Battle Scars
Garou can heal from most wounds without ill effect. A human whose fingers are bitten off by a wolf will need surgery, and will lose some function in those fingers (if she doesn’t lose the fingers entirely). A werewolf can grow the missing tissue and nerve connections back, even re-growing his fingers if they cannot be reattached.
Some injuries, especially those caused by other Garou, can cause a werewolf lasting damage. These wounds occur when a character channels her Rage to remain active in the face of death. A werewolf can also acquire a battle scar as a result of a particularly brutal attack, or from prolonged torture – especially with silver.
Battle Scars range in effect from cosmetic effects, like a web of scar tissue, to missing limbs and brain damage. Any Battle Scar qualifies a Garou for a discount on their next Glory purchase (the exact percentage depending on the severity of the Battle Scar…), although healing a Battle Scar through Gifts or other means, will either forfeit this bonus or make your next Glory raise less likely.
Some tribes, especially the Children of Gaia and the Glass Walkers, may recognize the Wisdom in healing a Battle Scar, when it is possible to do so. Sadly, many of those (especially when inflicted by aggravated damage or silver) can be very difficult to overcome.
When assigning a Battle Scar, the Director will often work with the player to choose one that makes sense. After all, a character who suffers repeated blows to the head won’t end up gelded, but could suffer brain damage. Sometimes, it isn’t immediately sure exactly how specifically someone was injured in the chaos of a large combat timestop. In that case, the player will simply roll on the chart below once the dust has settled.
NOTE #1: A character can avoid a Battle Scar if they are supernaturally healed within three rounds of having to Rage heal.
NOTE #2: If made to roll on the chart, a character may make a Stamina check (using their base Stamina without any bonus or other boosts) against difficulty 7. For every success they achieve, they may go down that many levels on the chart. If the damage was lethal, roll vs diff 6.
| Result (+D100) | Battle Scar | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1-20 | PTSD | Sadly common in the World of Darkness, PTSD reflects deep-seated pain caused by things that a person might not even recall. Combat, torture, accidents…the list goes on and gets ever more gruesome. Despite its sometimes extreme nature, PTSD is a perfectly rational response to harm. Because of that, it can be difficult to treat successfully, even with advanced psychiatry or supernatural gifts. Roll on the Psychological Scars below to see how your PTSD might manifest. |
| 21-30 | Superficial Scars | Large, ugly masses of scar tissue mar your character’s body and remain hairless in all forms. These scars may reduce a character’s Appearance dice pools by one, depending on the situation. (Note: Appearance dice /pools/. Not your Appearance attribute.) |
| 31-40 | Deep Scar | Much the same as a superficial scar, except that muscles are affected as well, and the scar aches when the humidity changes. |
| 41-45 | Improper Bone Setting | One of your character’s bones snapped and did not heal properly. If that area of your body receives two or more health levels of damage at once in the future, the bone snaps again, causing an additional level of lethal damage. |
| 46-50 | Cosmetic Damage | A readily visible injury that doesn’t have a significant debilitating effect, such as a missing ear, a hare lip, or an exposed part of the skull. It looks grotesque to humans and impressive to Garou. Reduce Appearance by one dot when dealing with humans, unless you cover or conceal the damage. |
| 51-55 | Headaches | You get really gnarly headaches sometimes, that seem to just come out of nowhere. Fortunately, you can usually grit your teeth and force your way through the discomfort, making this affliction an ongoing inconvenience more than anything else. Whenever you’re asked to make a Mental roll, for the first time in a scene, roll your Willpower vs the same difficulty. If you succeed, nothing happens. If you fail, you get a -1 dice to all Mental rolls for the rest of the scene. If you botch, you get +2 difficulty to all Mental rolls for the rest of the scene. Spending a Willpower point will reduce this penalty to +1. |
| 56-60 | Ruptured Eardrum | Gain the Hard of Hearing (1-pt) Flaw: You have a +2 difficulty to all rolls involving hearing sounds. You do not receive the normal bonus for Perception in Lupus or other animal forms for auditory checks. |
| 61-65 | Misaligned Jaw | Similar to Improper Bone Setting, your jaw was shattered, and it is now somewhat out of alignment with your tongue. All difficulties for actions involving talking increase or bite attacks increases by one. Your character’s speech is a bit slurred and should be roleplayed appropriately. |
| 66-69 | Missing Eye | One of your eyes was gouged out and hasn’t grown back. The difficulties on all rolls involving depth perception or weapon firing (including using thrown weapons) increase by two. Any Perception rolls based on sight take a +2 difficulty penalty as well. |
| 70-74 | Gelded | Your reproductive system has been damaged. You are incapable of siring or bearing children. Males with this wound are not necessarily impotent, but gelded characters of any gender increase the difficulties of seduction and using Animal Attraction by two. |
| 75-79 | Collapsed Lung | One of your lungs was punctured during battle. You find it difficult to breathe and to exert yourself. You lose one die on any Stamina roll involving exertion and an additional die after five turns of physical activity. In addition, you may hold your breath for only half as long as usual. |
