New Rules after CON

So I know we've talked about alot of new rules recently, and there was some confusion on whether they were in effect yet.

For the record, they have not been put into effect yet. The most recent rules updates included Gift, merit, and some rite conversions, along with frenzy rules upgrades and a variety of other little stuff. that's all in the House Rules and has been for several weeks now.

As for the bigger changes, those are waiting till after CON. I didn't want to spring those on people before CON considering all the other confusion that goes along with a big event.

Those rules will be filtering in after CON.

Here is a list of things you should expect to see go into the House Rules after CON.

Adding Permanent Ability Scores onto your traits when comparing ties.

The new spend system, which is also based on abilities.

Base Claw Damage in Crinos will be +1 from where it is now.

Beings that can't soak agg, will take +1 damage from Agg attacks, much like Silver Vulnerable creatures do from Silver Attacks.
A list of who this applies to will be included in the House Rule, but basically, it's Humans, Vampires, Spirits, etc.

Many more gifts will be house ruled for clarification, and we will be taking another round of TT conversions from the populace.

Many Gifts that do not have abilities attached to them (and hence default to Occult) will have abilities put in for their retests. This is in an effort to not make everyone have to buy 5 Occult, when their characters wouldn't normally, and let people focus on their own areas.

Some rank Trait caps will be going into effect, Cubs, and Cliath, and for Athro and Elder ranks. This will use a sliding system, where they choose a Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary state, and their stats slide down with that. This is in an effort to lessen the impact that the High Ranks have on the trait system, since they were never meant to have such a huge advantage via traits like that.
Since we plan to use the Laws of the Hunt revised for Kinfolk, this puts Cubs and Cliath at a disadvantage, since the Laws of the Hunt puts Kinfolk base traits at 12. So Cubs and Cliath will probably be brought up to 12 as well. All of these trait cap changes are in an effort to draw all the trait caps closer to the magic number of 14ish, since that's about where WW intended the base Supernatural traits cap to be, as shown in their later MET books, like Laws of the Hunt Revised.
So for a table to make this clearer Trait caps will probably end up looking something like this.
Kinfolk, Cub, Cliath, Fostern = 12
Adren = 14
Athro = 16,15,14 (You choose where the caps go)
Elder = 18, 16, 14 (You choose where the caps go)
Again this system would also make Abilities Scores (which will then be added to your traits for ties) way more important as well, since trait caps will be closer together too.
(Since I know I will be asked this i'll answer it now, yes you can still buy your traits up to 16/18 if you're an Athro/Elder to use for traveling purposes in other games that don't do this, just in this game you'll have to choose your sliding cap Primaries).

Kinfolk Rules will be more closely looked at too.
Many of these rules are also in an effort to allow PCs to customize more, so that they aren't all just cookie cutter builds, also many of these rules are attempts to balance broken things, that are either just unfair, or make some stuff way too weak compared to how strong other things are.
Of the Gift updates, some gifts that are way to weak will be beefed up (kinda like we did to Weak Arm) and some that are too strong may be evaluated (though I wouldn't expect huge nerfs, just slight tweaks for balance's sake).


Anyway, some stuff to look forward too, and discuss for the future of course.

Sounds like lots of interesting changes.

I do have some questions on two things.

Kin/Cub/Cliath trait cap
I'm just curious to the reasoning behind this one. At first glance my thought is, well the cub and cliath can change forms and still jump over the Kin's traits (Glabro or Lupus). I'm not saying Kin shouldn't get a nice buff. You could argue that a cub or cliath are still fairly young by comparison and haven't come into their full 'strength' as a Garou. Where likely a Kin character is going to be an adult who is in their prime which would make more sense as to why they can have 12 traits rather than be capped at 10.

The Claw damage rules:

So tell me if I'm figuring this right, if I'm in Crinos with no special buffs on my claws, then I swing at a spirit I'm doing 3 a pop? And if I was fighting another Garou, I'd be doing 2 a pop since they normally can soak agg?

Now if I use partial transformation and pop claws in say homid, I'd only be doing one agg a swing against garou and 2 vs another human/vampire/etc?

Just clarification cuz that might confuse some people right off the bat.

The reasoning is that it's closer to the TT, and in the end it's what WW intended, and will likely go to when the new system is released.
In TT everyone's Attribute caps are the same, all maxes of 5 in each Attribute, and 15 in each category.
Now in MET vampire they made 14 the standard, even though they still had trait changes for generation, which was the worst idea ever.
But in their later stuff, where they were actually editing the books, like Laws of the Hunt Revised, they put the caps at 12.
This was the 15 I mentioned earlier, without the 3 automatic attributes point that you got, hence 12.

The reason we are doing this is because Kinfolk getting 12 trait caps, while cubs and cliahts not getting it just seemed unfair.
Really all Rank trait cap differences is unrealistic and kinda unfair, considering it wasn't what WW meant for Rank to be when they wrote the world, but we can't just do away with it all together, because most games still use it after all. Also because traits are so cheap in MET, without different caps, everyone would just have the same traits, while in TT, Attributes are far more expensive so this isn't the issue.

In the NWOD system, WW made Traits costs 5 points per, and abilities cost 2, which just fixed the problem straight out, suddenly it really meant something to have maxed out traits. I bet they will do the same with the new MET system (which they have announced they are working on, and they are doing vampire and werewolf at the same time, so they will also be very insync).

But until then, the Laws of the Hunt Revised is probably the best written book they've released, so since we are going to use that for kinfolk eventually, we should really bring up Cub, and Cliath traits as well.

The increased Claw damage will only be in Crinos, since this is the better reflect the huge strength buff you get when you go to Crinos form....actually...now that I think about it, with that logic all Strength based damage should be increased by one while in Crinos....hmmm.....that might actually be something we may have to make happen....more on this to come!

But yes, you are translating the new Agg rules properly. Everything you said there adds up.

The extra damage from Crinos Claws is in fact coming from Crinos form strength, and not from the claws themselves, so if you use them in homid form, you do not get the extra damage. But like I said before, that's probably going to be now a bump to str based damage, and not just the claws, meaning melee weapons will get it too.