r/WhiteWolfRPG

Art by xKokobael!

An art piece I commissioned for my amazing friend of his character!

Damian Hawke! A Toreador Private Investigator!

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 made some npcs for a wta5 campaign im making for me and my irl buddies!

On the left we got Heather "Silent Leap" Brooks who is a Gaillard Silent Strider
Notes I have on her character:

"Before turning Heather was naturally spiritual. She was the typical girl to have tarot decks and gemstones and incense, but deep down maybe she knew that was never truly "spiritual", ya know?

Now in the state of Oregon you got your usual assistance for spiritual journeys, which of course can include shrooms(depending on the person you hit up), marijuana and the like.

Heather likes to say that her calling to Gaia came to her while on a spiritual journey (tripping on shrooms) which turned into a bad trip considering her sober buddy, her girlfriend Mildred (Millie) Wheeler at the time, ended up making her bad trip worse when attempting to calm her down. This resulted in Heather turning Crinos and ripping off Millie's arm.

Millie is alive, but has intense PTSD. She believes she was a victim of a bear attack. While Heather believes that Millie didn't deserve to get hurt, she had received her calling from Gaia. A "necessary evil" if you will.

Millie remains Heather's touchstone. She lies about the attack, and tries to help her when she needs it."

Other things on Heather: Her design is lightly inspired by Nikki from Obsession.

On the right we have Shadow "Loyal Mutt" who is a wolf born Philodox Gale Stalker

Former K9 of the police department (of whatever town the setting takes place)

Believes he is judge jury and executioner

Believes he knows and has the right to choose what human is good and what is bad

Impulsive, quick to act

How he turned: "Shadow's handler, Officer Chris Hazelton was attempting to apprehend a criminal who was a serial arsonist who was burning down his house attempting a murder suicide with his 2 children. Amidst the struggle between his handler and the criminal, Shadow saw Chris get attacked by the criminal and get engulfed in flames, causing him to turn. The squad car he was held in was burst open, half of the car rendered unrecognizable due to the shredded door and roof of the vehicle, and having charging in now in war form Shadow ripped the criminal in half before disappearing into the flames before running off into the wooded area behind the burning house.

Other officers who witnessed the transformation, who now are in a state of delirium from the brutality of their coworkers injury and the sudden beast bursting from seemingly no where are on permanent work leave due to the insanity a human seeing a werewolf can cause."

Notes on Shadow:

Shadow's deed name is "Loyal Mutt". While "Mutt" is used as an insult, Shadow does not mind it. He did after all think he was a dog for the majority of his life before he turned.

Shadow's origins are that he is about 75% wolf, his mother being a pure wolf and his father being a wolf dog. Shadow is often shamed for his bloodline but his actions often speak louder than the insults thrown at him.

After all, his deed name is true: he is indeed loyal. He earned it for protecting the Caern for 3 days and 3 nights with no sleep, slaughtering all that tried to harm the Caern during the moot.

2nd image is Heather's Lupus form!

I hope you guys enjoy the art and stuff! I'm still a bit new to WoD as this is my first time writing a campaign for any table top game and I'm constantly researching the lore. If you guys have any input or just regular comments feel free to let me know!

Just got my copy of mage, now all I’ve got to do is track down a reasonably priced VTM copy haha