Ooooh Snap!

I played a werewolf in a vampire larp for 5 years. Puissance and Fleetness kicked my ass time and again. There are some werewolf gifts that grant win all ties. I couldn't get them as a Fianna Ragabash... but that's neither here nor there.

Raven was on a roll when the four of us tried to kill him. Even without winning all ties he rarely lost a trait.

You should have had more villains with win all ties. A combo of Werewolves with some physical Vamps with Fort, Cel and Potence might have worked well. Have Theo Bell go on a apeshit rampage. He'd own all of us.:-p

Marius wrote:I played a werewolf in a vampire larp for 5 years. Puissance and Fleetness kicked my ass time and again. There are some werewolf gifts that grant win all ties. I couldn't get them as a Fianna Ragabash... but that's neither here nor there.

Raven was on a roll when the four of us tried to kill him. Even without winning all ties he rarely lost a trait.

We forgot that even if our weapons broke on him, he still took damage. So even when those stakes broke he would be getting at least one health level. Not that it matters. Personal Armor AND Skin of Marble BOTH break weapons btw. So that's like TWO tests to see if your weapon breaks, not one. And Skin of Marble then halves any physical damage. Raven is a monster. Even Raven Diamondback didn't have that. (Only cause in 2cd Prog we didn't allow Elder Powers AND you could only start at 10th gen.)

mixing and matching playing realms or whatever you want to call it usually works really well or really bad. Truthfully if you were after a life and death challenge for the numbers we were taking only having 4 garou left your side a little overwhelmed, but not having a big background with garou running multiple packs would have been a big challenge. Even using the strategy you were talking about would have just drawn out there death over time for a pack of 4 instead of proving a nearly impossible task. Realistically for a place like that and what we were taking having 2 packs or at least running around 6 garou in the pack would have helped and would have allowed for the use of more gifts for the combat like falling touch and/or jam tech. It was a pretty cool setup overall and well thought out combat scenario you threw at us though.

Just my input. You did a great job with what you had, just wasn't much you could have done different the way things were set up.

Hmm or perhaps if the Garou were in the middle but there were ghouled gaurds on the other side of a wall, like murder holes, armed with bows or crossbows trying to stake us? Or higher ranked Garou, or just Garou with gifts that specifically hurt vampires more than anything else.

Rank wasn't an issue unless you wanted Jason to be throwing a rank 5 out there as the leader. Garou don't match up 1 on 1 against vamp's with combat disciplines very well. As the power scale go's Garou start very powerful but don't ramp up in power horribly fast where as Vamp's start out a little weaker but can become combat effective powerhouses very fast. Murder holes really didn't seem like a very realistic addition to the enemy stronghold. These were a drug lab and living quarters/caern, not a 3 story trap.

It's realistic for a secret lair that they actually want to be able to defend against intruders. It's the World of Darkness. People are going to have things like that in their little secret evil underground bases. At least, they should.

I think we should take on ODSD next. I bet they would def fuck us up with what they know. :-p Or Strike Force zero!

The main reason for an enemy to be armed with bow's and arrow's in the WoD is to defend against vampires. This particular enemy stronghold had every bit if not more reason to expect a garou attack then an attack by vampires. Don't know, maybe it is or isn't something to be expected in any random enemy stronghold but keep in mind this was there home and place of business to. Just because it's the WoD doesn't mean supernaturals don't want some degree of comfort. Also I'm pretty sure nobody has there personal domain/haven set up like that and really the bad guys aren't too much different then the good guys.

But they did know we were coming so I think they did know we were vampires. You can have comfort and security in WoD, so its not unreasonable at all to have murderholes with guards at least armed with guns. They had frigging bulwarks but murderholes is somehow beyond them?

Maybe you should run a LARP if you think the villains in this one are inadequate. You are coming very close to criticizing the efforts of an individual who entertains us for no recompense. I should be a little more tactful if I were you Scott.

Please stop trying to take what I say and turn it into an insult against staff when I was CLEARLY arguing with Ryan about what is and is not possible, and we aren't even being rude to each other either. Getting very tired of this. I'm NOT insulting or criticizing anyone. What I AM saying that I don't agree with Ryan that you couldn't have such things and still have a nice place to live as well. What am I totally NOT saying is that staff did a poor job or anything of the sort. He did just fine. Throws didn't go well. It happens all the time in many games. I take offense to you saying I'm insulting Jason or Adena or anyone else on staff. I'm not looking for a fight or anything but please don't accuse me of such things, it hurts my feelings and upsets me. I like Jason and Adena as people and as staffers and they are doing fine. If any of my suggestions sounds like criticisms I appologize. They are certainly not meant to be.

I did not say you -were- being insulting. I said what you said sounded very CLOSE to being insulting. You might be arguing with Ryan, but other people are reading this too. If you don't want to be tactful, don't do it where people can misinterpret your words.

Keep in mind the "bulwarks" were in place as this was originally the safe for the Casino. The tunnel with elevator was added on and the living quarters developed. If the "kill holes" and army of ghouls/famori armed with crossbows and bows were going to be in place it's something that would have had to be placed between the time they were tipped off that a random Gangrel, or someone with earth meld, was snooping around the air ducts and now. The various investigations tipped them off to the fact someone was onto them. They could assume just about anything from there as I don't believe Sac was the only area they were operating in first off and to go from one or two vamp's snooping around to the force we brought is a pretty big jump. Besides, if they were expecting an attack would we have been able to literally catch them with there pants down? They had defensive schemes in place that would be effective against anyone but a small army of vampires like we brought, and the reason we were able to blow through there defenses as fast as we did was purely based off the numbers and potency of the front line.

