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.
Tribe Gifts
Black Fury Gifts
Basic Gifts
Breath of the Wyld
Required: You must touch a Garou or human target.
Challenge: Gnosis vs. five Traits for a Garou target, six Traits for a human target
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: Your touch instills a sense of life and vitality in another, giving them clarity of mind and purpose. They enjoy a one-Trait bonus on all Mental Challenges and Rage Challenges. They feel invigorated and focused on the task at hand.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Curse of Aeolus
Required: You are in a place where fog could naturally occur
Challenge: Gnosis vs. difficulty based on likelihood of fog -- four on the lakeshore, six in most places, nine in the desert
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: A bank of fog rolls in at your call, in an area at least 30 feet square -- double that if natural fog is also present. You can see through this fog perfectly well, but the impaired vision of everyone else halves their Traits on ties and overbids on perception-based Mental challenges. The creepy atmosphere of the fog also puts everyone except you and your pack at a one-Trait penalty on all Willpower challenges.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Flurry of Arrows
To Learn: You must be a member of the Amazons of Diana Camp to learn this Gift.
Cost: One Rage
Effect: Swift and deadly as the huntress Diana herself, you loose arrows with preternatural speed. Every turn, gain an additional Normal action with which to fire an arrow from a bow. (A crossbow and bolt don't qualify as "bow and arrow" for the purposes of the spirits who teach this gift.)
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Heightened Senses
Activation Time: At will
Effect: All your senses become keen to an astonishing degree. In Homid or Glabro shape, you have senses as sharp as a wolf's, gaining a two-Trait bonus to all Perceptive challenges (or synonymous), and you may make Mental Challenges to perform tasks like tracking by scent that would ordinarily only be possible to wolves. In Crinos, Hispo and Lupus forms, you gain a three-Trait bonus to Perceptive challenges and a one-Trait bonus to challenges of the Primal Urge Ability. If you experience any sudden blasts of sensory information while this Gift is active, like seeing a camera flash, hearing a klaxon or getting sprayed by a skunk, you will be stunned for two rounds, and you may lose that sense completely for an hour at the Storyteller's discretion.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Kali’s Tongue
Required: Any target except a spirit in the Umbra
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: 0 to 6 Social Traits
Effect: A whisper of the goddess' wrath strips away your target's ability to heal. They cannot regenerate or be healed by any means for the duration, and if they die under the effects of this gift, they stay permanently dead.
Duration: One turn, plus one additional turn per two Social Traits spent
Owl Speech
Challenge: Social vs. an owl
Retest: Animal Ken
Effect: Calling on the Furies' kinship with the Athena's favored avian, you become able to speak with owls. You may also command them, and they will follow your orders unconditionally. This gift is especially common among the Temple-Keepers of Artemis and the Sisterhood.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Rend
To Learn: You must be a member of the Bacchantes camp to learn this gift.
Required: You must be in Glabro, Crinos or Hispo shape.
Cost: One Rage and 0-5 Physical Traits
Effect: Your natural weapons become powerful enough to rip through any object up to the strength of solid iron or stone. Your claws and jaws are armor-piercing for the duration -- they ignore armor and damage Health Levels directly. If you make use of this ability to tear apart a suitably impressive target, the Storyteller may grant you a three-Trait bonus on an Intimidation-related Social Challenge the next turn.
Duration: One turn, plus one for each Physical Trait spent.
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.
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.
Stoking the Soul’s Fire
To Learn: Only Maidens of the Black Furies can learn this gift.
Cost: One Willpower, one Gnosis, and two Mental Traits
Effect: Maidens of the Black Furies can channel all their will and nature into wrath, for the good of Gaia. You regain all your spent Rage.
Touch of the Muse
Activation Time: At will
Frequency: Once per Social challenge
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Calling on the spirits of art and artifice, you gain a single retest on a Social challenge.
Trail of Pain
Activation Time: One turn of silent thought
Cost: One Gnosis and 0-5 Social Traits
Effect: By tuning into the psychic sound of suffering, you can sense people in pain. You gain a sense of the direction of a victim of suffering within 50 feet plus another 50 for each Social Trait you spent, or you can pick the victim out of a crowd.
Duration: One scene
True Shot
To Learn: Must be a member of the Amazons of Diana Camp to learn this gift.
Frequency: Once per turn
Cost: One Rage
Effect: On the Black Furies next attack with a bow, they receive a +3 trait bonus if they are Maidens, or a +2 trait bonus if they are Mothers or Crones. If used in conjunction with the gift Flurry of Arrows or Blizzard of Arrows, it may only affect one arrow shot each turn.
