u/mbralo

I'm preparing a Werewolf the Forsaken game, my first time touching on Werewolves in CofD and WoD in general, so it's a bit of a learning curve. I'm preparing a broad suite of antagonists for the PCs in the territory, and whoever they take more of an interest in will slowly cycle round to taking a more prominent role in the campaign. (God Machine cultists, Carthians, Pure and an Azoth)

One of these antagonists is the Pure. A Pack of Ivory Claws have been sent to protect a family in town, whom the Claws have "contributed" to over the generations, distilling the essence of Father Wolf in them through decades and centuries. The pack of Claws themselves aren't a problem, I have them mechanically figured out and characterised etc. The bit I'm stuck on, is their Totem.

Pure Totems are said to have a lot more slack than Forsaken Totems, and are often actually in charge of the Pure pack they are attached to. They can be cruel and wicked things, shaped by their packs Resonance etc. So I'm leaning into that. But I'm finding problems with the actual mechanics of the Spirit rules, in that they seem to be telling me to do different things? The supposed power of the Spirit seems to be spread across different parts of their profiles.

Since Spirits don't have skills, their Attribute line is presumably inflated to infer the presence of skills therein. None of the listed Spirits have actual weapons they would use, but i'm guessing they wouldn't use an unarmed attack? Are they just meant to be spamming the Blast numina with some Drain mixed in during an actual fight?

Influence seems to be a bit wishy-washy in its applications and I get the feeling I'm meant to use it more narratively (people get angrier, there's more dogs, more wildfires, whatever) rather than an active "The car-crash spirit uses its rank 3 Influence to conjure and throw a car at you" ability? It's not even said if Influence is a Reflexive, Instant or Extended action anywhere, which means I'm erring towards it being a more Narrative action.

Numina seem to predominantly be about deception and evasiveness, allowing a Spirit to passively spread its Resonance about with things like Aggressive Meme, Dement, Hallucination, Sign etc.

It seems to me that Spirits are all about their Influence, passively using that to hamper efforts to stop them (forest fires! car crashes, depression etc), and all of their Numina exist to make this easier for them to do. If the Uratha make it through those threats, the Spirit has a beefed up statline but not a whole lot else (tricky Numina aside), none of the presented Spirits actually have a weapon or attack outside of Blast to defend themselves with.

This all says to me that Spirits aren't the actual concern and feel like a nuisance rather than a major threat? Spirits are supposedly extremely dangerous to the unprepared, but all of their danger seems to be shoved over to the handwaving sidebar of "Influence is really powerful, trust us bro", and the actual Spirit that will have dice pools and stats exceeding most mortals is just an afterthought? With how much both WoD and CofD love to overexplain and apply game mechanics to narrative effects, why are Spirits so reliant on handwaving? Everything supposedly so dangerous about Spirits is just out-of-sight, and if you can deal with that mess then the actual Spirit itself should fold pretty easily if you scratch and bite it a few times?

My Pure Totem, Sanguine Scourge of Weakness is a rank 3 Spirit of medical bloodletting, middle-ages style. It has:

Influence 3 - Blood

Ban: Flowing blood cannot be hampered by hand or indent.

Bane: Modern/Contemporary blood based medicines (transfers primarily).

It grants the Pack +1 Stamina and a Skill Specialty to any cutting weapon that draws blood. It has a fairly standard suite of Numina and Manifestation effects (Blast, Drain, Regenerate, Possess, Reaching etc). Since the Pack also inherit its Ban, if they are wounded, they have to heal naturally over time (as naturally as Uratha do, anyway). Wounds cannot be treated without incurring the Scourge's wrath.

Given my current contradictory understanding of how I'm actually meant to present and use Spirits, my thinking is that if the PCs engage the Pure Pack in an actual fight, Sanguine Scourge will be a force multiplier. Any time anyone (but especially the PCs) take lethal damage, it will use its Influence to rip blood from their wounds, rapidly escalating any damage into Aggravated and I figure this will override the regular Uratha healing regeneration (unless Willpower and Essence are spent). But if the PCs find out about this Spirit without getting killed by its pack (the actual threat, in my mind), and they can slip into the Hisil, the Spirit is effectively helpless? All it can do is try to run away with its 12 Power because when the Wolves come knocking, it may as well be wet toilet paper?

