Everything about a werewolf is a study in duality: wolf and man, city and wilderness, duty and passion, Rage and Gnosis. Rage is a werewolf’s primal fury — what drives him to victory in battle and fuels the desire to win the war against the Wyrm. It is their physical, visceral reaction to anything that even slightly upsets them, and is therefore what makes them dangerous. A werewolf is a powderkeg on the best of days, and with the planet slowly dying, coughing up disease and poison with every gasp, werewolves don’t really have good days.
Gnosis, then, is the werewolf’s faith — her appreciation for the mysteries of the world and the wonder of the spirits. It is what allows her to befriend totem spirits for her pack and learn the Gifts of the ephemeral beings of the Umbra. While not as immediately dangerous as Rage, Gnosis has its own problems. If a werewolf ignores the base for the sublime for too long, she can become lost in the Umbra, her physical side falling away until only a spirit remains.
RAGE
Rage points are spent at the beginning of a turn, in the declaration stage. You can spend Rage only in times of stress.
A Garou can use Rage in the following ways:
• Frenzy: Frenzy is the violent outburst, the untamed savagery, the animal instinct for blood and brutality that lurks in the heart of every werewolf. Whenever a player gets four or more successes on a Rage roll, the character enters a frenzy. See Frenzy on p. 261 for more information on the causes and resolutions of frenzies.
• Extra Actions: A player can spend Rage to give her character extra actions in a single turn. However, a Garou cannot spend more Rage points for actions in a turn than half of her permanent Rage rating.
• Changing Forms: A Player may spend a Rage point for his character to change instantly to any form he desires, without having to roll Stamina + Primal-Urge.
• Recovering from Stun: If a character loses more health levels in one turn than his Stamina rating, he is stunned and unable to act in the next turn. By spending a Rage point, the werewolf can ignore the effect and function normally.
• Remaining Active: If a character falls below the Incapacitated health level, a player can use Rage to keep her character going. Doing so requires a Rage roll (difficulty 8). Each success heals a health level, regardless of the type of wound. A player may attempt this roll only once per scene. If this roll fails, the character doesn’t recover. However, this last-ditch survival effort has its price. Like all Rage rolls, the character is still subject to frenzy. The wound will
also remain on the Garou’s body as an appropriate Battle Scar.
• Beast Within: Occasionally, a Garou is more a snarling monster than man or beast, and she must pay the price for it. For every point of Rage a character has above her Willpower rating, she loses one die on all social-interaction rolls. People, even other werewolves, can sense the killer hiding just under her skin, and they don’t want to be anywhere near it.
• Losing the Wolf: If a character has lost or spent all his Rage and Willpower points, he has “lost the wolf,” and he cannot regain Rage. The Garou cannot shift to anything except his breed form until his Rage returns. The character must regain at least one Willpower point before he can recover any Rage.
Gaining and Regaining Rage
The Rage pool fluctuates from session to session and from turn to turn. Rage replenishes itself in several ways.
• The Moon: The first time a werewolf sees the moon at night, the Beast inside stirs, and Rage floods back into her. Under a new moon, the character gets one point; under a waning moon, two points; under a half or waxing moon, three points; and under a full moon, four points. If the moon phase corresponds with the character’s auspice, she regains all of her Rage. This phenomenon only occurs when the character first sees the moon each night.
• Botch: If the Storyteller approves, a werewolf might receive a Rage point after a botched a roll. Rage comes from stressful situations, and seeing the action you were attempting blow up in your face, sometimes literally, can be a very stressful situation.
• Humiliation: Rage will also come rushing back if anything a Garou does proves particularly humiliating. The Storyteller decides whether a situation is embarrassing enough to warrant a Rage point. Garou tend to be very proud, and they don’t take being laughed at well.
• Confrontation: Again at the Storyteller’s approval, a character could receive a Rage point at the beginning of a tense situation, in the moments right before combat starts. This gain accounts for the anticipation and hackle-raising that happens just as tempers start to flare.
• New Stories: When a new story begins, each player should roll a die to determine how many Rage points he possesses currently. (They might even exceed their permanent Rage ratings, at the Storyteller’s discretion.) Yes, characters might end up with less Rage than they had at the end of the last story. Such is the way of Rage. It is always moving and never predictable.
GNOSIS
Much as Rage fuels battle and the physical world, the uses of Gnosis tend toward affecting insight and the spirit world.
