Scouts and spies, tricksters and clowns; Ragabash Garou have many names for themselves, but the most traditional is perhaps "Questioner of the Ways." The Garou call upon those born beneath the New Moon to investigate the secrets of the world, both gathering intelligence on enemies and revealing the foibles of those who serve Gaia.
- Duties: Gather information on enemy activity, and discover new incursions of the Wyrm's corruption. Investigate wrongdoing among the Garou and bring evidence before the Philodox for judgment. Ask questions that challenge others' habitual ways of thinking. Mock the proud, lighten heavy hearts, and avoid becoming too predictable.
- Starting Rage: One
Basic Gifts
Alter Scent
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You replace the scent coming from your body with any other scent you know. Attempts to track you by your scent fail, unless the foe has Heightened Senses, in which case they get a Simple Test to uncover your true scent; if they win (not tie), they cannot be fooled this way for the rest of the session.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Blissful Ignorance
Required: You must remain still, make no noise, and don't interacting with your environment.
Effect: You can render yourself invisible to all senses, technology, and even spirits. You are undetectable as long as you are perfectly still and quiet. Cross your arms over your chest to indicate you're using this Gift.
Duration: Until you move, make noise, or interact with your environment.
Blur of the Milky Eye
Required: Move no faster than half your speed, make no noise louder than a whisper, and don't interact with your environment.
Challenge: If someone is looking for you, they must defeat you in a Mental Challenge.
Retest: Stealth (you), Investigation (those looking for you)
Effect: Your appearance blurs away into a haze, difficult to notice for all but the sharpest eyes. Others can only notice you by sight if you visibly disturb the environment, in which case they get the Mental Challenge described above to see through it. You must move no faster than half speed and must make noise no louder than a whisper.
Duration: Until you move faster than half your speed, make noise louder than a whisper, or interact with your environment.
Hush
Challenge: Mental vs. target (and you get a two-trait bonus versus your own packmates)
Retest: Subterfuge
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: You stop someone from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. They cannot communicate verbally for the duration of the gift. It's just a temporary solution, causing someone to forget their train of thought or stumble over their words — and it's especially useful for preventing packmates from saying something stupid.
Duration: 1 turn per Social Trait spent
Open Seal
Challenge: Static Gnosis vs. local Gauntlet rating
Retest: Security
Effect: No lock or closed device is closed to you. With barely a gesture and an expression of desire, you open any non-mystically closed device.
Scent of Running Water
Activation Time: At will
Effect: Your scent is washed away from the world as if you had just stepped through a river. All challenges trying to track you by scent suffer two-Trait penalty.
Sense of the Prey
Required: Knowledge of your target; the target is in the same realm as you
Challenge: Mental vs. target if they are actively hiding; automatic success if they're not
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: If you're target is in the same realm as you (Earth, the Penumbra, a particular Umbral Realm, etc.), then you gain an unerring sense of which direction you must go to find them. You can move directly towards them as fast as you are able to travel.
Slip of the Tongue
Required: Engage your target in a conversation about the topic
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: You have a deft and mystical knack for getting others to reveal more than they intend. Once you have the target talking about a topic, using this gift forces them to make an inadvertent remark on something they wished to hide regarding the topic. (E.g., "That's ridiculous, officer, if I wanted dispose of the murder weapon, I'd have thrown it into the incinerator down at the dump of 34th and Elm!")
Taking the Forgotten
Required: You've taken something from the target
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Stealth (you); Streetwise (your target)
Effect: You've become such an effective thief that your mark forgets ever having owned what you stole from them. Items like Fetishes, however, may trigger memories of their own in their former owner — the victim may make a Mental Challenge at Storyteller discretion to "recall" that they once owned a similar Fetish, but no details about how it went missing. Fetishes that are attuned to an owner may even make their own attempt to return.
Duration: Permanent
Trickster Beacon
Required: Touch your target
Frequency: The Gift can only be used once per lunar month, and once per season against a particular target.
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Enigmas
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: You tag a victim with a spiritual mark that draws trickster-spirits and makes their life interesting (in the ancient-Chinese-curse sense) for a few days. These spirits will play nonlethal pranks on the target like stealing small important items, locking doors, and mimicking voices. In the Umbra, these spirits distract and jeer at them, ensuring they get lost if they try to travel.
Duration: A number of days equal to the Social Traits spent
Intermediate Gifts
Fog of War
Required: Perform a song
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. the number of enemies
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: You perform a song whose melodies inspire confusion and fugue in your enemies. At the beginning of every turn, enemies within earshot must throw a Rock-Paper-Scissors test. A win means they are unaffected, a tie puts them down three Traits on all Perceptive Challenges (or synonyms) for that turn, and on a loss they lose all ties on challenges for the turn.
Duration: One turn per Social Trait spent
Fool's Luck
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: With the blessing of the spirits of deception, you receive a free retest on all challenges involving trickery or stealth. You only get this retest once per challenge, and if you lose, you can't use attempt any further retests.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Gremlins
Required: You touch the device to be affected
Challenge: Static Social vs. variable difficulty — 6 for complex electronics like computers, 9 for simple electronics like lighting, 12 for machines like cars, and 15 for simple tools like knives
Retest: Intimidation
Followup Cost: 0-2 Social Traits
Effect: Your touch terrifies the spirit of a device, disrupting it and possibly destroying it. It stops functioning for the duration.
Duration: One Scene or Hour; or, if one Social Trait was spent, the rest of the session; or if two Social Traits were spent, the breakdown is permanent.
Impunity
Required: You are making accusations you believe to be true
Challenge: static Social vs. twice the target's Willpower, plus 1 Trait for each prior use of the gift during this lunar month
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: The blessing of your moon allows you to impede others' efforts to attack or punish you while you are speaking uncomfortable truths about them. Your target must win a Willpower challenge against you to attack or punish you for the duration of this gift. If you try to use this opportunity to say untrue things about your target, the spirits themselves may strike back at you (at the Storyteller's discretion).
