Questions on House Rules Revisions: Fetish Creation

Fetish Creation:

I'm a bit cross-eyed at the formula. "Issue a Social Challenge vs. 3x the Gnosis Rating of the Spirit + Level of the Fetish"

Example: Heart of the Spirit
Social Challenge vs. 10 (Engling's Gnosis) x3 = 30 + 5 (Level of the Fetish) = 35?
Five successes required with (only) one Rituals retest available through that series.

I don't imagine many PCs are going to be sacrificing lots of permanent Gnosis to win ties on extended challenges to make single fetishes, and losing ties on extended challenges is a statistical set up for hard failure. I see that taboos and arrangements with the spirits can adjust the difficulties, but if those could adjust the difficulties with a heavy enough swing to achieve ties-winning for creating the good/great fetishes, that would be such a heavy swing that it will always be sought. By canon, there aren't many fetishes that require taboos, and there are some Theurges out there who make no arrangements with spirits whatsoever (except to beat them into Slumber). Are these the intended results?

Add Persuasion, Add cracktastic results from totems (retests and traits), Add Silver Fang retest, Add Fair Fortune. Add ways to strip gnosis from a spirit. There are a variety of ways to buff and retest and trait yourself out that have been used by Players in this game before to gain an edge. Should it be harder for Adren to make high level, high gnosis fetishes? Yes. They're Adren. Should spending permanent gnosis to create these things be applicable? Yes, it should.

A one-chop ruling for fetish creation is too easy. Propose a non-dice system and it will be discussed. However we are trying to limit the fetish creation in our game to a single chop.


The alternate ruling we are considering is using 2X the permanent gnosis score of the spirit + fetish level (Max of 25 per your account above), with 1 chop per level. If enough people are in favor of using 2x the permanent score vs. 3x the current gnosis rating of the spirit then we will switch to that format.

Additional Notation: All Fetishes created in Heartland Alliance will also need to make a notation of what is required to have Exorcism be successful on the fetish.

Example:
Exorcism Requirement: 5 Challenges vs. 17 Traits.

17 Traits = 14 Base for Adren, 3 for Persuasion.

(This will be added to our house rules as well).

ST Jonah wrote:The alternate ruling we are considering is using 2X the permanent gnosis score of the spirit + fetish level (Max of 25 per your account above), with 1 chop per level. If enough people are in favor of using 2x the permanent score vs. 3x the current gnosis rating of the spirit then we will switch to that format.

I think it's better only on the basis of sensibility. When making a deal with a spirit to enter into a fetish, the request of "Would you mind dumping out a bunch of your magic so that I can actually succeed at this?" has never, ever come up. I can't think of a canonical basis for it.

But the "buff and retest and trait yourself out" method should not have to be employed to have some modicum of success in creating fetishes -- wouldn't it be better to get closer to published canon by reducing the crack-pile? And viable methods of reducing that difficulty aren't widely available to all PCs who would have suitable reasons to create a fetish. Even at a 25 difficulty, what is the Elder Metis Uktena Theurge (just by way of example) supposed to do to achieve the tie? Sacrifice four permanent Gnosis? And then they still have to win five chops in a row (with probably only one applicable retest) -- who would sacrifice four permanent Gnosis for the far-from-guaranteed possibility of making one (though arguably good) fetish?

Can I encourage you guys to run some playtesting efforts? I'd help by taking a random number generator and pitting some fair (for OWbN) sheets to see what their overall success rates would be for various fetishes. I get that your staff doesn't want to bring dice into game and I'm happy to help with getting to a place where R-P-S can be a viable medium for fetish creation without reducing it to one (too-easy) test. If we come up with something solid, I'll employ it in my chronicle, too.

ST Jonah wrote:Additional Notation: All Fetishes created in Heartland Alliance will also need to make a notation of what is required to have Exorcism be successful on the fetish.

Example:
Exorcism Requirement: 5 Challenges vs. 17 Traits.

17 Traits = 14 Base for Adren, 3 for Persuasion.

(This will be added to our house rules as well).

I'm not trolling, I promise.

Space on an index card comes at a premium, and again this is not something any other game does. Can we house rule how Exorcism functions and base the difficulty off of the fetish's statistics rather than what happened at creation? A lot of H.A.'s fetishes are from elsewhere, as is, and that information was not recorded.

Trolls don't get Dennys for dinner.

1. Playtesting is fine. However one-chop fetishes will not be made in H.A. even during the playtest stage. The rules will revert to following the Double Tempers vs. Named Traits, extended challenge. We will see how this rule works for the time being. If it is abused, then number goes up.

2. Propose a house rule that will be just as effective.

I think that your trying to solve a problem with policy instead of just addressing the issue.