Watchful Eyes
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: static Mental vs. nine Traits
Retest: Investigation
Effect: With a moment of concentration, you home in on the nearest perpetrator of crimes against Gaia's laws. These crimes are not necessarily the same as Litany offenses, nor are they necessarily acts that serve the Wyrm or Weaver; rather, they are deeds that wrong Gaia and her children in any form (as determined by the wisdom of Pegasus and his brood). A Storyteller will point you in the direction of the closest such criminal, if indeed there is any one nearby.
Intermediate Gifts
Barring the Will
To Learn: Only Mothers of the Black Furies can learn this gift.
Cost: One Rage, one Gnosis (yes, this is an exception, you can spend both), and two Mental Traits
Effect: Nothing rivals a Mother's willpower to achieve her goals; you bend all your spirit and fury to the task at hand. You regain all your spent Willpower.
Blizzard of Arrows
To Learn: You must be a member of the Amazons of Diana Camp to learn this Gift.
Required: A bow and enough arrows to hit up to 20 targets. The bow and arrows may not be enhanced by Weaverish means, such as laser sights or explosive arrowheads.
Cost: Two Rage and one Willpower
Challenge: Static Physical vs. up to 20 targets, limited by your arrows on hand
Retest: Archery
Effect: Breathe out -- time slows for you as you loose shaft after shaft from your bow, one shot per enemy you can see. Breathe in -- time snaps back into place and every arrow races to its target, dealing its damage against each enemy you defeated in the challenge.
Body Wrack
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Physical vs. target
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You point at a target, and pain flowers in every nerve of his body. For the duration of the gift, this agony puts all his challenges at a Trait penalty equal to one plus the number of Mental Traits you spent.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Bolster the True Name
To Learn: Only Crones of the Black Furies can learn this gift.
Cost: One Willpower, one Rage, and two Mental Traits
Effect: As a Crone, you have no need of Rage's passion or Willpower's reason: you channel the spirit of Gaia herself. You regain all your spent Gnosis.
Calm Before the Storm
Required: You cannot use this gift in combat.
Challenge: Social vs. up to 5 targets
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: You project a sense of calm into a group, lulling them into a false sense of peace. The affected targets will be subject to Surprise retests in the first round of combat this scene.
Duration: Until the end of the first round of combat; the effect goes away at the scene's end if there is no combat.
Coup de Grace
Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Brawl
Effect: You masterfully identify your opponent's most vulnerable spot and prepare an attack against it. If the gift succeeds, your next attack will deal double damage (up to a limit of three additional damage).
Duration: Your next attack -- if the attack fails, the gift's benefits are lost
Flames of Hestia
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Gnosis vs. eight Traits
Retest: Occult
Effect: Your hands ignite with a purifying flame, that cleanses or destroys as you desire. Your touch removes Wyrm-taint, purges poison and heals most mundane diseases (at ST discretion); if it does any of these things to a target, it also heals a level of any damage that was caused by that taint, poison or disease. Alternately, you may will the flames to burn, adding a level of Aggravated damage to your unarmed attacks.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
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.
Visceral Agony
Required: A form with claws
Cost: One Rage
Effect: Your claws transmute into wicked poisoned talons, making their strike difficult to avoid by inflaming your target's current wound penalties. Your target suffers a two-Trait penalty against your next attack if they are Bruised, or a four-Trait penalty if they are Wounded. If they are somehow ignoring wound penalties, then instead they suffer normal wound penalties during your attack.
Duration: Your next attack -- if the attack fails, the gift's benefits are lost
Wasp Talons
Required: A form with claws
Frequency: Once every two turns (the claws take a full turn themselves to regenerate)
Cost: One Rage
Challenge: Physical vs. target
Retest: Brawl
Effect: You fire your claws from your hands like a deadly swarm of wasps, dealing two Aggravated damage to your target. Win or tie an additional Simple Test for an additional level of damage. No additional damage is added by other gifts and fetishes that enhance claw damage (Razor Claws,Silver Claws, and the like).
Advanced Gifts
Bacchantes’ Rage
Required: You are in the deep wilderness.
Cost: Two Gnosis
Effect: Drawing upon the astonishing power of your tribe to defend the wild places of the world, you become an unsurpassed warrior-queen. You gain +10 Traits in ties and overbids on all challenges involving melee combat. You may also spend one Rage per attack after striking a foe to deal an additional level of damage.