Duration: One Scene or Hour, or until you make an accusation you don't think is entirely true
Luna's Blessing
Required: While using the gift, you must be able to see the moon clearly in the night sky (yes, that means it doesn't work during the new moon)
Activation Time: At will
Effect: As long as Luna's light shines on you, she protects you against the curse of silver. You regenerate damage from silver as if it were merely lethal. If the moon is full, this effect is increased: those who attack you with silver weapons and fail must make two Simple Tests. If both tests fail, your attacker takes damage from their own weapon.
Madness Season
Required: The target must be able to see you (although there's no need for eye contact)
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: You reach into the target's psyche and twist, reducing them to a twitching ball of insanity. They are unable to act for the duration of the gift.
Duration: A number of turns equal to your permanent Gnosis, or until the target takes damage.
Open Moon Bridge
Required: You're at a Caern
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: With or without the cooperation of a Caern Totem, you open a moon bridge as per the Rite of the Opened Bridge. This bridge can extend up to one thousand miles and end anywhere.
The Usual Suspects
Required: A clear view or strong scent of your target
Activation Time: Three turns
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: You have a knack for keeping mystical awareness about others' whereabouts. If your challenge succeeds, you gain a constant sense of your target's general location. You may track a number of targets this way equal to your permanent Gnosis rating.
Duration: Permanent
Whelp Body
Frequency: The gift works once, ever, against a given target.
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Gnosis vs. target
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: 0-5 Gnosis
Effect: You utter a curse on your foe, dooming their body to sickness and palsy. You remove a number of base Physical Traits from your target (your choice) equal to the total number of Gnosis you spend activating the gift (including the initial cost). The target can regain these Traits by spending Experience points as usual, but suffering from these effects is such a grave insult between Garou that using it on a fellow Gaian warrior can be understood as a declaration of war.
Duration: Permanent
Advanced Gifts
Thieving Talons of the Magpie
Required: You have enough knowledge about a power to specify it, and you can accomplish its own requirements
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Effect: You steal others' supernatural abilities for a short period of time. Use this gift to take other Gifts, spirit Charms, vampire Disciplines, mage Spheres, etc. While you have the stolen power, your target cannot use it. Use your current Gnosis total in place of any Trait that Garou don't normally possess, like Blood, Glamour, etc.
Duration: A number of turns equal to the Gnosis you spent
Thousand Forms
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: static Mental vs. variable difficulty — 8 Traits for an animal about your size, 11 Traits for a much larger creature, 15 Traits for a much smaller one, or 18 Traits for a mythical creature
Retest: Animal Ken
Effect: Embodying the classic trope of the trickster as a shapeshifter, you can change into any animal form between the size of a bluebird and a bison. You can even take on the shapes of mythical creatures, although you can't become a wyrm-beast of any sort. You can all the standard powers of the animal in question, such as flight, gills, poisonous fangs, etc.
Duration: Until you choose to end the effect
Turn the Moon
Initial Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Primal Urge
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: In order to share a new viewpoint or punish someone who is too proud of their role, you can give a fellow Garou a new Auspice of your choice for a time. Your target loses all access to their usual auspice gifts, and their Rage adjusts to the base minimum of the auspice. Even their thinking changes for a while, drawn to the stereotype of their new role. They cannot learn any Gifts of their new auspice during this time, however.
Duration: A number of days equal to the Social Traits spent
Violation
Challenge: two: first, a Physical vs. target, then an extended Mental vs. target
Retest: Brawl for the Physical Challenge; Empathy for the Mental
Effect: With a physical touch and a psychic blow, you shatter an opponent's confidence. They cannot spend Rage or Willpower until they recover at the end of the gift's duration.
Duration: Determined by the number of successes you win on the extended Mental challenge: one success, the scene; two successes, two scenes; three successes, the session; four successes, two sessions.
Weakest Link
Initial Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Social vs. the person in the pack with the best Social Traits
Retest: Enigmas
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: At a glance, you deftly puzzle apart the dynamics of a given pack. For each Social Trait you spent, you may learn one pack-specific fact from one pack member, such as who they call pack alpha, who their Totem is, their pack's strength or weakness, etc.
Werewolves of the Theurge Auspice are mediators between the Garou and the spirit worlds. Experts in supernatural mysteries, they serve as priests and shamans, directing the religious life of the Garou. Some Theurges see themselves as healers who restore the spiritual balance in all things; others see themselves as purifiers, burning the spiritual corruption out of Gaia's body by skill and strength of will.
- Duties: Learn about the spirits and the Umbra. Foster good relations between the spirits and the Garou. Oversee the proper performance of everyday Rites, and perform significant Rites at the proper times in the proper ways. Create Talens and Fetishes. Solve supernatural mysteries.
- Starting Rage: Two
Basic Gifts
Airt Perception
Activation Time: At will
Effect: When moving through the Umbra, a spirit leave a mystical trail called an airt. This Gift makes airts visible to you, so that you may make ordinary tracking challenges (involving such skills as Investigation and Primal Urge) to hunt down the spirit.
Command Spirit
Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Social vs. target spirit
Retest: Leadership
Followup Cost: 0 to 5 Willpower Traits
Effect: By the force of your will and your auspice, you compel a spirit to obey a simple command. For each additional Willpower you spend, you may add an additional simple command. This Gift is not strong enough to force a spirit to leave areas or items that they're bound to; the intermediate Theurge gift Exorcism provides that capability.
