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.

Duration: Until you move, make noise, or interact with your environment.

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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.  This gift allows for as many retests as the character wishes to spend Willpower for, but any damage suffered by this gift is unpreventable, and heals at the normal rate for aggravated damage. Damage sustained by Desperate Strength may not be healed with Healing Talens or with Gifts such as Mother's Touch during a game session. It may be healed with Talens or Gifts between sessions. (During Soft RP time)

 

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! The PC using this gift must be able to continue to play music and only concentrate on that activity. The PC may only bid stamina based traits when attacks are made against them and continue to play.

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. This gift can only be used once per challenge. 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: Can only be used once an hour/scene. Using the 1Trait Option requires a Physical Challenge (retest Athletics) to hit it's intended target for the full 2 Aggravated wounds. Any other character that is in the area to be hit may also take part in the challenge (the Giftuser needn't risk additional traits) in order to move away before it lands. Those still in the area of effect at the end of the challenge (either because they lost the challenge or did not leave the area) take 1 Aggravated wound from the explosion. Players should keep in mind that this gift does not and should not always require that the object be thrown as a ranged weapon. Triggers and Detonators should be used when appropriate. An ST is  free at their discretion to allow the bomb to do greater structural damage to an area or building, when it does not involve characters (PC or NPC).

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: This spirit will be handled by the presiding ST. The "Patrolling Spirit" can attempt to use the Gift: Sense Wyrm, as well as any of the following, assuming the originating Garou knows them: Scent of the true Form, Sense Unnatural. The Patrol spirit uses your Mental Traits, as well as the appropriate Ability Traits (Ability Traits are "loaned" to the spirit and unavailable for the Gift's duration; unused traits are returned when the spirit returns.)

 

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.

Duration: One Scene

 

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 two-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. You may only benefit from one Totem at a time from the use of this gift.

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

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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. Silly, abusive or stupid commands (ST discretion) will auto-fail.

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 or an appropriate Crafts ability.

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. Crafted items cannot have more bonus traits or health levels to an identical item listed in our rules pages. Crafted Item may not be complex for example have moving parts.

 

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). These traits must have been lost in the same scene as when the gift is used.

 

Streets tell Stories

Required: An outdoor, urban setting.

Cost: One Gnosis

Challenge: Mental Vs Storyteller difficulty 7

Retest: Streetwise

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

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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.