Vai ICly doesn't have the experience with powerful gangrel to have put this together, but Michelle did: The traps that Vai encountered and has been ridiculing were so ineffective against her because they were designed to capture form of mist. So I'm assuming someone went snooping around in mist form and got caught, probably by spirits or by tripping some sort of ward.

Adena and Jason explained how they were initially tipped off to our investigations which was the earthquake sensors attached to the vault level picking up some odd movements as Raven did his explorations using earth meld and earth movement. Add on top of that I'm sure some if not all of the spying could have been picked up on some level by the spirits in the area but how much if any of that happened was never shared.

But mist form wouldn't have tripped earthquake sensors, is what I'm saying, and the traps that Vai encountered would only really have been effective against mist form.

Wow...alot happening in this thread.

I will try to address some of the issues.

I totally understood what scott was saying. I've decided to assume anything scott says is spoken from a Technical and clinical view of a given situation, and not spoken from an Emotional standpoint. If some of his words ever accidentally offends me I'll assume it was accidental until I talk to him about it and if he still seems to mean it as an insult then i'll get mad.

Though, just to warn ya scott, if I do pull you aside and ask you what you meant by something, please take a moment to think about what you said before you reply....so that We don't have a misunderstanding.

Alright...next topic.

I don't mind you guys theorizing, and honestly I know I don't need to justify my decisions...but to my knowledge there is nothing in the book that clearly says Earth Movement will not trigger a series of abnormal blips on technology designed to warn Casino Vaults of approaching diggers etc.... So having decided that it was a gangrel that was responsible, and knowing he will be unable to enter through the steel and stone vault walls, the only other option would be an attack via Gaseous form through the vents. However, Vai is very slender. We discussed this prior to you entering the Vents for the first time. They didn't anticipate that. Enemies make mistakes. It's actually a good thing to have a story teller that recognizes that, instead of every challenge and defense being executed flawlessly against you.

Furthermore....the whole point of a secret base is to keep it secret. That's your best defense. In that area it would be difficult to do radical changes to their base for the purposes of security improvements. It would be expensive, time consuming, and open up the chance of the "Secret" to get out.

As for what I should and shouldn't have done to make this encounter more challenging.

Hindsight is always 20-20. I learned some valuable lessons from this scenario, and will do what I can to apply this knowledge to future encounters. My first priority is always fun, but second is to be Fair. I held back on having a heavy Vampire force in addition to the werewolves in an effort to be fair. It was my first attempt to incorporate werewolf characters into my story, and I am a rookie when it comes to using them in combat, but they looked pretty damn dangerous to me.

There was a werewolf with...falling touch i think it's called, and another that had the ability to disrupt technology. However, the BSD's were being overwhelmed and making someone fall down, or limiting the usefulness of your Technology was the least of their worries. They were more focused on operation bulwark using their Area of effect powers....Though Richards sword might have been nice to nuke...hmm...

I suppose I could have added more BSD's. I felt 4 was enough, in conjunction with 2 Lasombra, and 1 Infernal "Caster". Not to mention a Horde of Fomori Just waiting to be released to rape your front line with Ag damage, and Mass combat rules. However, I was a Fair ST...If the infiltration team did their thing correctly, then you guys would catch them un-prepared.

So make sure you pat Larissa on the back for that one. As the only player on that team, she carried a heavy burden.

Wanna hear something nasty...That only just now occurred to me...

That Infernal "Caster" And I'm saying caster cause you are unable to determine his clan, could have done a lot to shift the battle in the favor of the BSD's.

I think a wall of green fire might have been quite daunting to your front line fighters...and win all ties wouldn't have helped that much.

Of course, he might have been shot to shit the moment the werewolf front line opened enough to give him line of sight...but still...might have been worth it for him to try.

Over all it was a well thought out session. Pure and simple we got very lucky that no one died. Our biggest advantage was surprise.

From a position of having played a garou in a garou game where the ST constantly threw things that could win on ties I can say abusing gifts, fetished items and always trying to stack the numbers so they were in our favor was the only way we regularly came out on top. Werewolfs are total combat monsters until you throw them against something with max potence or celerity. Nice part from the garou standpoint is if a group is gaining win on ties through potence that just means you swarm them as the extra attackers get to bypass the win on ties factor, Cel on the other hand garou are screwed against unless they have some way to mitigate it. The ultimate cheese way to kill vampires and the like as a garou is to just drag them into the umbra and leave them, which I did inform Jason about but he was nice enough to not throw that at us feeling it would be unfair to throw something at the player characters that was as simple as win this one test or your dead.

All in all for the first time trying to run a Garou heavy storyline you did a great job. The overpowering nature of Potence and Celerity is why alot of vampire type games try to avoid mixing these sort of things together as it's hard to get a gauge for just how many and what to throw at a party as 1 garou can make the difference between an easy fight and defeat as gifts and everything else garou flow easier.

*feels all warm and fuzzy from the ST love*

Don't you have to have a specific gift to drag someone into the Umbra anyway? A fairly high level gift? I played a Werewolf too in a game with Vampires and you cannot just drag one into the Umbra normally. This applies in BOTH Larp and Tabletop btw.

Hmm perhaps if the Werewolves had been ghouled that would have made them slightly nastier. Though they'd only have access to basic level Disciplines. I'm still surprised Werewolves don't get win all ties at some point in Ranking up. You'd think a mighty Rank 5 Ahroun would have win all ties.

Garou did have a win on ties and bomb equivilant in 1st ed I think it was. Being able to win on ties and throw around 30 traits when capped and min maxed is a bit overpowered though.

And yes, you need a gift. If memory serves is a mid ranged gift but was more then achievable for at least 1 of the Garou that we fought Saturday. Nasty part is you could peer through and even reach through the gauntlet instead of actually having to leave the umbra and get a full suprise attack on someone with that gift. The only way without the gift to take things into the umbra is if it's an item bound/attuned to the character.