Mother's Touch
Required: Touching the wound to be healed on another living creature; for battle scars, healing the same scene they happened
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: none for other Garou; Mental Challenge vs. non-Garou
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: To heal a battle scar, one Gnosis and a successful Mental Challenge
Effect: Gaia's regenerative power flows through your hands, knitting together flesh and bone. Your touch heals one Health Level of damage on another. You can't heal yourself, spirits or undead. In order to heal a non-Garou, you need to succeed at a Mental challenge. In order to heal a battle scar, you must use the Gift in the same scene the scar was gained, then you must spend an additional Gnosis and succeed at a Mental Challenge.
Name the Spirit
Required: A spirit within 50 feet on either side of the Gauntlet
Challenge: Mental vs. the spirit
Retest: Investigation
Followup Cost: (optional) one Willpower
Effect: Your eyes see into the very essence of a spirit, telling you its type and its approximate levels of Rage, Gnosis and Willpower. If you spend a Willpower Trait as well, you also sense the spirit's true name, which can be useful for summoning or tracking it.
Sense Chiminage
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Subterfuge
Followup Cost: (optional) three Social Traits
Effect: You sense the weight of spiritual obligation resting on the shoulders of any spirit-aware being. Success with this Gift means you discover the state of the target's outstanding debts to the spirit world. By paying the additional cost in Social Traits, you also discover the name of the spirit that this person has most recently offended.
Sense Wyrm
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty based on intensity of Wyrm influence (high intensity is low difficulty, low intensity is high difficulty)
Retest: Investigation
Effect: A mystical sense not unlike a scent tells you whether the Wyrm has touched or influenced anything in the area. This "Wyrm-Taint" may mean there is an enemy nearby, or it may simply mean that an innocent bystander ate Wyrm-manufactured food or works at a Wyrm-run office.
Sight From Beyond
Effect: You sometimes receive cryptic visions of important events in the near future. These visions are always shrouded in metaphor and dream symbology: a wheeling owl might signify a death, a writhing pool of leeches could indicate vampires, and drops of your own blood could signify family or packmates. The Storytellers will give you these visions. They might permit you a Mental Challenge (retest with Enigmas) to interpret the vision if they feel like it's especially cryptic.
Spirit Knife
Required: An ordinary weapon you made yourself (not a fetish or weapon created by Reshape Object); a Gauntlet equal or less than your permanent Gnosis rating
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You imbue your chosen weapon with the ability to inflict damage on both sides of the Gauntlet. For the duration, as long as the Gauntlet is equal or less than your permanent Gnosis, your weapon can deal damage to targets on either side of the Gauntlet. This doesn't give you any special ability to see across the Gauntlet, unfortunately, so some assistance or foreknowledge in that department is helpful.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Spirit Skin
Required: The gift only works in the Umbra
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You hide your flesh nature, disguising yourself as a spirit to all mystical senses. By default, you cloak yourself as a wolf-spirit, taking on the appearance of your Lupus form. With some effort you can imitate other spirits, but this is not at all a robust disguise: it doesn't give you any new spirit capabilities, and you're still recognizable to anyone who knows you. ("Billy? It's you, isn't it! I'd know those eyes anywhere…") Theurges find this Gift most useful to blend in with unfamiliar spirits or avoid notice from spirits who don't know them.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Spirit Speech
Activation Time: Always on
Effect: You understand spirit languages used around you, and you can communicate back in kind. Because relatively few spirits can communicate in the werewolf High Tongue (let alone human speech), this gift is absolutely invaluable for Garou of the Theurge auspice.
The Spirits' Displeasure
Cost: One Gnosis, and burn a small effigy of the target
Challenge: Static Social vs. target
Retest: Occult
Effect: You levy a minor curse against the target, a warning that they have offended the spirits. The target will automatically fail one challenge of the Storytellers' choosing. The target sees an omen of bad luck appropriate to their culture that informs them the failure was not chance.
Duration: The effect takes place within the current story
Intermediate Gifts
Castigate
Required: Rebuke your Garou target loudly; they must hear you.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. a Garou target
Retest: Intimidation
Effect: Your stinging verbal rebuke strips the spirits' favor from a Garou, revoking their right to call upon a bit of the spirits' power. They lose access to a Gift of your choice for the duration, or until they make amends to the spirits or to the Nation.
Duration: The remainder of the story
Evocation of Ceremony
Required: You are performing a ritual
Challenge: Mass Social (with an innate 4-Trait bonus) vs. multiple targets
Retest: Rituals
Effect: You enhance the sense of the sacred around the rituals you cast, evoking wonder, reverence or even fear in the onlookers and participants. Those who lose the challenge find their mood affected as you desire, although this does not compel any particular behavior.
Duration: the duration of the performance of the rite
Exorcism
Vs. spirits that are not bound:
Challenge: Static Social vs. spirit's Willpower
Retest: Intimidation
Effect: You compel a spirit to leave this place, even if it is unwilling.
Vs. spirits that are bound to a place:
Challenge: Static Social vs. 12 Traits
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: You break the bond between the spirit and its binding-place, forcing it to leave.
Vs. spirits that are bound to a fetish, object, or person:
Challenge: two out of three Static Social vs. 12 Traits
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: You break the bond between the spirit and the object or person it is bound to, forcing it to leave. Fetishes lose their spiritual power, becoming ordinary objects. Fomori, once the possessing bane is ejected, die (unless a very powerful healer can somehow preserve the host's life through the process).
Grasp the Beyond
Required: A firm grasp on the target (may require a Physical Challenge)
Cost: One Willpower for pocket-sized items; two Willpower for larger, backpack-sized items; three Willpower for large items or other people
Challenge: normal Stepping Sideways challenge or Gnosis expenditure; Willpower challenge vs. unwilling target
Effect: You may pull objects in and out of the spirit world without using the Rite of Talisman Dedication first to attune them to your own spirit. You may even bring companions along who cannot ordinarily access the Umbra at all. Take firm hold, spend the Willpower cost, and make a standard challenge to enter or leave the Umbra (or, as usual, pay a Gnosis to do so. If the target is unwilling, you must win a Willpower challenge against them as well. If successful, you take the objects or passengers with you as you cross the Gauntlet. Unfortunates who get left in the spirit world without any means of their own to return will face a harrowing journey to a place with a low Gauntlet (three or less) to find their way out again; if they cannot do this, they eventually turn into spirit matter themselves.