Duration: One Scene
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 gain all the standard powers of the animal in question, such as flight, gills, poisonous fangs, etc.
Duration: Until you choose to end the effect
Wyld Warp
Cost: One Rage and one Gnosis (yes, this Gift is an exception, you can spend both)
Challenge: static Mental vs. a difficulty you choose
Retest: Enigmas
Effect: Summoning a maelstrom of chaotic Wyld-spirits is a desperate move, but this gift gives you that option. What exactly the Wyld-spirits do is unpredictable and up to the Storyteller, but their actions will at least be beneficial to you. They might give you fresh Traits and Abilities, heal all your wounds, disassemble everything man-made in the area, turn your enemies to cheese -- you can never guess beforehand. The higher the difficulty you set yourself for this challenge, the more beneficial they will be.
Duration: Storyteller-determined
both at once -- 1 to 5 of both, giving a max of 10)
Effect: When this Gift take effect, humans no longer fear you because of the Curse: instead, they feel awe toward you, perceiving you as a paragon of human potential. You gain a trait bonus on all Social Challenges equal to the number of Rage and/or Gnosis you spent.
Duration: One scene or hour
BoneGnawer Gifts
Basic Gifts
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.
Cooking
Required: Something to serve as a pot and a spoon, plus rubbish and water
Cost: 1 Gnosis per five pounds of ingredients (round down -- no cost for less than five pounds)
Challenge: static Mental vs. difficulty based on ingredients -- six Traits for harmless but inedible trash, ten Traits for toxic substances
Retest: Survival
Effect: You transform garbage and water into a bland but healthy gruel, simply by stirring it up in a pot. Bone Gnawers use this gift to ensure they and their kin never go hungry for long.
Dead End
Required: Physically mark or vandalize your trail to deceive your pursuers
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You throw off pursuit by leaving confusing signs or graffiti in your wake. Any attempts to track you by ordinary means or Rite of the Questing Stone requires that your pursuer expend an an appropriate Ability and defeat you in an additional Mental Challenge.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Declamation
To Learn: Only Homid and Metis Garou can purchase this gift.
Activation Time: Five minutes per page of text to memorize
Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Effect: You memorize pages of text and recall them with perfect clarity for the duration of the gift. You don't even have to understand the text: you could memorize a book written in a language you don't understand, or a shipping manifesto filled with unfamiliar names, dates and numbers.
Duration: One week, plus one per Gnosis spent activating the gift
Desperate Strength
Activation Time: At will
Cost: One Willpower, and take one level of Aggravated damage to your own natural Health Levels
Effect: In a time of great need, you call on immense strength -- at the cost of your own will and health. You may avail yourself of an additional retest on a Strength-related challenge. You may use this gift for as many retests as you like, even on a single challenge, as long as you pay the cost for each retest. You may even use this Gift after attempting the Rank "Might" retest, as a special exception to the rule that Might must be the last retest.
Find the Prize
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Static Mental Challenge (Difficulty determined by the Storyteller, depending on the rarity of the object)
Retest: Enigmas
Followup Cost: 1-5 Mental Traits
Effect: The Garou employing this GIft spends a round thinking about something valuable that they want to find (either a specific item, or a general group of items). For each Mental Trait spent, the user receives one clue as to the whereabouts of this item (e.g. "Turning a corner you see a greyhound bus station, maybe your pet dog is inside.") Note that knowing where something is, doesn't mean that it's easily accessible.
Hootenanny
Required: You must sing or play music to invoke this gift.
Effect: Your music brings in da noise and/or da funk, invigorating your packmates. Your packmates gain a two-Trait bonus to all Physical Challenges while you perform. Multiple performers may stack their effects: fear the Garou with a backup band of Bone Gnawers!
Duration: As long as you focus on your performance -- doing anything else like joining a fight ends the Gift.
I Got a Rock
Activation Time: At will
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: The spirits guide your aim, enabling you to throw more accurately. You gain an additional throwing retest. You may activate this gift multiple times on a single challenge, as long as you can pay the cost each time. This gift cannot be used at the same time as Stone Throwing Devil.
