The Northern Star
Role Play of the Seas
Gifts
The inhabitants of the spirit world share their secrets with werewolves and other shapechangers. In accordance with pacts struck long ago, the spirits teach Gifts, magical abilities of many sorts, to the Garou. Tribe, breed and auspice all influence a spirit’s willingness to teach a particular Gift to a Garou; every community within the Garou Nation has its own secrets and connections.
There’s a story behind each Gift: A spirit bound itself to a pact to teach that Gift to Garou who meet a particular qualification. Storytellers and players should keep this in mind when characters use Gifts in play. See “Systems,” below, for ways the vital history of Gifts can matter in the course of a game.
Gifts do not come automatically or mechanically. Living spirits teach them, and when a Garou fails particularly impressively in his fundamental duties, the spirits can revoke their Gifts. The Gifts come to allow Garou to accomplish their assigned roles and tasks more thoroughly, not to do whatever seems like fun. Gifts are divided into three levels. Basic Gifts are available to cubs from the moment of their First Change, while Advanced Gifts are granted to those Garou who have done great deeds. A new Garou begins with one Basic Gift each from the lists for her breed, auspice and tribe. The player can spend freebie points to acquire more starting Gifts during character creation and can buy others after play begins with experience points.
Learning Gifts
The quickest and most reliable way for a Garou to learn a Gift is through dealing with spirits. Either the Garou petitions a suitable spirit himself, or he requests an elder to do so on his behalf. No spirit teaches a Gift to a werewolf who hasn’t earned the proper rank, and only spirits allied with the Garou willingly teach Gifts at all. The usual way to learn a Gifr is to travel to a caem with a power level equal to or greater than that of the Gift the Garou wishes to learn: level 1 or 2 for Basic Gifts, level 3 or 4 for Intermediate Gifts, level 5 for Advanced Gifts. The traveling Garou then petitions the spirit directly. The act of summoning a spirit to a powerful caem it shows proper respect and inclines the spirit to honor the request.
Unfortunately, the world is sadly lacking in powerful caems as the Apocalrpse approaches, so it’s often necessary to seek compromises. The next best course of action is for the Gift-seeking Garou to ask a powerful Theurge to petition the spirit on the seeker’s behalf. The Theurge’s rank and expertise in rites can offset some of the penalty from using a weak caem.
A Garou may choose to enter the Umbra and seek out a spirit teacher directly.This is generally a bad idea. Inexperienced Garou can easily offend a spirit, and doing that in the spirit’s home realm leads to reprisals that may insure the Garou never gets home. Even a well-behaved Garou arouses spirits’ suspicion by making a request
without proper support and ritual.
Storytellers and players alike should keep in mind that spirits aren’t vending machines for Gifts. Every spirit has its ownpersonality, history, concerns and agenda. Garou who spend time cultivating the spirit’s company may win an ally as well as a source of Gifts, and spirits do sometimes return (without advance notice) to see how Garou use their Gifts. Werewolves who fulfill the general mission of the Garou and the more specific callings of their auspice, breed and tribe earn favor and may have an easier time dealing with pleased spirits in the future. Roleplaying the experience around the challenges to learn Gifts can strengthen a chronicle and help guide it away from clicht.
Garou can teach Gifts to each other. This is inefficient, and when spirits find out that Garou have been doing it, some sort of atonement must almost always follow to restore spiritual harmony. Whena spirit teaches aGift, it merges withtheGarou’s soul and, in a period ranging from an hour (for Basic Gifts) up to asingle night (for the most complex Advanced Gifts), the spirit shows the Garou what to do and how it feels when the Gift works properly. When one Garou teaches another, on the other hand, it takes at least a full lunar month and often more. Practice requires a great deal of experimentation and often painful failure: learning Silver Claws, for instance, can render a Garou nearly incapacitated throughout the learning period. Garou teach Gifts this way because they must, thanks to the shortage of elders as well as of powerful caems. A Garou teaching a Gift to another Garou must be of the same Rank or above (or only one level less, if they’re packmates). Unless otherwise stated, Gifts may retest with the Occult Ability.
The Consequences
Once he leams a Gift, a Garou does not forget it.Once a spirit teaches a Gift, that spirit cannot remove it: It’s now part of the Garou’s own nature, an innate ability to call upon like the reflexes for walking. Garou who use their Gifts in disregard for the Litany and fundamental tenets of Garou society face social sanction, even as their Gifts continue to work. In the gravest extreme, Incamae and Celestines can block a Garou’s access to the Gifts their spirit broods teach. This is usually a temporary matter, Lasting until theGarou atones; blocking Gifts permanently is far more shameful than a mere death sentence. Most Garou live their lives without ever seeing a great spirit’s sanction imposed, though tales circulate about the unfortunates who suffer the consequences. The vast majority of packs and septs intervene to discipline or expel their rebellious members long before one of the kings of the spirit world can take offense.