Placation
Challenge: Static Mental vs. 11 Traits
Retest: Occult
Effect: You empathically share in a moment of a spirit's displeasure, gaining an accurate sense of what the spirit will require to placate that anger. You can use this gift on your own behalf, or for others, but unless the object of the spirit's wrath is present to pay their debt, the spirit is likely to require a stiffer chiminage than otherwise.
Prophecy
Effect: Similar to Sight from Beyond, this gift grants you visions of the future. Consult the Storytellers before taking this gift, as its effect is entirely up to their whim. This gift offers more detailed, significant visions than Sight from Beyond, but they are every bit as enigmatic.
Pulse of the Invisible
Challenge: None if the Gauntlet is equal or less than your permanent Gnosis rating; a Static Mental vs. the Gauntlet if it's higher
Retest: Primal Urge
Activation Time: At will
Effect: Your mystical senses transcend the Gauntlet. You see nearby Umbral spirits even when you are on Earth. You can interact with these spirits as if you were in the Umbra.
Duration: One scene or hour, or until you go where there's a higher Gauntlet.
Spirit Drain
Challenge: Static Gnosis vs. target spirit
Retest: Occult
Effect: You siphon off a spirit's power to fuel your own strength of will. The spirit loses two essence; you gain one Willpower. Any Willpower you gain that exceed your rank maximum are lost after the duration.
Duration: The scene
Spirit Path
Required: A spirit's true name (usually gained via Name the Spirit)
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. the spirit's location (8 Traits in the penumbra, 12 in a near Realm, 15 in a deep Realm)
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: If you know a spirit's name, you know the spirit's location in the Umbra. You focus on its name and gain a precise sense of just where it is, wherever that may be.
Advanced Gifts
Feral Lobotomy
Cost: Two Gnosis
Challenge: Extended Static Mental vs. target's Mental Traits plus three
Retest: Empathy
Followup Cost: 0 or more permanent Gnosis
Effect: You strip reason itself out of a victim's mind, reducing them to their animal instincts. Each success you win on the extended Challenge destroys one of the target's Mental Traits (your choice). These Traits will not return for the duration of the effect. You cannot reduce your victim to less than one Mental Trait. Your victim becomes more and more animalistic as he loses more and more Traits this way.
Duration: Game session. For each permanent Gnosis you spend, two Traits may be destroyed permanently.
Healing the Soul
Required: Being sequestered with a willing target for a week
Activation Time: One week
Effect: This gift manifests as a week-long ordeal, requiring fasts, trances and ecstatic communication with the spirits. Once a willing target endures these trials, the forces of the Triat within their soul are restored to balance. The precise effect of this is up to the Storytellers, but it tends to ease emotional trauma and cure Derangements. It cannot heal Harano, but it can prevent it in the early stages. It cannot free a Silver Fang of their tribal disadvantage or remove the permanent madness of a Metis. If the target's own actions caused their own trauma, then they may never benefit from a use of this Gift again.
Poisoned Legacy
Required: Confront your target and speak a curse on them
Frequency: Once ever per target
Cost: One Gnosis and one Willpower
Challenge: Extended Social vs. target (up to 6 successes)
Retest: Occult
Effect: You declare a permanent curse onto your victim, a stigma which will last the rest of their life — which may now not be so long a life. The successes you earn on the challenge gives your victim the Cursed Flaw with the corresponding point value. If you gain six successes, they gain the Dark Fate Flaw instead. They gain no freebie points for these flaws.
Duration: Permanent
The Malleable Spirit
Challenge: Static Gnosis challenge vs. difficulty based on effect (see below) or the spirit's Gnosis, whichever is higher
Retest: Occult
Effect: You reconstruct the very essence of a spirit, changing its nature according to your own needs. Changing the spirit's disposition toward you (friendly, neutral or hostile) has a minimum difficulty of eight Traits; changing its Willpower, Rage or Gnosis has a minimum difficulty of nine Traits to add or subtract a single Trait; and changing its deepest nature (Naturae, Bane, Elemental, etc.) has a difficulty of 15 Traits.
Duration: Permanent
Spirit Vessel
Frequency: Once per session
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. twice the local Gauntlet
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: Up to two additional Gnosis, each with an additional Mental challenges
Effect: You draw in the power of the local spirits, gaining a number of their Charms for your own use. If you succeed at the original test, you gain one Charm of your choice and you may pay Gnosis and test for up to two more Charms. If you fail the initial test, a Bane possesses you, and the Storytellers instruct you in what to do next.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
The Philodox Auspice, born beneath the half moon, counts justice and balance among its highest virtues. Garou look to the Philodox to oversee disputes and challenges, to bring peace, and to take decisive action on difficult questions. Matters of Honor, the Litany, and how to apply ancient Garou traditions to modern problems fill the Philodox mind.
- Duties: Know the Litany and all its competing interpretations. Render judgment in matters of Garou law and scandal. Make peace where there is unnecessary conflict between Garou, overseeing challenges where necessary. Ensure that traditions are being followed. Balance your own nature and bring balance to others.
- Starting Rage: Three
Basic Gifts
Call to Duty
Call a Specific Spirit
Required: You know the name of a local, non-hostile spirit
Challenge: static Social vs. the spirit
Retest: Leadership
Effect: By invoking the name of a local, non-hostile spirit (which you must have learned by some other means), you summon it to appear. You may give it a single command, which it obeys to the best of its ability; once this is done, the spirit is free to leave.