| 80-83 | Serious Impediment | Due to some physical condition, you’re less able to deal with certain situations than most other people seem to be able to do. Your Impediment presents constant but not insurmountable problems. In certain situations, you may suffer a +1 to difficulties that deal with that element of your life. |
| 84-86 | Missing Fingers | You have either lost or mangled at least two fingers on one hand. Dexterity rolls involving that hand suffer a +2 difficulty penalty. Your claw attacks with the maimed hand now inflict Strength -1 Aggravated damage, instead of +1. |
| 87-90 | Maimed Limb | One of your limbs has been mauled to the point of uselessness. If you lost a leg, you move at half speed in all forms. If you lost an arm, your Hispo and Lupus speed is reduced to three-quarters. You are not able to use the damaged limb for any purpose. |
| 90-93 | Spinal Damage | Your spine was fractured, and you have trouble keeping your balance. Your Dexterity is reduced by one, you subtract two from your initiative rating, and you must spend Willpower on any roll involving balance, precision, or remaining still. |
| 94-97 | Major Impediment | Due to some physical condition, you’re less able to deal with certain situations than most other people seem to be able to do. You’re unable to function in most ways that people take for granted. Add +2 to physical difficulties unless you’ve got a reliable way to compensate for that handicap, and assume that you simply cannot do certain things at all. |
| 98-100 | Brain Damage | Severe damage to the head, or perhaps lack of oxygen for a long period of time, has reduced your mental faculties. You lose one dot from Wits or Intelligence (your choice). Additionally, you must roll one D10 and subtract that number of dots from your Gnosis, Willpower or Knowledges (player’s choice of where these points are lost). You are most likely partially amnesiac as well. |
Psychological Scars
You seem fine, on the surface. In this case, you healed back perfectly from the damage wrought on your body…yet the scars beneath have lingered. Unfortunately, the Garou Nation doesn’t offer the same admiration and renown for invisible scars. Indeed, most traumatized Garou are expected to just ‘get over it’. After all, who could be suffering worse than Gaia?
| Result (+D100) | Psychological Scar | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | Minor PTSD | Your PTSD conjures occasional nightmares and anxieties under certain rare circumstances (confronting ghosts, dealing with demons, entering the wilderness, and so forth). |
| 11-18 | Addiction | You’re addicted to some activity or substance that interferes to some degree with your daily life. Perhaps you drink constantly, do drugs or can’t stop playing video games. Whatever the nature of the addiction, it drives you to irrational and possibly dangerous extremes. The one up-side is that it helps you forget why and how you received this scar. For a little while at least. |
| 19-26 | Always Angry | You got your ass kicked. Now, your Rage burns hotter than it did before. This might manifest as a growly irritability or suggest a dangerous proximity to the Wyrm. Your difficulty for Rage rolls is decreased by 1. This makes it much more likely that you will fall into the “thrall of the Wyrm” when you Frenzy. The violent upside of this Flaw is that you inflict +1 die of damage when biting or clawing enemies. |
| 26-34 | Tic | Your nerves are shot. As such, you are afflicted with some sort of repetitive motion during times of stress as an involuntary coping mechanism. Examples include a nervous cough, trembling hands (like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan), twitching eye muscles, and so on. It costs one Willpower to refrain from engaging in your tic. |
| 35-42 | Nightmares | You experience horrendous nightmares every time you sleep, and memories of them haunt you during your waking hours. Upon awakening, you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) or lose a die on all actions for that night. A botched Willpower roll indicates that, even when awake, you still believe that you are locked in a nightmare. |
| 43-50 | Indecisive | You fucked up once. It could happen again. System-wise; you must make a Willpower roll whenever your character must make a decision, otherwise you remain undecided about what to do. |
| 51-57 | Hatred | You utterly despise whoever did this to you. Whoever it was, fixating on them tends to blind you to other opportunities and probably (eventually) annoys even those who sympathized with you. You’ll take dangerous risks for even a shot at vengeance. Many werewolves die this way. |
| 58-63 | Survivor’s Remorse | Did someone die or get seriously injured while you came through seemingly unscathed? whenever you’re presented with a situation even vaguely reminiscent of the ones who died, you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8) to remain composed. Failure results in a breakdown of composure for the remainder of the scene, increasing the difficulty of all rolls by one. |
| 64-69 | Failure | Life is made of reversals of fortune, of course. Yeah, you’ll get back on top someday – it’s just gonna be a hard climb. Especially when the others are looking at you like that. You suffer a -2 dice penalty to any roll intended to persuade or impress your fellow werewolves. In particularly brutal and competitive Caerns, this is often responsible for Kinfolk learning to keep a low profile…shit rolls downhill after all. |
| 70-74 | Serious PTSD | Reactions become more extreme – near-panic, powerful aversion, rapid mood swings – and provocations become more common (gunshots, confrontations, raised voices, etc.). |