Kitchen Chemistry
Required: Basic household chemicals
Cost: One Rage
Challenge: static Mental vs. Storyteller-determined difficulty based on the bomb's ingredients and complexity
Retest: Science
Followup Cost: 1, 3, or 5 Mental Traits
Effect: You can improvise small bombs from just about any household chemicals you can find. The Mental Traits you spend determine the complexity of the bomb's trigger condition: 1 Trait makes the sort of bomb that explodes on impact, 3 Traits make it explode when someone comes within three paces of it, or 5 Traits make a complex trigger such as one detonated by cell-phone. When they explode, these bombs deal two Aggravated damage to everyone within five steps of the explosion.
Duration: Permanent (well, until they explode, at least)
The Hungry Hound
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller-chosen difficulty, based on likelihood of finding food in the area
Retest: Scrounge
Effect: You sniff the air and track down the nearest source of free food. If you win the challenge outright, it only takes you a minute to locate it. If you have to retest to win, it takes you five minutes. If you lose, there's no free food in the area to be found.
Odious Aroma
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Your body odor intensifies to a horrific degree, hitting everyone nearby like a hammer. Anyone within twenty feet who has a sense of smell suffers a two-Trait penalty to all their challenges, thanks to the effort of not inhaling the debilitating stink. You gain a two-Trait penalty to all Social Challenges and Stealth Challenges.
Duration: One Scene
On Patrol
Required: The gift Sense the Unnatural and/or Scent of the True Form
Activation Time: Ten minutes
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: After spending time concentrating on an area, you can use the gifts Sense the Unnatural and Scent of the True Form on anything up to one city block away.
Duration: Until you leave the area
Resist Toxin
Activation Time: At will
Effect: Your constitution has been spiritually enhanced to enable you to deal with a Bone Gnawer's typically unusual diet. You may neutralize most poisons from your body at will, and you benefit from a three-Trait bonus on any challenge to cope with a Wyrm-enhanced toxin.
Road Ward
Activation Time: At will
Cost: One Willpower
Followup Cost: any number of Traits of the Survival Ability
Effect: Bone Gnawers have a knack for falling off of things and out of things at high speed, so this gift exists to help them cope. You can negate the effects of Falling Touch, and you can spend Traits of Survival on a one-for-one basis to negate levels of damage taken from falling.
Scent of Sweet Honey
Required: You must physically touch your target.
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You rub a scent onto a target that will render it irresistible to all kinds of insects and vermin. This Gift takes five minutes to reach full effect, as crawling and skittering things are drawn to the target. After five minutes, the target is infested, suffering a one-Trait penalty to all challenges and the negative Traits Clumsy, Repugnant and Witless as a result of constantly being bitten and picking parasites out of their fur or clothes.
Duration: The remainder of the session
Smell of Success
Required: Ask the target for some change or for food
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Streetwise
Followup Cost: optionally, one Mental Trait and/or one trait of the Streetwise Ability
Effect: With a moment of distraction and a sniff or two, you determine how well-off your target is. You gain an understanding of whether they are destitute, or if they have a job and place to stay. Spending the Mental Trait reveals how many dots in Resources they have. Spending the Streetwise Ability lets you learn one fact about their home.
Stone Throwing Devil
Cost: One Rage
Effect: The strength of your arm makes anything you throw especially deadly. Increase the damage type of your thrown projectiles by one step along the line from nothing to bashing to lethal to aggravated.: e.g., paper airplanes do bashing damage, baseballs do lethal, knives do aggravated. Anything that already does aggravated damage will do one additional level of it. You still must make an ordinary physical challenge to hit your target, but your throwing range increases to your line of sight. This gift cannot be used at the same time with I Got A Rock.
Duration: One Scene
Tagalong
Required: Know the name of the Totem and prostrate yourself in front of the sept or pack alpha, wriggling forward on your stomach like a begging dog. You can't target an alpha who is actively hostile toward you.
Challenge: static Social vs. the Totem
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: With a display of humility, you ingratiate yourself to the patron Totem of a sept or pack. The totem will look on you with favor and consider you one of its own for the purposes of granting its blessings, allowing you to perform pack maneuvers, etc. It will disapprove of any Garou who mistreats you without cause. The totem of a caern won't even mind if you perform the Rite of the Opened Caern while this gift is active.
Duration: One day
The Mark
Required: Urinate on the target person or object. (Keep it in your imagination, please. This may require a Physical challenge against an unwilling target.)
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You mystically link yourself to your scent-mark. You are able to tell where the target is located at any time after you mark it. You may only have one target marked at a time; new uses of the gift cancel the old one.