Call All Spirits Within a Mile
Cost: Two Gnosis
Effect: Without even knowing their nams, you summon all non-hostile spirits within one mile to aid or protect you.
King of the Beasts
Required: An animal within 100 feet
Frequency: You may affect only one animal at a time
Challenge: static Social vs. three Traits for a wolf you're related to, six Traits for an animal you care for, eight Traits for an unfamiliar animal, or ten Traits for an unfriendly animal
Retest: Animal Ken
Effect: You exert a mystic dominance over the target animal, winning its loyalty instantly. It will follow your orders unconditionally.
Moon Lore
Challenge: static Mental vs. six Traits
Retest: Primal Urge
Followup Cost: optionally, one Mental Trait
Effect: You learn the phase of the moon under which a nearby target person was born. If you spent the Mental Trait, you also learn weather the moon was waxing or waning at the time.
Omen of Truth
Activation Time: One minute
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. difficulty based on environmental cues: 15 Traits in an empty room, 11 Traits in a city, 8 Traits in the wilderness
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: You have a supernatural ability to glean answers from your physical environment. After a minute of study, a hint to an answer you seek comes to your attention (provided, naturally, by the Storyteller).
Realm Wisdom
Required: You are in an Umbral realm or zone.
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty (based on obscurity of Umbral Realm)
Retest: Law
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: Your Philodox nature attunes to the fundamental rules governing the local umbral realm or zone. The Storyteller tells you one relevant fact about the laws here, plus an additional relevant fact for each Mental Trait you spent.
Resist Pain
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: You push on through the pain of injury with superhuman resilience. You stop suffering wound penalties for the duration of this Gift.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Scent of the True Form
Challenge: automatic success against Garou; otherwise, static Mental vs. 6 Traits for most creatures, 8 Traits for vampires, changelings and fera, or 10 Traits for fomori and mages
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: Through a combination of scent and other mystical cues, you determine a target's true supernatural nature. You learn whether they are a werewolf, vampire, fomori or the like.
Strength of Purpose
Frequency: Once per game session
Challenge: extended Physical vs. 11 Traits
Retest: Rituals
Effect: You renew your determination by performing a ritualistic reminder of your role in your pack, your tribe and your world. For each success you achieve in the challenge, you regain one Trait of spent Willpower. This Gift cannot grant Willpower over your maximum rating.
Truth of Gaia
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You hear the ring of truth and deception in the words of others. If you win the challenge, you can tell if the target has deliberately lied to you. The gift cannot detect lies that the target actually believes — misinformation and altered memories foil this gift.
Intermediate Gifts
Divided Heart
Challenge: Social vs. 11 Traits
Retest: Primal Urge
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: When another Garou's Rage threatens to overwhelm her better judgment, you can step in and enforce a division between Rage and reason. For the duration, your target may ignore the usual dangers of having her Rage exceed her Willpower.
Duration: Five minutes per Social Trait spent
Reality's Path
Challenge: Mental Challenge vs. 11 Traits
Retest: Enigmas
Followup Cost: optionally, three Mental Traits
Effect: Your ear is now attuned to the true ring of reality; you determine whether words your target believes to be true are actually true, regardless of the target's beliefs. Success tells you if your target is speaking an unintentional falsehood; by spending three Mental Traits, you can tell whether someone deliberately misinformed them.
Roll Over
Challenge: Willpower vs. target
Retest: Intimidation
Effect: Bearing down on your target with an irresistible force of will, you compel them to submit. For the duration, your target may take no action other than submission to you unless they are directly endangered.
Duration: One scene or hour
Scent of Beyond
Required: You are familiar with the area you want to sense
Challenge: static Mental vs. eight Traits or the Gauntlet, whichever is higher
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: You can extend your senses to any place you are familiar with. You perceive that area as if you're standing in the middle of it. While your senses are extended this way, you become totally unaware of what is happening in your actual physical vicinity.
Duration: Up to one scene; you may end it at will
Weak Arm
Activation Time: One turn
Frequency: Once per scene per target
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Brawl
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: By studying your target's fighting style for a turn, you gain valuable insights regarding how best to attack them. Your next attack against the target gains bonus Traits equal to one plus the number of Mental Traits you spent.
Duration: The bonus goes away if not used by the end of the scene.
Wisdom of the Ancient Ways
Activation Time: One turn
Challenge: Gnosis vs. 9 Traits (minus one Trait per level of Ancestors you have)
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: 1 or 2 Mental Traits
Effect: Through a moment of meditation, you reach out for answers to the Garou who have gone before, be they your own ancestors or other warriors of yore. You recall their memories or summon up ancient lore. Ask the Storyteller for the information you seek: if you spend one Mental Trait it is clear but broad information, while if you spend two Traits the information is detailed and specific.
Advanced Gifts
Geas
Frequency: A target may labor beneath only one geas. Geases after the first one will fail until such a point as the first geas is fulfilled.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: static Social vs. target's Willpower; or, vs. highest Willpower among all members of the target pack or family
Retest: Leadership
Effect: You lay a mystically binding oath over a target or group or targets. The requirements of this oath may not override basic self-preservation, but it has significant leeway otherwise. The target or targets are compelled to obey the oath until an assigned task is completed.
Duration: Until the task is completed
Soul's Guilt
Activation Time: One turn
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You can now see into the heart of your subjects, determining what guilt they hide. Success allows you to tell if the subject is feeling guilty about anything, and how intense that feeling is.
Take the True form
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: At your command, your target must forgo all shapeshifting. They instantly assume their natural form (breed form, for Garou and other Fera; human, for shapeshifting vampires) and they cannot use any further shapeshifting powers for the duration.
