections with some not-so-good people.i have univercity degree & master on musicology & guitar.I am also the guy that would easily kill a packmate if he caught him doing mean things.3/5 packmates have justice as Virtue & we are good overall,(as good as can be in the World of Darkness.)

the campaign has all the dezignens of nWoD mages, Vampires, Geists
but our main enemies are the Pure & some Crazy spirits. or so our ST told us as guidlines.& our goal is to establish a territory, expand it & set up our dominion.we are gona play for at least a year & we will reach 150-200 xp. thats the main reason i am not cahalith bloodtallon, because i will have only 1 affinity renown, & i will be left behind in renowns after 2-3 months, because of the xp cost.

we won't be much combat oriented as a pack, that my role.i was thinking of goind dalu with 2 weapon fighting & 2 fetish (1 greater- 1 grand)
But since i saw the wolf only fighting style i will reconsider my desicion.

Where is the lodge of arms? i only know grotto doors & wrath.

Yuki Akuma
2010-09-22, 06:05 AM
All nWoD splats have different 'spell' systems. Werewolves are actually pretty good - they can pick and choose any gift they qualify for. Other splats have to buy lower level powers before higher ones, but the wolfies don't really.

Well, Prometheans can buy any Transmutation they like, too, but it's more expensive if they don't get the lower-level ones first.

(I have no idea how Changelings work, though.)

Project_Mayhem
2010-09-22, 06:24 AM
Changelings buy in order

*drops out again cause knows nothing really about WW*

Kesnit
2010-09-22, 07:20 AM
All nWoD splats have different 'spell' systems. Werewolves are actually pretty good - they can pick and choose any gift they qualify for.

This is one of my pet peeves in Werewolf. Qualification is based on renown, which means you cannot just buy the dots as you get the XP. You have to do something to earn them. On the surface, this may not seem bad. However, it makes planning out a character very difficult (unless you have an ST willing to work with you) because you cannot plan which renown you will get. If your character concept is based on (say) Wisdom, but the ST keeps pushing everyone at Honor, your character is just not going to work.

Jornophelanthas
2010-09-22, 07:47 AM
This is one of my pet peeves in Werewolf. Qualification is based on renown, which means you cannot just buy the dots as you get the XP. You have to do something to earn them. On the surface, this may not seem bad. However, it makes planning out a character very difficult (unless you have an ST willing to work with you) because you cannot plan which renown you will get. If your character concept is based on (say) Wisdom, but the ST keeps pushing everyone at Honor, your character is just not going to work.

I own, but have never played Werewolf: the Forsaken. I do play and ST other World of Darkness systems. Rereading the section on gaining renown, I believe the Storyteller is actually required to work with you to some degree.

While it is true that the story events may push the players into certain renown categories (if indeed they are willing to spend XP on those), if a player wants to develop a different renown type, he/she should be allowed to do so by small non-story acts and attitudes, i.e. through roleplaying. The Storyteller should not block this kind of roleplaying, but indeed offer the player an opportunity to actually make an impact, renown-wise.

If, to use your example, a player wants to develop Wisdom in an Honor-heavy plotline, the player should try to act out logical thinking and detached curiousity, and should try to contribute meaningfully to any spirit encounters (which could be created by summoning and bargaining with spirits). The Storyteller should give players room for such developments, by playing out these side-plots and having them contribute (however tangently) to the main plot. Similarly, a Glory-hound could try looking for trouble, and the Storyteller should facilitate this by allowing the player to find trouble significant enough for a Glory increase.

Still, success by the players is not guaranteed. If the Wisdom-seeker fails to solve the puzzle laid out by the spirits, or if the Glory-seeker fails to pick up signs that a dangerous threat is hiding at spot X, no renown increase is warranted.

A good Storyteller should be able to plan for such events and execute them either in such a way to incorporate all players, or to take little game time. A Storyteller who goes "There is only Honor in my story, so tough luck" is not a very good one, in my opinion.

Reluctance
2010-09-22, 08:27 AM
All nWoD splats have different 'spell' systems. Werewolves are actually pretty good - they can pick and choose any gift they qualify for. Other splats have to buy lower level powers before higher ones, but the wolfies don't really.

Well, Prometheans can buy any Transmutation they like, too, but it's more expensive if they don't get the lower-level ones first.

Werewolves also pay more if they take higher level gifts before the basic ones, plus they can't buy any gift with a rank higher than their highest renown. For the record, the system assumes that players can boost renown any time they have the XP and a friendly ritualist handy. ST veto only comes in if they've flagrantly violated the respective code, just like the ST can veto raising any trait that the player has been actively undermining.

OP, I'd suggest doing what the "start as a human" games primarily focus on. Ask yourself what sort of mortal would be interesting to play. Characters in play tend to be a little different than the concepts you started out with, so get a feel for that personality first. Decide which supernatural line and politics fits you best after the dynamic has been established.

Selrahc
2010-09-22, 04:49 PM
As Rahu bloodtallon, i am some kind of leadership portrait in my pack. i am the guy that will go in the first line so my siblings won't get hurt,self sacrifice is my concept.

Sounds like a Storm Lord to me really. They're more about being inspiring, self sacrificing leaders. Blood Talons are more fighters and tacticians than generals. It's not a firm thing though. I just think it sounds more Storm Lord if that is the concept you're going with.



For the record, the system assumes that players can boost renown any time they have the XP and a friendly ritualist handy

And they get a free gift of that level too unless I'm misremembering.

There is an awful lot of hoops the GM can make you jump through if they want to. Technically each gift you learn must be taught to you by a spirit, who you need to hunt down and bargain with in a separate interaction, as well as spending xp.

We never really did that. Possibly because our first quest as a pack was hunting down and befriending our totem, and more quests like that would have gotten samey fast.


Where is the lodge of arms? i only know grotto doors & wrath.

It's in Lodges: The Faithful. But it's an Iron Master lodge, so a Blood Talon joining would be really unusual. It's got some pretty easy mechanical requirements to meet (Occult 2, Firearms or Weaponry 3) and it gives you a substantial boost to your fighting capacity with your signature weapon and gives you a network of some of the best klaive crafters in the world to rely on. It also makes you into some kind of freaky weapon fetishist.


Lodges in general I would leave to the storyteller to introduce. They can be a pretty major part of the backstory and politics of the setting, so he'll probably have some around for you to pick from.