Social sanctions can punish careless or inappropriate use of Gifts. For instance, Sense Wym doesn’t tell Garou that the targets are active minions of the Wyrm, only that they’ve been touched by the Wyrm at some point, perhaps through tainted food or a contaminated workplace. A Garou who uses Sense Wym to justify rampant slaughter and destruction is eventually going to lose Renown for foolish waste of effort and for failing to protect innocents: He’s forgotten that the Gift is a way to gather clues, not a license for carnage. Likewise with other Gifts, which Garou might attempt to justify with appealing to just one of the taboos that define Garou norm. There’s seldom just one relevant principle, and Gaia gave Her warriors judgment as well as strength. Storytellers and players alike should feel free to ask “Was this agood idea?“ as well as to reward innovation and ingenuity. Garou who use their Gifts intelligently as well as courageously should earn favor for it.
Ahroun Gifts
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. All allies in earshot 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 focus your pack's fighting instincts, coordinating them against your primary target. Choose that target when activating this gift. You and your packmates gain a Trait bonus equal to the number of packmates present (limit +5) to Physical Challenges against that target. Multiple Garou using this gift do not stack these bonuses. Requires that packmates be in combat with you focusing on the same target.
Duration: Until you attack a new target
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 you 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 packmate 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.) This will give you + 10 Initiative for the first round of combat.
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. You gain a three-Trait bonus to your next attack.
Duration: Your next attack. If the attack misses, the gift is wasted.
Spur Claws
Cost: One Rage
Effect: On your next successful claw attack you bury your claws into your victim, where they stay stuck after they rip from your fingertips. Until the victim takes the time to pull them out (which takes a full turn), they will suffer a 2-Trait penalty to all their challenges. Your claws take a full turn to regenerate and can't be used in that time.
Duration: The spur claws remain ready until your next successful claw attack or until the end of the scene, whichever comes first. The trait penalty lasts until the victim pulls the claws out with a full-turn action.
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
Combat Healing
Cost: Two Rage
Effect: Those born beneath the full moon are known for fighting long after other Garou have fallen. While this gift is in effect, instead of your natural regeneration healing one Bashing or Lethal damage per round, it heals one Bashing, Lethal or Aggravated damage per round instead. (Homid and Lupus Garou still don't have regeneration in their breed forms.)
Duration: Scene or hour, or until you fall unconscious
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
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.
Shatter Bone
Required: You are about to make a Brawl-based called shot on a foe who has bones to break.
Cost: One Rage and one Willpower
Effect: You possess a sixth sense about the way a skeletal structure works -- and breaks. By targeting an opponent's bones you add two Lethal damage to your next called shot. (The called shot still deals all its usual effects.)
Duration: Your next attack. If the attack misses, or is not a Brawl-based called shot, the gift is wasted.
Silver Claws
Required: A form with claws
Challenge: Gnosis vs. 6 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. Requires physical contact.
Advanced Gifts
Aegis
Cost: 1-5 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: A number of rounds equal to the Willpower spent
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 (which includes Create Element). Man-made chemical fires (like napalm or gasoline) and powerful supernatural flame (like Balefire or Fire Elementals) 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
Galliard Gifts
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 (which counts as your action), 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. If other characters are using Distractions, this effect may stack with their efforts for a cumulative effect.
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. A Garou may even be subject to multiple uses of this gift from different Galliards, in which case they suffer cumulative penalties.
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
Required: You must be able to move at least one step to use this gift.
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.
Fog of War
Required: Perform a song to create and maintain the effect
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. The effect ends prematurely if you take any action other than singing, moving, and defending yourself.
Duration: One turn per Social Trait spent, or until you take action other than singing
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
Cost: One Willpower
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
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 boost your Traits to five in an Ability of your choice, or add a sixth Trait to a five-Trait Ability you already have. (This does not refresh any spent Traits in the Ability.)
Duration: One Scene
Song of the Siren
Required: You must sing, audibly and continuously.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mass Social vs. 1-5 targets
Retest: Performance
Effect: Your soothing song lulls your targets into a trance, during which they can do nothing but relax and listen to your music.
Duration: Until any target is attacked, or until they can no longer hear you singing.
Philodox Gifts
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 names, 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.
Ma'at's Feather
Required: This gift can only be used upon a dead Garou
Challenge: Static Gnostic Challenge vs the deceased's former Gnosis Rating
Retest: Occult
Effect: By using this gift the Philodox is able to determine if a Garou died in service to Gaia, or if they had fallen to the Wyrm before they died. This gift does not determine how the dead Garou betrayed Gaia, only whether or not they did.