The issue with fetishes is:

1. There are too many of them
2. They are being abused
3. They are too easy to manufacture.

We don't need house rules to solve this problem. This is not a democracy, its a totalitarian dictatorship and the ST's happen to be the dictators. Use dat' powar!~

Instead of instituting house rules and more mechanics, simply say that the spirits aren't permitting any more fetishes to be created, or if they deem the creators worthy they have to do some questing or pay outrageous chiminage or whatnot in order to get their magic items and extra wonk. I'm okay with this and I think most of the players would prefer this instead of more rules to remember.

Its okay to say at wrap up that you guys are having a problem with the amount and types of fetishes that are being created and its got to stop, and even to have the spirits get angry and demand to be released from the uber cracktastic ones.

This is a cooperative experience and the players are here for the same reasons the ST's are and that's to have fun. I think anyone who really complained about the wonk faucet being turned off would be shouted down by the rest of us who just want to have a more balanced and fun experience.

Additionally I don't want to have to dial up my wonk to deal with encounters because they ST's have had to over-tune things because there are people running around with mozzarella item cards and slinging their provolone powers all over the place.

TL;DR

Issue a cease and desist instead of making new rules.

I wonder how many people in HA actually have Fetishes? People just started hitting Adren except for a few transfers (and only 1 of those are actually being played in HA regularly). I can only think of a problem if everyone is coming in with Fetish x5 as a background.

To say "No new fetishes" would mean all those who don't have fetishes will be denied that aspect of the game. If things are coming in from outside, that can be monitored as well.

The MET fetish creation rules are way to lax and I am all in favor of making a house rule to balance it rather than just saying "No fetishes unless you goose chase" after all, some fetishes are made by just beating the crap out of a spirit and binding it. You don't always have to play nice and make deals.

I haven't seen fetish abuse in HA. There may be some potent fetishes in play, but I haven't seen anything outrageous.

Is the quest for house ruling a preventative measure?

Influx of Fetishes: You forget we received lots of transfers, and with them the treasure trove of fetishes they carry.

MET System for Fetish Creation is stupid. This is a way to fix the system so it is fair.

Cool.

If I (as, essentially, the one transferred-in PC who gets portrayed regularly in Heartland Alliance) need to power down my PC's fetishes or put some/most/all in a footlocker reserved for travel, I'd rather go through that then to see some wacky house rules make fetish-making nigh impossible (or at least painstaking to attempt) for all PCs.

Is there a compromise I can acquiesce to so your house rules don't curbstomp everybody? I'm not going to cry about leaving most of my "treasure trove" out of play.

You'll notice a bit of copy paste here

We're looking to be more conservative with our actions. This house rule we believe will assist with it. One chop easy fetish making doesn't help with that. We are taking suggestions. Please feel free to make them here or e-mail us at the ST addy we use. As much crazy as we are, we're also looking to make the experience fun in the long run.

Notice: Use this until further rules are playtested. As always recommendations are reviewed seriously. (Super super cereal).

Fetish Creation
*Follow the initial steps within LotW:R in preparing the object.
*When it comes time to RPS the results, the following procedure will be followed
-Issue a Social Challenge vs. 2x the permanent gnosis rating of the spirit.
-This will be an extended challenge. You have 1 Rituals Retest through the
challenge. Merits/Gifts/Etc. only work once as well. The extended challenge is
based on the level of the fetish being created.
-To lower the difficulty you may cut a deal with the spirit, introduce taboos on
the fetish, and spend permanent gnosis to lower the trait difficulty.
-Spending permanent gnosis will lower the trait difficulty by 2.
-You may not spend willpower for an automatic success.

Consider this (I've been thinking about this all day):

After preparing the fetish, the Rite of the Fetish needs to be performed. It is an Extended Social Challenge vs. a difficulty equal to the proposed fetish's Gnosis Rating x2 plus the fetish's level. A Trait of Rituals can be expended for a single retest in that challenge, and any other applicable retests can be applied no more than once (as it would be with a standard challenge).

• Example #1: Apeskin - Level One, Gnosis 6 = Difficulty 13 ([6x2]+1)
  
• Example #2: Baneskin - Level Three, Gnosis 7 = Difficulty 17 ([7x2]+3)
  
• Example #3: Bindrune Amulet - Level Five, Gnosis 8 = Difficulty 21 ([8x2]+5)

The number of successes required is determined by the level of the fetish.

• Level One & Two: One success
  
• Level Three & Four: Two successes
  
• Level Five: Three successes
  

If the fetish requires the binding of a second entire spirit (i.e. grand klaive), then an additional success is required in the extended challenge (i.e. four successes required to craft a grand klaive).

I think it would be important to keep in the possibility of an angry spirit or spirits if the rite fails (follow the failed challenge with the two Simple Tests called for in LotW:Rev).

I don't think the type of spirit called on should have any bearing on the mechanics of making the fetish (unless one actually goes through the process of beating a spirit down to Essence 0 so they can forceably bind it, in which case it's combat stats that really matter). The power gamer that lives in the darker recesses of my headspace would try to rather creatively gravitate towards the several spirits that have relatively low Gnosis ratings rather than what may be the more story-appropriate high Gnosis spirits.