Duration: One scene
Wall of Granite
Required: You are in contact with earth or stone
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Calling on the strong bond between the Philodox auspice and earth elementals, you summon a moving barrier of stone to protect you. A wall nine feet tall, six feet wide and three feet thick emerges from the earth to protect you, moving automatically to guard you from all angles. It can absorb fifteen Health Levels of damage before being destroyed, plus an additional ten Health Levels that absorb only Bashing and Lethal damage.
Duration: One scene, or until destroyed or dismissed
Galliards give voice to the deepest passions driving the Garou. First and foremost, they are storytellers, recounting the heroic tales of the werewolves' ancestors, and adding new stories of the achievements of their own packs. It is through the tales of the Galliards that other Garou grow in Renown. Galliard-crafted songs and speeches guard the hearts of their brothers and sisters, setting the tone for their war against Gaia's enemies.
- Duties: Tell the stories of glorious, wise and honorable accomplishments by the other Garou of your sept: do the same for their shameful mistakes. Learn the history of your ancestors and apply those lessons of the past to the modern day. Maintain morale; remind the Garou what they're fighting for.
- Starting Rage: Four
Basic Gifts
Beast Speech
Challenge: Social vs. the animal
Retest: Animal Ken
Effect: You are able to speak with any sort of animal. If successful, you can speak not only to the target animal, but to all animals of the same type. This gift doesn't change their natures nor their reactions to the predatory nature of the Garou, nor does it force them to cooperate.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Call of the Wyld
Challenge: Physical vs. 8 Traits
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: 0-2 Physical Traits
Effect: You let forth a mighty howl, one that stirs your allies into action and can strike fear into your enemies. The call spreads out even beyond the normal range of hearing, allowing any within double the normal hearing range to understand your call. Spending one additional Physical Trait grants all your allies a one-Trait bonus to the next challenge they make toward a pack or Sept effort; spending two Physical Traits also imposes a one-Trait penalty on the your enemies' combat-related challenges for the rest of the scene.
Duration: One Scene
Call of the Wyrm
Challenge: Social vs. the Wyrm-creature in the area with the highest Social Traits
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: optionally, one Social Trait
Effect: You let out a call audible to all creatures of corruption. Though a dangerous gift to use, this call implants an urge that cannot be ignored, bringing all the creatures in the area to your location. You can't control which creatures are attracted, so there are many cautionary tales about using this gift in the wrong areas. These creatures know they are being supernaturally drawn unless you spent the optional additional Social Trait, in which case they think it's their own idea.
Distractions
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: 0-5 Social Traits
Effect: By making a series of yips, yelps, howls, and other distracting sounds, you impose a penalty to all challenges your target makes during the next turn. This penalty is equal to one Trait plus one for each additional Social Trait you spend.
Duration: The next turn
Dreamspeak
Required: You must know or have seen your target.
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You enter another person's dream and alter their dreamscape. No damage will carry over into the waking world, but, if you intend to give the person unpleasant dreams, disorientation will impose a one-Trait penalty on the victim for one turn per Gnosis you possess you posess once they wake. If the dreamer wakes up while you are still in their dream, you will be immediately thrown out of the dreamscape and will lose one Gnosis Trait.
Mindspeak
Cost: One Willpower per target
Challenge: Social vs. unwilling target; automatic otherwise
Retest: Investigation
Effect: You layer a daydream across the thoughts of multiple Garou, allowing you all to communicate in telepathic words and images with one another. You can even use Social abilities like Intimidation and Subterfuge against one another this way. This is, however, highly distracting, so everyone caught up in the gift suffers a two-Trait penalty to all challenges that involve dealing with their actual surroundings. You must be within line of sight to your targets when you activate this gift, but once active, you can communicate at any distance.
Duration: When all participants choose to end it, or when you fail your challenge against an unwilling target
Perfect Recall
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Your spiritual nature enhances your memory, giving you perfect clarity in summoning up one detail you have experienced. You might remember a license plate you only glimpsed, a sequence of touch-tones you heard dialed, or the exact words spoken by a dying messenger. The detail you remember is short, specific, and accurate.
Reverie
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: You lure a target into daydreams and nostalgia, setting their mind wandering down memory lane. For a short while they have difficulty focusing on their tasks, taking a two-Trait penalty to all Mental Challenges.
Duration: Five minutes, or until a loud noise or attack jolts them out of the effect.
Unified Force
Required: At least three pack members present
Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Effect: You coord inate the timing of your pack so that you strike as one. All pack members act on the best initiative in the pack.
Duration: One turn per Gnosis spent, or until a pack member Frenzies
Intermediate Gifts
Book of Years
Challenge: Mental vs. the Gauntlet rating
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: You fall into an ancestral flow of memory, tapping into knowledge of almost any topic Garou history can teach. The Storyteller guides you on a vision quest for the answers you seek. You are in a trance while this Gift is active; for each hour you spend in that trance, you can reach back through five centuries of Garou wisdom. Every hour after the first, make a Willpower challenge vs. seven Traits; if you fail, the trance ends and you make two Simple Tests. If these also fail, you fade into memory and emerge in the Umbra somewhere — both the Battlegrounds and the Legendary Realm being common destinations.
Duration: Until you voluntarily end the gift, or until you fail the hourly Willpower challenge.
Bridge Walker
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Followup Cost: optionally, one Permanent Gnosis
Effect: You open a minor moon bridge for your own personal use — short enough to effectively teleport you behind an enemy, or long enough to take you up to one mile per current Gnosis from your starting point. It takes one percent of your usual travel time to use this bridge (so if you can run a six-minute mile, you can travel a mile by Moon Bridge in three seconds). The bridge is not protected by Lunes, so sometimes curious or hostile spirits can follow you to your destination, even materializing in the physical world.
Duration: The bridge closes immediately after you use it, unless you spend a permanent Gnosis, in which case it stays open until the next full moon.