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
Activation Time: At will (Reflexively)
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
Power of the Ways
Frequency: May only be used to regain each temper once per game session
Challenge: extended Willpower vs. 5 Traits
Retest: Rituals
Effect: You draw upon the ephemera of the Umbra. For each success you achieve in the challenge, you regain one Trait of the chosen spent temper (Rage, Gnosis, or Willpower). This Gift cannot grant points over your maximum rating.
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
Frequency: This gift is specially subject to the five-minute rule (i.e., if it fails, you cannot attempt it against the same target until five in-game minutes have passed).
Challenge: Willpower vs. target, and possible Rage vs. target.
Retest: Intimidation, and possible Primal urge.
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.
If the target is in frenzy, there may be a follow-up Rage-based challenge (using current Rage) to pull the target out of frenzy. The only retest that can be used is Primal urge, representing the primal dominance.
Duration: One scene or hour
Scent of Beyond
Required: You are familiar with the area you want to sense
Challenge: static Mental vs. six to fifteen Traits, depending on your familiarity with the place
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
Sense Balance
Required: The Garou must be focused and at peace (thus it cannot be used while in combat, or while the Philodox is exhausted)
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Static Mental Challenge vs 12 traits
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: By focusing on a target (which can be an area, person, or inanimate objects) and succeeding on the mental challenge, the Philodox becomes innately aware of an imbalance in the Triatic Forces. Wyrm manifestations feel dense and oily, Weaver presence feels cold and unyielding, and Wyld energies feel warm and trembling.
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 attacks against the target gains bonus Traits equal to one plus the number of Mental Traits you spent.
Duration: One scene or combat, whichever ends first.
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: Social vs. target; or, vs. highest Social 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 -- or until another use of Geas cancels the compulsion.
Duration: Until the task is completed, or until Geas is used to cancel the compulsion
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
Frequency: Once per scene
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 absorbs fifteen Health Levels of damage before being destroyed.
Armor Type: Barrier
Duration: One scene, or until destroyed or dismissed
Theurge Gifts
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.
Find the Portent
Required: Meditate on the future for at least three minutes (in character).
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You place yourself in a receptive state and open yourself to omens about the future. Tell a Storyteller about your general concern (e.g., "I meditate upon the battle we are planning") and then tell them what you look at for a sign ("I watch a flock of birds in flight"). The Storyteller then provides a general hint about the future by describing something you see ("a strong red bird rules the flock").
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 Weaver
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty based on intensity of Weaver influence (high intensity is low difficulty, low intensity is high difficulty)
Retest: Science or Investigation
Effect: A mystical sense not unlike a scent tells you whether the Weaver has reinforced anything in the area. This "Weaver-Taint" may mean there is a Weaver-servant nearby, or it may simply mean that an ordinary person attends a Weaver-designed church or keeps a very orderly house.
Sense Wyld
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty based on intensity of Wyld influence (high intensity is low difficulty, low intensity is high difficulty)
Retest: Enigmas or Investigation
Effect: A mystical sense not unlike a scent tells you whether the Wyld has changed anything in the area. This "Wyld-Taint" may mean there is a Wyld-spirit nearby, or it may simply mean that a random passerby employs Wyld-touched childcare or spends a lot of time in the verdant wilderness.
Sense Wyrm
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty based on intensity of Wyrm influence (high intensity is low difficulty, low intensity is high difficulty)
Retest: Occult or Investigation
Effect: A mystical sense not unlike a scent tells you whether the Wyrm has corrupted 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 spite-filled 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
Frequency: You may only have one curse active at a time per 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
Umbral Tether
Required: You are in the Umbra
Cost: One Gnosis each hour you maintain the tether
Effect: You spin a strand like spider silk behind you as you explore dangerous realms in the Umbra, allowing you to retrace your steps. While you are usually the only Garou who can see your tether, some perceptive spirits of Gaffling strength or better can notice it -- and if they're mischievous, they might cut it or alter it.
Intermediate Gifts
Castigate
Required: The target has offended the spirits. Rebuke your Garou target loudly, calling out those offenses; 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. If you cannot correctly state the target's offenses to the spirits (as judged by the Storytellers), the Gift may fail automatically and rebound against you.
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
Cost: One Gnosis
Vs. spirits that are not bound, or that are bound to a place:
Challenge: Social vs. the spirit
Retest: Intimidation
Effect: You compel a spirit to leave this place, even if it is unwilling. This breaks any binding present.
Vs. spirits that are bound to a fetish, object, or person:
Challenge: Social vs. the owner of the fetish or object, or against the person themself
Retest: Intimidation
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
Activation Time: Five minutes of meditation in-game
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. It also grants an immediate precognition that makes you immune to Surprise retests.
Duration: The session
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.
Shadow Play
Requirement: You can take no action but pantomiming the movement of the shadow while you use this gift.