Duration: Permanent, or until the gift is used one a new target
Trash Magnet
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Streetwise
Effect: You persuade local garbage-spirits that your target is their best friend ever. Bits of trash and detritus fling themselves against the target, distracting and obstructing them. Until they clean themselves off or dig themselves out, all their actions take a Trait penalty fitting the number of trash spirits in the area -- zero for a sterile lab or pristine wilderness, one for an ordinary house or open field, two for a city street, three for a dirty alleyway, four near a garbage truck, five for a city dump.
Duration: Until they take an action to shed the garbage (or in worse cases, dig themselves out of the pile)
Urban Ward
Required: Mark off an area no larger than a single motel room, and sleep there.
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You lay down a simple ward for your sleeping area. The gift instantly awakens and alerts you if anything crosses the boundary you set. You don't learn who or what crossed the boundary, however.
Duration: Until you wake
Intermediate Gifts
Attunement
Required: You're in an urban area
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller-determined difficulty
Retest: Streetwise
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You commune with the ambient spirits of the city, learning useful information about the area. Success gets you general information on a topic, such as the human population count, locations of supernatural hideouts, the presence of hidden tunnels, etc. Each Mental Trait you spend gives you an accurate answer to one specific yes-or-no question about the area.
Cooter’s Revenge
Owing its name to the mechanic from the Dukes of Hazzard, this modern gift grants two effects:
Repair Retest
Activation Time: At will
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You gain a retest on a challenge involving the Repair Ability.
Tool Weaponry
Required: An automotive tool at least the size of a half-inch crescent wrench
Cost: One Rage
Effect: The tool you wield becomes a three-Trait melee weapon that deals two Lethal damage on a successful strike, and has the negative trait Dangerous.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Dumpster Diving
Required: You and your pack must jump into a dumpster or trash can.
Challenge: Gnosis vs. four Traits
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: This means of escape was granted to the Bone Gnawer tribe by the spirit of the Great Trash Heap. He instantly transports you and your pack to some other location -- but exactly where is up to the spirit.
Face in a Crowd
Required: A crowd of nameless NPCs
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: You move a crowd into mob behavior, directing their actions with simple mental commands. You can't force a mob to act against itself. The first turn that you stop paying the cost of the gift, the everyone goes back to doing what they had originally been doing as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Duration: One turn
Friend in Need
Required: Your target is a packmate or tribemate. Friend in Need itself may never itself be shared, by its own effect or any similar effect.
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: The other tribes may say what they will about the Bone Gnawers, but this gift proves they are willing to give their all for those they trust. Choose one of the following: one of your Gifts, or a specific number of your Health Levels, Rage, or Willpower. For the duration, your target packmate or tribemate may use that Gift or those Traits as if they were their own -- and for the same duration you cannot use the Gift or Traits. If you choose a Gift, it cannot be a higher level than your target's Rank would allow them to learn. When the Gift ends, you get these things back -- though any Traits spent are still spent, and any damage taken remains on the Health Levels. If your target dies while this Gift is in effect, youpermanently lose whatever you lent -- except for Health Levels, which simply return having taken Aggravated damage.
Duration: One Scene, or until you choose to end the effect
Gift of the Skunk
Challenge: Physical vs. up to 5 targets (which must be standing next to one another and within 20 feet of you)
Retest: Athletics
Effect: The spirits have granted you musk glands like a skunk. Anyone struck by your spray gains the Negative Traits Repugnant x2. Anyone using a heightened sense of smell will be unable to do anything for ten minutes other than gag and retch -- unless they spend Willpower, which gives them one turn of control per point spent.
Duration: The Negative Traits remain for the rest of the session.
Gift of the Termite
Required: A target comprised of wood
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller-based difficulty based on the size of the target
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: With a trick taught to you by termite-spirits, you wreak destruction on an object or structure made of wood. It immediately rots and collapses. Seconds later, nothing remains of it but splinters and sawdust.
Infest
Cost: One Gnosis
Cost: 1-5 Social Traits
Effect: You send out a spiritual signal to all the vermin of the area, summoning them to a new home. They infest a structure of your choice. The number of Social Traits you spend determines what kind of a problem this is: one Trait creates an minor nuisance, while five Traits renders a building unfit for human occupation.
Duration: Permanent (though the vermin can be exterminated by normal means)
Laugh of the Hyena
Required: You must cackle loudly like a hyena.
Activation Time: At will
Effect: As indomitable as the hyenas of the veldt, you are as difficult to control. By laughing madly, you gain one free retest on the defense against any Mental challenge or Willpower challenge made to control or dominate you, such as Roll Over, the Dominate discipline, or the Mind sphere. This is the last retest you may attempt on this challenge.
