Okay, first things first: wow, what great discussion on that last post. You guys are doing Werewolf proud. Obviously, not every concern there can be addressed (and to point out said obvious, because some of them are diametrically opposed), but it’s a mass of information that our authors have to work with.

Care to give them a little more?

One of the things that’s been evident as you put together a big pile of Werewolf is that the Gifts are a lot more asymmetrical than Disciplines are. Because they don’t follow a strict progression with one power per level, but rather are treated as lists of options from which one chooses freely, over the years new Gifts arose as accumulation. You didn’t have to add five new Gifts in a Tribebook: you could add three, or seven. It would take a remarkable coincidence for all the tribes to wind up with the same number of Gifts, much less the same number of Gifts at each level. And tragically, said coincidence didn’t take place.

(I know, right? It would have been great.)

As a result, one of the things we want to do is make those lists overall a bit more symmetrical. Make sure that every breed, auspice and tribe has roughly (though perhaps still not exactly) the same number of Gifts as their brethren. In a few cases, this may mean making some new Gifts; most of the time, though, it means choosing obscure Gifts to bring forward and make more relevant, or in the case of a group that has a few too many Gifts, choosing the more obscure ones to leave out.

Which leads us to the question: What Gifts are–

No, wait. If we’re doing this, let’s go all the way. What Gifts, rites, fetishes and totems are things that you would hate to see go? If it’s a choice between three obscure tribal Gifts in a Dark Ages book, which one is the leader? Which are the fetishes that just have to be in there? Which are the obscure rites that are critical to the game’s feel even if at present they need to be mechanically more compelling for anyone to use them? And heck, if you’ve got some criticism of obscure Gifts, rites, fetishes or totems that don’t need to be revisited, we can accept that too, though obviously the real question is what positives to include.

For the purposes of this question, assume that everything in the core book is good. It’ll be in there. But we have a lot of supplements out there. Multiple editions of some supplements, like Umbra: The Velvet Shadow and Umbra.

What is the stuff that we dare not forget?

So the authors are rummaging around in the guts of Werewolf like a bunch of Theurges who just figured out that haruspicy is a pretty fun way to get your divination on. A lot of discussion is flying back and forth about what to change, what is far too legacy to get rid of, and so on. Want to see some guts? Let’s see some guts, torn from writer commentary, and then I’d like to see what you think.

Ability Changes:  Some notables here. It was pointed out that Leadership was a Skill in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, but a Talent in Werewolf and Mage. The proposed plan we’re looking at is:

* Talents loses Dodge, but gains Leadership. (“Dodge” was moved into Awareness for V20; it might be taken under Athletics for werewolves, which seems apt.)

* Skills loses Leadership, but gains Larceny. (Larceny is a useful Skill, especially for Ragabash and some tribes, that doesn’t have a good equivalent. Some Ragabash Gifts would do well to roll Larceny rather than Stealth.)

* Knowledges loses Linguistics, gains Technology. (Basically following V20′s lead.)

Backgrounds: Not all Background restrictions are very loved, despite being an old tradition. As Matt McFarland puts it, “Bone Gnawers not have Pure Breed, OK, makes sense. Glass Walkers not getting Mentor? Um…why? Options are better than restrictions, any day.”

This was counterpointed by Holden Shearer: “Some of the restrictions make sense, I think– lack of Pure Breed for some tribes, lack of Ancestors for the Silent Striders– but the social ones have always been weird… I mean, are Bone Gnawers incapable of rifling through the wallets of dead fomori? Does Rat destroy any money or stolen credit cards they scrounge up?”

Now, I may operate with a pretty wide-reaching hand on this issue. What do you think?

Gifts: Some changes here. A good example is making sure that some Gifts are the same level in all lists. Name the Spirit is the example here: level two for Theurges, level three for lupus. Yet:

“Cost for a lupus to buy the Gift out of his own list: 9xp. But he has to wait till Level Three.
Cost for a lupus to buy the Gift as a Theurge Gift: 10xp. But he can get it at Level Two.

Is 1xp worth of savings worth it to a lupus to wait a whole rank? Worse, that’s just the XP differential for that particular range– there are plenty of matchups where the earlier Gift could be cheaper to buy at ‘un-favored’ cost in addition to being available earlier.”

This is what happens when you hire writers who do math. So, expect some alterations to the Gift lists.

Rites: “Does anyone have any strong objections to me just burning the Rite of Caern Building to the ground and starting over from scratch, system-wise? I just ran the math on the thing and even with the best dice pool possible, the chances of ever successfully executing it to create even a lv1 caern are less than 0.1%. I know it’s supposed to be hard, but Jesus.”

I don’t have much to add to this. If your experiences were counter, though, I’d love to hear about them.

Spirit Combat:There are two sets of rules: pre-Revised, and Revised/Dark Ages. Here’s a plan: “I was going to go with the post-errata Revised rules, so the difficulty to damage a spirit is Rage -2, and we don’t have so many spirits with Rage 10. However, variable difficulties on the damage roll is a bad idea because it stops the damage roll being universal.

“So what I’m currently thinking: Garou use their physical traits in spirit combat, just like Revised. Spirits attack with Willpower, use Rage for damage, and soak with Willpower. The difficulty of the damage roll is fixed at 6.”

So, those are a few examples of the rules changes and tweaks we’re considering. Naturally, we still want Werewolf to feel like the sweet spot around 2nd edition, with the best parts of 1st edition and Revised incorporated. But sometimes the changes go a little further, and naturally we’re cool with feedback on what goes too far and what is highly welcome.

Guts Talk Welcome: In the comments for this post I encourage you to leave your own commentary and findings on what you’ve discovered as you’ve rummaged around in the rules for Werewolf. I assure you we are big kids and can take it if you point out flaws: we fully acknowledge that our math was often… less than rigorously applied, and that speed bumps arose as a consequence. Just as we acknowledge that often our cultural stereotypes could get a bit out of hand…

Actually, that’s another topic entirely, and I’ll talk about it next time. Until then, strew the guts, people. There’s a few lovely omens in those loops of viscera if you’re willing to dig.