Eyes of the Cobra
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Enigmas
Followup Cost: optionally, one Mental Trait
Effect: With a hypnotic glance, you beckon a victim to approach you. Your target will immediately (if slowly) begin moving toward you. If you spend the Mental Trait, they move as fast as they can without risking injury.
Duration: Until your target is within arm's reach.
Shadows by the Firelight
Challenge: Social vs. each unwilling target; automatic vs. willing targets
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Effect: You spin a story from dreams and shadows, compelling others to take on a role you assign them. While compelled by the gift, they act out their role precisely, and dreamlike sensations immerse them in the tale. Galliards commonly employ this gift to highlight climactic moments in the stories they tell at moots — that is, when they're not in battle, weaving a tale of bitter defeat for their enemies to take part in.
Duration: One turn per Gnosis spent
Sing the Spirits
Required: You must address the spirit by name or by type ("You, Bane!" is fine), order it to stay away, and make a threat for if it doesn't.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. the spirit
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: 0-5 Social Traits
Effect: You ward a spirit away from you with a dire threat. The spirit must attempt a Rage challenge vs. eight Traits. If it fails, it cannot come within 10 feet of you, plus an additional 10 feet for each Social Trait you spent.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Song of Rage
Frequency: Once per turn
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Leadership
Followup Cost: 0-5 Social Traits
Effect: You sing a maddening song, compelling humans to fly into a violent rage and forcing Garou and vampires into Frenzy. Your target remains in this state until the gift ends.
Duration: One turn, plus one for each Social Trait you spent
View the Battlefield
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs difficult based on the size of the battle: 8 Traits for a large room, 11 Traits for an acre, 15 Traits for an entire forest.
Retest: Alertness
Effect: You gain an innate sense of everything going on in a battle — both for the purposes of coordinating your packmates and for telling the tale afterward. You get a hazy picture of the battlefield as if seen from a bird's-eye view, including the power to see through walls and other obstacles to detect all friends and foes alike. Even if supernatural concealment like Shroud be in effect, you still know exactly where each of your own packmates can be found.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Advanced Gifts
Fabric of the Mind
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: static extended Mental vs. eight Traits
Retest: Performance
Followup Cost: One Gnosis per turn, for any object that gets involved in a fight or other strenuous activity
Effect: You weave creations out of your imagination and into reality. For each success you accumulate in the challenge, you have one Trait to assign to these fabrications. You can create one object or many, with whatever attributes you can imagine and describe. You can even create sentient creatures that react naturally, and behave as you direct. If you fail the challenge before you achieve the number of Traits you want, perform two Simple Tests: failing both means you create the object, but it acts independently of your control, and may even be somewhat malicious. It will last until you destroy or banish it.
Duration: One Scene (but you may extend the gift another Scene for another Gnosis); if your fabrications get involved in combat or the like, the gift ends if the followup cost isn't paid.
Head Games
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You become a master manipulator of the soul, puppeting a target's emotions as you please. You control whether your target feels love, hate, trust, fear, joy or despair, and you determine the object of their emotions. These emotions fade after the gift ends, but some vestige may linger if events occurred to reinforce those emotions while they were in place — if their newfound beloved, for example, accepts their advances, or if the snakes they are so afraid of end up biting.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Legend’s Insight
Required: the Ancestors background
Challenge: Social vs. 11 Traits
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: 1-5 levels of Ancestors
Effect: You call upon your ancestors not for glimmers of insight, but for absolute mastery of subjects or skills. Each Trait of Ancestors you spend will gain you a level of an Ability of your choice. No Ability may be raised above six in this way.
Duration: One Scene
Song of the Siren
Required: You must sing, audibly and continuously.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Performance
Effect: Your soothing song lulls a target into a trance, during which they can do nothing but relax and listen to your music.
Duration: Until the target is attacked, or until they can no longer hear you singing.
All werewolves are warriors — but Ahrouns are paragons of the role. Garou born beneath the full moon lead the charge against the Wyrm, first into battle and last out. They organize the other Auspices into tactical strike teams, leveraging the strengths of each Auspice toward maximum destructive potential. They study the arts of war and train others in those skills. Young Ahrouns are born to be soldiers; Ahrouns who survive to an older age become their generals.
- Duties: Master the arts of war, becoming versatile in any combat situation. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies of Gaia. Lead other Garou on missions against the enemy. Train younger warriors. Guard the Caern and improve its defenses.
- Starting Rage: Five
Basic Gifts
Empathy of Hatred
Activation Time: One action
Effect: You are so attuned to the ebb and flow of Rage that you can sense it in others. After a moment of study, you learn another's current and permanent levels of Rage. The gift Aura of Confidence blocks this effect.
Falling Touch
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Physical vs. target
Retest: Medicine
Effect: With a precise strike to a key pressure point, you send a foe sprawling. Your target falls down, unable to move from that spot or initiate Physical Challenges for the duration. They may defend themselves from challenges as normal.
Duration: Four actions (or fifteen seconds out of combat); spending Rage for extra actions helps burn through the duration.
Inspiration
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: With a rousing speech or howl — or maybe just a steely gaze — you inspire your companions to stay true to their purpose. Up to five companions within arm's reach may call on one of the following effects during this scene or next: an automatic success when defending on a single Willpower Challenge; one additional Willpower Trait to spend; or an automatic win on a test to resist Frenzy. Multiple uses of the Gift do not stack, although you can re-apply the effect after a beneficiary uses it.
Duration: This scene and next
Pack Tactics
Required: At least one other packmate
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: You extend your fighting instincts to your entire pack, coordinating their attacks with preternatural precision. Whenever your pack gangs up on your chosen foe, your Physical Challenges benefit from a +1 Trait bonus for each pack member involved in the gang, up to a maximum of +5. (Count pack members "ganging up" on a foe as those whose last action targeted that foe, including yourself.) This effect switches with you when you switch foes. Multiple Garou using this gift do not stack these bonuses.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Razor Claws
Required: Crinos or Hispo shape; you must rake your claws over a hard surface.