I'm in the early stages of preparing my and my players first Forsaken game. I've run Vigil and I've run a lot of Requiem over the years, but Forsaken (and Werewolf in general) is new to me. The game has a lot of jargon that I wasn't entirely prepared for, so some of these are mechanical questions while others are more about the general setting and plan for the campaign.

For mechanics;

Spirit Magic, Pg 114 notes that at character creation you gain a single Moon Gift associated with your Auspice. Each Auspice has one Moon Gift associated with it, makes sense. Then in the same paragraph it says that you may discover other Auspices associated with your Auspice for 5XP, but there are only Moon Gifts equal to the number of Auspices presented and each explicitly starts with "This Gift is only available to X Auspice". Is that meant to be ignored if you pay the 5XP, or are there splatbooks for 1e that offer additional Moon Gifts that I've not read yet?

How often am I meant to be handing out Renown? The examples given seem as though a player could reasonably accomplish one or two a session if they're busy. That's tethered by the amount of XP they have of course, but how are the two meant to co-exist? Should a player just always set aside 3XP to cash in a deed for renown? There's a sidebar outlining different approaches, but it seems very ungainly to me? Renown is a strong narrative descriptor and reflection of your deeds, but it doesn't count for anything unless you invest XP? XP you would have invested into other skills, merits etc to even accomplish the deeds that would earn that Renown? Am I reading too much into this, or is XP the real limit on your Renown and not the actual deeds?

Totems. All the CofD books I've read seem to generally frame the PCs group as relatively established characters, with sidebars for fresh-converts. I want this campaign to have the PCs be brand new Uratha, forming their own pack and figuring out things for themselves with not a lot of oversight from tribe elders and the like. This means that I'd like them to find a Totem early in the campaign, as part of their first hunt even. It'd still be built in character creation, but how does a Totem actually become bound to the pack? Is it a negotiation of sponsorship, threatened and coerced? I don't know how to actually run this bit.

For the campaign itself;

Mid 1980s in south-east England for our timeframe. A moot of the various tribes is called for some sacred festival or other. The PCs are in attendance as new Uratha, their current packs are offering the new blood up as a new pack. The PCs can interact, speak with a few pack Elders etc. A big ritual is held and Siskur Dah is called, the PCs are given their target. The target is their Totem. The PCs will have to find it, go into the Hisil and earn its patronage (see above).

While this is happening, packs of Fire-Touched Pure will attend the moot. They are unwelcome, and despite their best intentions, blood is spilled. The PCs return from their hunt to find the Moot almost empty. There are few survivors, many Uratha taken prisoner. The PCs are the last pack left standing in East Anglia, and they're as green as can be. The Pure run wild. This is the first strike of the Brethren War in the UK.

This part, I would appreciate clarification on. My current thinking is that a prophet of the Fire-Touched is following some disturbed prophecy granted by their mad wolf patron (I forget his name right now), and believes that if she can spread disease and flame, then this wolf shall return and usher in Pangea. This prophecy is actually an Idigam, currently formless but reflecting back the desires of those about it. In a feedback loop, the Idigam will eventually Coalesce as a being of disease and flame. The campaign will have two primary antagonists, this Prophet and her mad god the Idigam.

The PCs will inherit vast swathes of East Anglia, with no Forsaken to claim them, the Pure descend. There are wolf-blooded and other pack-members who survived the purge, and the Pure will hunt them mercilessly, as well as those due to undergo their First Change. Finding these surviving pack members, and rescuing Uratha taken by the Pure, will allow the PCs to uncover information about the Pure and better combat them. The campaign presents the PCs with a large area of enemy territory, populated by various packs of Pure and other threats (whatever the PCs want to hunt really) and invites them to carve their own territory and avenge the fallen. The picture attached is the first area, sort of a tutorial for both me and the players with one pack of the Pure. It's about 270km or 100 square miles with natural borders (the River Crouch to the north, the coast to the east and the River Thames to the south) so it feels pretty safe.

How does that sound for a framing device? Any and all feedback is welcome.