| 75-79 | Slip Sideways | What the hell is wrong with you? You increasingly find it difficult to control travel between the physical world and the Umbra, sometimes entering the spirit world when you don’t intend to. When stressed and near a reflective surface, you must roll Wits + Occult (difficulty 7) to avoid shifting into the Umbra unintentionally. In order to overcome the Gauntlet, you must still roll your Gnosis, but the difficulty is 1 less than usual. If you deliberately try to step sideways, you do so at the normal difficulty. |
| 80-84 | Uncontrolled Flinch | When confronted with gunfire; obvious, brutal combat (blood drawn, stab wounds, bones breaking); or any kind of supernatural violence, roll Willpower (difficulty 7). If this roll fails, the character freezes in place for a round. |
| 85-89 | Chronic Depression | Everything seems overwhelming, pointless, and at best a fucking joke at the world’s expense. That feeling pervades each aspect of your existence: your attitude, your physical health, your relationships, and even – especially! – your approach to the supernatural and all its manifestations. System-wise, it often requires you to make a Willpower roll when your depressed character needs to push himself beyond the depression. A successful roll means that he acts without hindrance. A failed one adds +2 to the difficulty of the primary task at hand. You can spend a Willpower point to temporarily ‘suppress’ this Flaw for a scene. Yet Willpower does run out, eventually… |
| 90-93 | Harano Prone | Gain the Harano Prone (4-pt Flaw): You must make a Willpower roll every scene in which you suffer some form of setback. If the roll fails, you fall into a bout of temporary Harano. You may become morose and inactive, or suddenly spring into self-destructive activity. Your perceptions go awry, causing you to lose a die from every dice pool. |
| 94-97 | Major PTSD | Your PTSD kicks off major reactions – fight or- flight panic, vivid flashbacks, moments of stark terror, incapacitating catatonia – in fairly common situations (sex, arguments, financial transactions, etc.). |
| 98-100 | Dark Fate | You barely survived…But should you have? NORMALLY: If you roll a success, which then gets negated by, say, two 1’s, it won’t be treated as a botch. Per the rules, a roll is only ever a normal ‘failure’ (i.e., 0 successes) no matter how many normal 1’s you roll, as long as you get at least one success. A PC with Dark Fate will disregard that rule. Instead, multiple 1’s can take you into negative successes, which of course, is a ‘botch’. So if you got one success and two 1’s, that would now be considered -1 successes (hence, a botch). |
Klaive Dueling
“Make your klaive as an argent claw, so that it responds instantly and precisely to your every thought, striking where you will.”
Duels and challenges between werewolves are an accepted part of the social interplay of the Garou. Serious disputes, usually ones that have significant implications beyond just the two participants, call for an early serious form of duel. It impresses on both the participants and the rest of the sept (possibly even the tribe or entire Garou Nation) that the matter being fought over is serious and its resolution is important. Over the centuries the klaive duel has become the method of choice for these disputes.
A formal, fully-fledged klaive duel in the ancient ritual fashion between two worthy Garou is a source of intense interest and speculation; few such duels occur without curious observers from other caerns showing up. This helps the participants to recognize the seriousness of what they are about to do and helps many of them keep the discipline and control to stop themselves from frenzying to their lasting disgrace. However, the combat rules given below are just as applicable to two warriors crossing klaives on a chaotic battlefield while roaring unfathomable hatred at each other.
Klaive dueling or klaivaskar is a specialty of Fencing, and the search for a knowledgeable and honorable instructor willing to spend the traditional year in teaching its principles and techniques is often an arduous process of proving one’s self worthy all over again. There are many heroes of the Garou Nation who have inherited klaives or claimed them by some other right, who don’t entirely trust themselves to carry such an intimidating weapon into battle. Many resides for decades – even centuries – in sept armories, periodically attended to by the caern’s Theurges to appease the spirits within.
Werewolves who choose to carry klaives (and survive doing so) generally learn a few things in battle that they then incorporate into their dueling techniques. However, those who are borrowing a klaive purely for a ceremonial duel (hopefully to only first blood…) are usually forced to rely on a kind Master of Challenges to give them a set of quick lessons lessons, allowing them to actually use the weapon without disgracing themselves. Some Garou have studied the application of human swordfighting arts, such as fencing and Kenjutsu, to klaive-fighting. Garou are free to study those styles if they wish, though many other werewolves will scorn them for “taking lessons from the apes.”
Klaivaskar Basics
- No character can raise Fencing higher than their Melee ability. Fencing cannot be learned on its own – it requires an instructor to even acquire the first dot. Then, you will need to pay 10 XP (and possibly seek out another instructor) to acquire the Klaivaskar specialization.
- A Garou typically rolls Dexterity + Fencing to perform most attacks, parries and maneuvers with klaives. It does not benefit from the specialization bonus (i.e., getting two successes for every 10 rolled). The specialization simply allows you to wield it without being a menace to yourself. As your Fencing/Klaivaskar improves, you gain access to more sophisticated maneuvers.
- Any Garou with a high enough Fencing/Klaivaskar Ability can attempt any of these maneuvers at +1 difficulty. Those who spend an additional 5 XP on perfecting a particular technique or maneuver, may attempt them at no added difficulty.