Activation Time: One turn
Cost: One Rage
Effect: You sharpen your claws, honing them into even deadlier weapons. You do an additional level of Aggravated damage with all claw attacks.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Renewed Vigor
Required: This round your have both spent three Rage and killed a foe
Activation Time: Instantly, when the requirement is met
Cost: One Willpower and 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: The brutal flourish with which you kill your foe fills your companions with confidence and Rage. Every ally within line-of-sight gains one point of Rage for each Social Trait you spent.
Sense Silver
Challenge: Mental vs. 8 Traits
Retest: Primal Urge
Followup Cost: optionally, one Mental Trait
Effect: You attune your senses to your hereditary weakness, sensing the mystical charge of silver. You can tell whether or not any silver weapons are nearby. If you spend the Mental Trait, you sense the exact locations of all such weapons.
Spirit of the Fray
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Your reflexes become so quick, your actions nearly precede the stimuli they're reacting to. Your normal action automatically happens prior to every other normal action in the scene. (Multiple Garou using this Gift resolve the order of these normal actions in initiative order as usual.)
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Spiritual Wrath
Required: A target that is entirely flesh or entirely spirit; Garou, Fera, fomori and Changelings are immune
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: All Garou are both spirit and flesh; by focusing that part of your nature a foe does not share, you can strike in ways that are especially difficult for them to avoid. Your target must bid three Traits instead of the usual one in order to soak your next attack.
Duration: Your next attack. If the attack misses, the gift is wasted.
True Fear
Challenge: Willpower vs. target
Retest: Intimidation
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: Your supernaturally terrible mien makes a foe cower in fear. They cannot attack, but can defend against attacks and perform other actions normally (though fearfully).
Duration: One turn, plus one turn for each Mental Trait you spent
Intermediate Gifts
Clenched Jaw
Required: A successful bite attack
Activation Time: Instantly
Cost: One Rage
Effect: Locking your jaws onto an enemy, you become impossible to dislodge. Your target may attempt a Physical Challenge to break free, but a) you enjoy a bonus of half your current Willpower Traits (round up) for the challenge, and b) even if they do break free, they take a level of Lethal damage. On successive actions you may make further biting attacks with a two-Trait bonus to continue inflicting your bite damage.
Duration: Until the target breaks free or you choose to let go
Heart of Fury
Challenge: Willpower vs. your own permanent Rage rating
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: One Willpower at end of scene
Effect: Erecting walls of spiritual discipline in your heart, you gain a one-Trait bonus to all efforts at resisting Frenzy. At the end of the scene, unless you pay the followup cost, you must make a standard Frenzy test.
Duration: One scene
With this power, you erect mental and spiritual barriers against the flow of anger within, restraining yourself by suppressing the rage for the time being. You must vent it later, of course, before it erupts in frenzy, Make a Static Willpower Challenge against your permanent Rage Trait total. You receive a one-Trait bonus per success to efforts at resisting frenzy that scene. At the end of the scene, spend one Willpower Trait or make a frenzy check at normal difficulty.
Purity of Spirit
Activation Time: Instantly
Cost: One Gnosis per level of damage reduced
Effect: You have learned to sacrifice your spirit rather than your flesh when struck by silver. Whenever you are struck by a silver weapon, you may spend Gnosis to reduce its damage, one-for-one. As usual, you may not use this gift in a round during which you spend Rage.
Silver Claws
Required: A form with claws
Challenge: Gnosis vs. 7 Traits
Retest: Occult
Effect: Calling on Luna's power, you transform your claws to silver, which inflicts an extra level of Aggravated damage to any creature vulnerable to the moon's metal. In addition, the searing pain gives you one Rage each turn and inflicts a one-Trait penalty on all non-combat Challenges. If your Rage ever exceeds your Willpower, you must test for Frenzy.
Duration: One scene, or until you end the effect
Stoking Fury's Furnace
Effect: You've learned to focus your Rage with fearsome efficiency. You gain one Rage Trait in any turn you suffer damage, and that damage will not force you to test for Frenzy. You may also spend exactly one Rage Trait each turn without decrementing your current Rage — though if you spend two or more, you cross them off as usual.
Duration: Always in effect
Touch of Rage
Required: A supernatural target that possesses Rage, or a non-supernatural target
Cost: One Willpower (or Two Willpower for non-supernatural targets), plus 1-5 Rage
Effect: You share the Rage you feel with others, inspiring them to terrible feats of violence. Your chosen target gains the number of Rage you spend activating this gift. The target must test for Frenzy if this Rage takes them above their Willpower. They automatically Frenzy if their new Rage is twice their Willpower.
Advanced Gifts
Aegis
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: You gain an astonishing mystical shield against attacks. After an attack lands, you may call for a Simple Test: on a loss you take damage as usual, on a tie the damage is reduced one step (Aggravated becomes Lethal, Lethal becomes Bashing, and Bashing doesn't deal damage), and on a win you take no damage at all.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Kiss of Helios
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You have received the blessing of the sun, able to burn without being consumed. You are immune to all damage from natural fire. Man-made chemical fires, as from napalm or gasoline, inflict half their usual damage (round up) as Bashing damage. If you set yourself on fire, you stay alight, and deal two additional levels of Aggravated damage if you attack with blazing claws or fangs.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Strength of Will
Frequency: Once per scene
Challenge: static Social vs. 12 Traits
Retest: Leadership
Followup Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Effect: Your mighty presence inspires your comrades to astounding feats of courage. All your allies within 100 feet gain a number of Willpower equal to the Gnosis you spent. A Garou may only benefit from one use of this Gift at a time.
Duration: One Scene or Hour