• Rage and Gnosis: A player cannot use both Rage and Gnosis in the same turn, whether spending points or rolling the Trait. The only exceptions are certain Gifts that demand both to function. These two forces are very powerful, and the Garou’s body is not strong enough to pull the power from these two natures simultaneously. For example, a werewolf cannot spend Rage for multiple actions and activate a fetish in the same turn.
• Carrying Silver: For every object made of or containing silver that a character is carrying, she loses one effective point from her Gnosis rating. More potent objects will cause the character to lose more. Luckily, this effect is only temporary, and it lasts only a day after the silver is discarded.
• Using Gifts: Many of the Gifts the spirits have bestowed upon faithful Garou call for Gnosis expenditures and/or rolls.
• Fetishes: Gnosis is used to attune or activate fetishes.
Gaining and Regaining Gnosis
Character can regain their Gnosis in several ways.
• Meditation: When a character takes time to center himself and reconnect with the Sacred Mother on a personal level, he can sometimes regain Gnosis. The character must spend at least an hour in one place, focusing on his deeply spiritual side. The player rolls Wits + Enigmas (difficulty 8). For each success, the character regains one Gnosis point, up to a maximum of one point per hour of meditation; additional successes are lost. A Garou can only meditate to regain Gnosis once per day. The difficulty increases by one for each extra day a character attempts it in the same week, to a maximum difficulty of 10. The spirits are gracious, but not always generous.
• Sacred Hunt: The Sacred Hunt is one of the most frequently performed activities at Garou moots. The chosen prey — an Engling — is summoned and then hunted down. This activity can be done in either the Umbra or on Earth. After the prey has been caught and “killed,” werewolves who have taken part in the hunt give thanks to the spirit for the gift of its life. All who participate in the hunt replenish their Gnosis pools completely.
• Bargaining with Spirits: Ritual hunts are not the only way to get Gnosis out of a spirit; the soft sell can work just as well. A werewolf can simply ask a spirit to share some of its Gnosis. The character must be able to speak in the spirit language through the use of a Gift or similar. The spirit may ask the character to perform some task before it shares its life force with the Garou. Once the bargain is completed, the spirit spends an amount of Essence, and the werewolf gains that many points of Gnosis.
• Between Stories: In the downtime between new tales, the players can make a Charisma + Enigmas roll to regain some Gnosis. Each success on this roll refreshes one point of Gnosis.
WILLPOWER
Of all the Traits werewolves possess, Willpower is one of the most frequently rolled and spent because of the many ways it can be utilized.
• Automatic Successes: Spending a Willpower point on an action gives the player one extra success on any roll. Only one point can be spent this way each turn, but the success is guaranteed. Spending Willpower in this way completely negates the effects of a botch. Some do not allow a character to spend Willpower, including damage rolls or any roll to activate Gifts.
• Uncontrollable Urges: Garou are instinctual creatures, and can find the Beast within reacting to stimuli without conscious thought. The Storyteller may inform you that your character has done something from a primal urge, like getting away from fire or attacking a creature of the Wyrm. A Willpower point can be spent to negate this gut reaction and keep the Garou right where he is. On rare occasions, the player must keep spending Willpower points until the character removes himself from the situation or runs out of Willpower.
• Halting Frenzies: As mentioned previously, a character flies into a frenzy whenever her player rolls more than four successes on a Rage roll. This situation can be averted if the player spends a Willpower point to remain in control.
• Fighting On: When a werewolf is injured, her wounds can make it hard for her to concentrate, represented by wound penalties to her actions. By spending a point of Willpower, she can ignore the wound penalties on a single roll.
Recovering Willpower
Characters must be able to rest in order to regain Willpower. Between their ongoing battles against the Wyrm and its minions, the daily rituals and duties of the human side of their lives, Garou often do not have time to take a breath. This section presents three different ways characters can regain their Willpower; it’s up to the Storyteller which of these methods she uses.
• When a story is complete, characters can regain all their Willpower. This act should be reserved for story endings, not necessarily the end of each session. The Storyteller may allow the characters to regain only as much Willpower as she feels they deserve for the goal they accomplished.
• Characters who achieve a personal victory in the framework of the larger story can regain some amount of Willpower. These victories should relate directly to the character, such as confronting a personal enemy or overcoming a vice. The Storyteller rules whether a character has regained some or all of his self-confidence by this action.
• If a character performed his auspice duties particularly well, she might regain one to three Willpower points. This method is subject to the Storyteller’s approval, and it relies largely on the roleplaying skills of the player. In addition to these methods, characters regain one point of Willpower when they wake up each day. While not as involved or satisfying as the above methods, it does allow werewolves to keep moving even when all hope seems lost.