Lucky Bastard
Frequency: Once per game
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You have the devil's own luck. Once per game, you may spend a Gnosis for a free retest on any challenge.
Rant and Rave
Required: A target you know, within 100 miles
Effect: Gibbering on the corner like a crazy person, you can infect the mind of a distant target with a message you want to deliver. Speak a message of five sentences or less to a Narrator or Storyteller, who delivers the message to its recipient. You must then spent a full minute gibbering aloud madly, ranting and raving about whatever comes to mind. You can't initiate any challenges during this time. When your target gets the message, they can respond to you in five sentences or less -- but if they do, they also launch into a full minute gibbering. You can slowly conduct entire conversations this way, which has been known to disturb many an onlooker.
Reshape Object
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. a Storyteller-chosen difficulty, based on the change being attempted
Retest: Repair
Followup Cost: 0 to 3 Mental traits or a permanent Gnosis for duration; an optional Gnosis to deal Aggravated damage (see effect)
Effect: You extend your shape-shifting spirit into an organic, non-living object, changing its shape and size to suit your needs: you can turn a dead branch into a spear, a pile of leaves into armor, or a piece of bone into a canoe, for example. If you create a weapon and spend an additional Gnosis, this new object can deal Aggravated damage.
Duration: The duration depends on the followup cost paid:
0 Mental Traits: 5 minutes;
1 Mental Trait: 10 minutes;
2 Mental Traits: 1 hour;
3 Mental Traits: the remainder of the session; or
1 Permanent Gnosis: the change is permanent.
Shadow of the Rat
Frequency: Once per session
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Calling on Rat's signature hardiness, you refresh all your Tough Physical Traits (or their Stamina-related synonyms).
Streets tell Stories
Required: An outdoor, urban setting.
Activation Time: You may only use this gift in your Downtimes, and only once per Downtime.
Effect: The streets and paving-stones themselves inform you of what has been happening in an area. In your Downtimes, describe the area you are investigating. The Storytellers will inform you about everything that has happened in that area and who has traveled through it in the last few days.
Trust Me
Required: Lie to a mundane human target, beginning with the phrase "Trust me"
Frequency: Once per session
Challenge: Automatic unless the target has double your Social Traits, in which case Social vs. target
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: Bone Gnawers have a way with ordinary humans of the city. You tell a lie to a mundane human target, and you are so convincing that they have no choice but to believe you.
Duration: Permanent, or until they're convinced otherwise
Advanced Gifts
Help me
Required: A mundane human target
Frequency: Once per session
Effect: You invite the assistance of an ordinary human, and they give their aid enthusiastically and freely. They will help within their normal nature and means: a banker might lend a large sum of money, a hit man might offer to kill someone, or a grandmother might bake you cookies -- but grandma won't offer to kill anyone (unless she's also a hit man).
Duration: The rest of the session
Piping
Effect: At no cost, you summon a horde of rat-spirits and give them a message. They then scatter and carry the message to every Bone Gnawer or Ratkin (your choice) in the city, delivering your words in chittering voices. If you use this gift for frivolous purposes, the spirits will also take an Honor away from you.
Riot
Cost: 1-5 Gnosis -- one to affect a building, two for a block, three for a neighborhood, four for a suburb and five for the whole city
Challenge: static Mental vs. 10 Traits
Retest: Subterfuge
Effect: You whip up a storm of malevolent spirits to incite the humans of the city to riot. They justify fears and hatreds, twisting people's perceptions of one another and blocking all communication that could defuse the tension. The spirits you summon will start with a target group of humans you specify, but they will soon spill over to affect the entire area, appropriate to the amount of Gnosis you spent.
Duration: One scene
Survivor
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You exemplify the Bone Gnawer ideal, surviving almost any extremes. Upon activating the Gift, choose either Extreme Survivor or Trauma Survivor. If you choose Extreme Survivor, you suffer no ill effects from hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, temperature extremes, or harsh weather conditions. If you choose Trauma Survivor, you become immune to all mundane poison and disease, and even Wyrm-enhanced versions of these work at half normal strength; you gain the additional Physical Traits Tough x3 and the Ability Traits Survival x2; and you suffer no wound penalties. You may activate both of these effects, but they count as separate gift activations.
Duration: Extreme Survivor lasts a full day; Trauma Survivor lasts ten turns.