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You lend form to your own shadow, sending it to do your bidding. It manifests with your current Physical/Social/Mental Traits, Ability Traits and Health Levels. It has no Rage, Gnosis or Willpower; it has no Gifts and does not benefit from Gifts, Fetishes or Talens you are using. By focusing on acting out what you want your shadow to do, you can send it away to perform tasks for you, including combat.
Duration: Until you take an action other than pantomiming the shadow's actions.
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.
Ultimate Argument of Logic
Required: You are explaining a topic covered by one of the Abilities Occult, Science, Spirit Lore or Umbra Lore.
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: The Ability that covers what you're explaining
Effect: When you discuss the mysteries of existence, your words take on a supernatural power to persuade -- whether or not they are entirely true. You convince your target of a new "fact" you have explained, as long as that knowledge is covered by one of the Abilities Occult, Science, Spirit Lore or Umbra Lore. E.g., church bells repel faeries (Occult), alcohol is a deadly poison (Science), Unicorn is one of Fenris' brood (Spirit Lore), or there is no such realm as the Abyss (Umbra Lore).
Duration: Until the end of the session, or until your target sees evidence that contradicts your explanation.
Umbral Tracking
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You gain the ability to see others' Umbral Tethers (as described in the basic Theurge Gift of the same name). You can't tell whose they are, but you can determine which direction leads to the Garou maintaining them. You may even make a Physical Challenge versus a tether's creator, retest Occult, to violently break the thread. The other Garou becomes aware of your attempt regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
Web Walker
Required: You must be capable of moving at least one step.
Initial Cost: Two Gnosis (or only one Gnosis if you're a Glass Walker)
Effect: You travel through the Umbra along the Pattern Web as if it were a moon bridge. 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 Pattern Web in three seconds).
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
Ragabash Gifts
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.
Effect: Your appearance blurs away into a haze, difficult to follow by all but the sharpest eyes. People who are looking at you when you activate this gift can keep track of you, but others can only notice you by sight if they are using supernatural senses or if you visibly disturb the environment. If so, they get a Mental Challenge against you (they retest with Investigation; you retest with Stealth) 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.
Emergency Exit
Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Mental vs. 8 Traits
Retest: Survival
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: Ragabash rule number one, whether you're scouting a warehouse or exploring a strange Umbral realm, is that you should always know where the exits are. Use this gift successfully and you get an intuitive sense of the direction of the nearest way out (which is not necessarily the safest way out). The Storyteller gives you one additional detail about the exit for each Mental Trait you spend.
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
Obscure the Truth
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Sly as any fox, you lie and manipulate with the best. In challenges involving the Subterfuge Ability, gain a Trait bonus equal to your current Subterfuge Ability Traits.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
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 game session 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
Fly Feet
Activation Time: At will
Challenge: optionally once per use, Physical vs. difficulty based on material being climbed (9 for stone or wood, up to 14 for glass or ice)
Retest: Athletics
Effect: You cling to walls and ceilings like a fly. You can climb across these surfaces at half your normal movement rate. If you succeed at the optional challenge, you can climb at your full movement rate instead.
Duration: Scene or Hour
Fog of War
Required: Perform a song to create and maintain the effect
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. The effect ends prematurely if you take any action other than singing, moving, and defending yourself.
Duration: One turn per Social Trait spent, or until you take action other than singing
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: You must be outdoors and the moon must be clearly visible 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: Once per scene per target
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Gnosis vs. target
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: 0-5 Gnosis
Effect: You utter a curse on your foe, inflicting sickness and palsy on their body. You remove a number of temporary Physical Traits from your target (your choice) equal to the total number of Gnosis you spend activating the gift (including the initial cost). These traits are marked off as if spent, but they may not regained by any means until the end of the session. Also, having lost Permanent Traits to another version of this gift does not confer an immunity to this version.
Duration: The traits are lost and cannot be refreshed until the end of the session.
Advanced Gifts
Blank
Cost: Three Rage
Challenge: Willpower vs. all supernatural targets in the area; automatic success vs. non-supernaturals
Retest: Occult
Followup Cost: 1-5 Gnosis (yes, even though you spent Rage)
Effect: Why sneak around when you can do your dirty deeds in plain sight? You temporarily shut down conscious thought for everyone affected in the area. They remain standing but stop moving; their senses go dull and they stop being aware of anything for the duration. This buys you a window of time in which to set up some epic mischief, but take care: attacking any victim of the effect ends it.
Duration: A number of turns equal to the Gnosis you spent plus one, or until someone is attacked
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.Target may NOT relent.
Duration: A number of turns equal to the Gnosis you spent
Thousand Forms
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: automatic for non-mythical creatures; static Mental vs. 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 use 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
Required: You must be touching your target, which may require a physical challenge.
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Primal Urge
Followup Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
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: One turn, plus one turn for each social trait spent
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.