Children of Gaia Gifts
Basic Gifts
Calm
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You soothe another's anger. If they are in a Frenzy provoked by anything except Rage-healing, they immediately regain control, leaving Frenzy. Otherwise, they lose Rage instead -- one Rage plus one for each Mental Trait you spent, up to a limit of half their current Rage (round in the target's favor). You have to choose the Mental Traits you spend without necessarily knowing how many Rage your target will lose; extra Mental Traits you spent have no effect.
Domestic Seeming
Required: You're in Lupus shape
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: Seeing a wolf incites unwarranted alarm or interest from humans, so this Gift provides a gentle disguise. Others see you not as a wolf, but as a large domestic dog breed like a husky or malamute. Supernatural creatures can attempt to see through this disguise with a Mental Challenge.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Jam Weapon
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Repair
Effect: You mystically peace-bind every mundane, man-made weapon that your target carries; they all simply stop having any ability to deal damage. This has no effect on Fetish weapons.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Luna’s Armor
Frequency: Once per scene
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You invoke Luna's light to protect you from your enemies' attacks. You gain a number of Armor levels equal to your Rank plus one. While this Armor is intact, you do not take additional damage from silver weapons.
Armor Type: Barrier
Duration: Until the end of the scene, or until destroyed by damage.
Mercy
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Unicorn blesses you with the ability to fight to your fullest without risk of truly damaging your foes. All damage you inflict unarmed becomes bashing damage. Your claws and teeth tear open your opponents' flesh -- which then immediately seals up bloodlessly into bruises.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Mule’s Bane
To Learn: You must be Metis to purchase this gift.
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Physical vs. target
Retest: Expression
Followup Cost: 0-5 Social Traits
Effect: You share the curse Gaia laid upon you with another unlucky individual. They gain your Metis deformity for the duration. (You don't lose it, though.)
Duration: One turn, plus one per Social Trait 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
Stinging Blows
Cost: One Rage
Effect: Your attacks land with wicked, wasp-like stings. For the entire duration of this gift, anyone you successfully attack must succeed in a static Willpower challenge (difficulty 9 Traits, retest Survival) or else turn on you and attack only you until they're attacked by someone else.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Swallow Rage
Required: You have just failed a Frenzy test
Activation Time: At will
Challenge: Rage vs. five Traits
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: You stop yourself short of flying into a deadly rage, instead turning your anger on yourself. You must instantly lose a number of Rage that will drop your total below your current Willpower. Then take a number of levels in Lethal damage equal to the Rage you lost. You are immune to further Frenzy tests for the duration.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Water Conning
Required: Touch the water with your head or your hand.
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty based on the potency of the toxins in the water
Retest: Occult
Effect: Your touch purifies water of all contaminants. This gift effects one day's worth of drinking water per use.
Intermediate Gifts
Beast Life
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. Storyteller difficulty
Retest: Animal Ken
Followup Cost: 0 to 5 Mental Traits (range); 0 to 5 Gnosis (duration)
Effect: You can communicate with all animal life. Animals become inclined to help you, fulfilling any request, even risky or suicidal ones -- although you may gain notoriety with Gaian spirits if you fail to give homage to such animal-spirits after they've sacrificed themselves for you. You may also summon all animals of a chosen type within ten miles, plus another then miles for each Mental Trait spent; those animals who can reach you without too much difficulty will do so, and follow your commands.
Duration: One Scene or Hour, plus one for each additional Gnosis spent
The Cleaving Hoof
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Sometimes a decisive blow is the surest route to peace. You gain an additional retest on your next damage-dealing attack.
Duration: One attack
Dazzle
Frequency: Once per target per scene
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You flood a target's mind with visions of Gaia's wonders; you fill their heart with love of all Her works. They sit down and quietly contemplate these glorious revelations for the duration. The effect ends if they are attacked.
Duration: One Scene, or until attacked
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.
Lover’s Touch
Required: Touching the wound to be healed on a spirit or living creature; for battle scars, healing the same scene they happened
Initial Cost: 1-5 Gnosis
Challenge: none for other Garou; Mental Challenge vs. non-Garou
Retest: Medicine
Followup Cost: To heal a battle scar, one additional Gnosis
Effect: A more powerful version of Grandmother's Touch allows you to heal with a caress. You either heal two Health Levels of damage on yourself or another, or you restore one spent Willpower to them. If you touch a spirit, you can give it one Essence. You still can't heal 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, and you must spend an additional Gnosis.
Pain Chain
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Extended Static Mental vs. a series of targets
Retest: Investigation
Effect: Killing the puppets of the Wyrm does Gaia little good. You've learned to follow the strings up to the true masters -- for example, tracing the psychic stain of subjugation from a Fomor to a Bane to a BSD theurge to the theurge's Alpha. Starting from a known pawn, make a Static Mental Challenge versus the entity giving that pawn orders; if you succeed, you mystically learn the name and face of that boss, and you get to attempt the challenge again against its boss. Continue this way until you fail or reach the top of the chain.
Serenity
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You inspire a deep sense of peace in your target that blocks their ability to spend Rage.
Duration: One turn, plus one per Mental Trait spent
Serpent Driving
Frequency: Once per game session
Challenge: Gnosis vs. variable difficulty: 4 for a few minor Banes, 10 for BSDs or ancient vampires
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: The sacred purity of your presence drives servants of the Wyrm out of the area. Define the area you're affecting. Wyrm-tainted creatures flee the area, unable to endure close proximity of your purity.
Duration: One Scene
Soothe the Savage Beast
Required: Play soothing music for your audience
Challenge: mass Gnosis vs. up to 5 listeners
Retest: Performance
Effect: The gentle power of your performance eases the Rage in your audience, removing one Rage trait from each listener who failed your challenge. Your listeners cannot lose their last Rage trait this way, however.
Spirit Friend
Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: Many spirits recognize and trust Unicorn's mark on a Garou, and this gift amplifies that. You gain a one-Trait bonus on all interactions with non-hostile spirits, plus an additional Trait for each Mental Trait you spent.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
The Guilty Mind
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Law
Effect: You magnify your target's ethical instincts, inspiring a state of guilt that compels them to act justly and to right any wrongs they have committed. Their new sense of right and wrong is like that of a stereotypical Child of Gaia.
Duration: One Scene
Uncaught Since the Primal Morn
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Physical vs. your fastest pursuer
Retest: Athletics
Effect: Just like the unicorns of legend, you become impossible to hunt. Your pursuers automatically fail to catch up to you for the duration of the gift.
Duration: One Hour
Unicorn’s Grace
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You attain a state of balance and calm unusual to most Garou. You cannot enter Frenzy by any means. You may spend only one Rage per round. Humans treat you as if you had no Rage, freeing them from the Curse.
Duration: One scene, or until until you take Crinos form.
Words of the Alpha
Required: Five minutes of meditation
Activation Time: Five minutes
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. Storyteller difficulty
Retest: Leadership
Effect: To lead Garou through time of peace requires extraordinary insight, and this gift provides it. Tell a Storyteller what objective you're trying to achieve, then meditate for five minutes and make the challenge. If you win, the Storyteller will advise you on how to achieve the goal. Your character receives this advice as a flash of insight.
Advanced Gifts
Halo of the Sun
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Helios anoints your form with a blaze of sunlight, lending his power to your attacks. All attacks against you suffer a three-Trait penalty from the blinding light. All your unarmed attacks deal Aggravated damage, as well as dealing an additional two levels of damage. Vampires within twenty feet suffer the effects of standing in direct sunlight.
Duration: One Scene
The Living Wood
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You animate the trees themselves to fight on your behalf. Each successful use of this gift animates a single tree. The tree wades through the earth at your movement, and has traits in accordance to the type of tree you animated:
Sapling: Physical Traits equal to your Homid Traits, 4 Health Levels, 1 Brawl, 1 Survival, deals 2 Bashing damage per strike
Tree: Physical Traits equal to your Homid Traits + 10, 8 Health Levels, 2 Brawl, 2 Survival, deals 3 Lethal damage per strike
Ancient Tree: Physical Traits equal to your Homid Traits + 20, 12 Health Levels, 3 Brawl, 3 Survival, deals 4 Lethal damage per strike
Duration: One Scene
Trust of Gaia
Required: Your targets hear you speak -- even via telephone or loudspeaker
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: mass Social vs. up to 20 listeners
Retest: Empathy
Effect: Your voice carries a tone of Gaia's love that instantly wins the trust of potential allies -- and the hatred of anything strongly aligned with the Wyrm. Those against whom you win the challenge will treat you like a trusted friend for the duration. Creatures of powerful Wyrm-traint feel a potent distaste for you instead. Your listeners' common sense still functions, but they don't realize how unnaturally their attitudes have shifted. Unicorn becomes angry with any Child of Gaia who abuses the trust created by this gift.
Duration: One Scene