Mathematically, I believe this system will lend some real weight to the options of securing a taboo with the spirit as well as the potential sacrifice of permanent Gnosis (as a two-Trait swing can have much more bearing on the numbers PCs can typically reach under this proposal).

I think asking for five successes, winning ties or not, is wholly excessive for any fetish (except maybe a Legendary fetish, which should be well beyond the ken of any PC). Under my proposal, the average PC will need to be an Elder with a Rituals specialization in fetish-making to win ties to make a grand klaive (difficulty 19), and would still have to win four tests (with the anticipated Rituals retest, I think the math is about 30% chance of success). With Persuasion, there would be a bit of a swing back in a lower-Rank PC's favor (though you could potentially mitigate that by limiting the permitted Gnosis spend to fuel that Gift by Rank) so that an Adren with maxed Social Traits and maximum Persuasion potential could win the ties... but, this is still a lot better than a single test, right?

If anything, I'm imploring you to implement a system where PCs actually have a viable chance to create an item or two of worth. Anything not captured by the difficulty level of this could be made up for by spirits that are difficult to bargain with. If an Adren actually wanted to negotiate with two spirits to get them into a huge silver weapon, it should be an epic experience unto itself (since most self-aware spirits should worry that they'll be bound poorly by someone without top notch experience).

That actually seems to streamline it. Especially the part about using the gnosis score of the item rather than the spirit.

Question: Would getting people to help in the creation cause bonus traits to be added? Rituals generally get a trait bonus for every X number of extra helpers.

I think the idea of making fetishes with other Garou would be rewarding to a story. Rather than have the one guy in a dark cave somewhere... and entire pack could attempt to make one item.

Anselm Walker wrote:Question: Would getting people to help in the creation cause bonus traits to be added? Rituals generally get a trait bonus for every X number of extra helpers.

I think the idea of making fetishes with other Garou would be rewarding to a story. Rather than have the one guy in a dark cave somewhere... and entire pack could attempt to make one item.

Per Hammer & Klaive, fetish-making is traditionally a private activity. It's supposed to have a very personal touch, and goes to explain why fetish-making isn't easy -- the recipe changes in ways each time it changes hands. Some stages of the preparation can involve others (I'm a huge fan of the cleansing period where a couple Silver Fangs hold the ritemaster back while the soon-to-be klaive is pressed to his chest until he passes out from the pain), but the actual invocation of the Rite of the Fetish should be (in my strong opinion) fairly personal.

I would suggest that in genre taboos on fetishes are not that uncommon. Citing Hammer and Klaive (2003) page 21: "A smart werewolf should never lose sight of the fact that fetishes are much more than ritual objects, they are spirits embodied within the physical world. Nor are the spirits powerless to remind the Garou of this, as many spirits demand taboos placed upon the fetish."

There are other modifiers suggested in Hammer and Klaive for lowering difficulties in fetish creation that I think should be looked at. As an example, the use of the basic Philodox gift Call to Duty which if well employed during Rite of the Fetish lowers the difficulty by 2.

One of my problems with the current rules revision on fetishes is that it is unfair to players who did not transfer in or begin with the Fetish background. It makes it very difficult for them to obtain the fetish edge and in fact slants the game in the favor of older characters.

Personally I'd love to see the spending of Permanent Gnosis be more effective than a minor difficulty lowering. I'd suggest it could grant an additional retest on this challenge as you are limiting retests severely.

A note on the Exorcism rule, I like it kinda. Making fetishes more imperishable makes them more valuable, which is legitimate considering you're making them pretty difficult to create. That said... this does not stop someone from grabbing the fetish and snapping it over their knee much more easily, which is a legitimate way of destroying a fetish by pretty much everything about fetishes in genre ie. "I'll forgo this ridiculously difficult social challenge whereby I spend a willpower and have to win a bunch, to make a much more easy physical challenge to take and destroy it."

Just my three or four cents.

As a note: I'm speaking as the player of a character that transferred in, and who has a fairly high fetish background on sheet... but also as a player who has the most ability to attempt creating fetishes. Grains of salt all around.

Permanent Gnosis expended for a retest sounds pretty good. It'd probably be more balanced to combine that with the normal two-Trait adjustment, given how great a sacrifice Gnosis really is (again, per Hammer & Klaive).

^Yes, as the player of a character that has sacrificed 4 permanent Gnosis in the past, I wholeheartedly agree.

Since it did come up earlier in this conversation with note towards Grand Klaives, I'd like to mention that Black Furies and Glasswalkers create multiple spirit fetishes almost exclusively, but because of their slightly different paradigms this does not effect their difficulty in creating these "normal" fetishes. Grand Klaives and fetishes of that level are exceptions to this rule and if we go by Hammer and Klaive are extremely difficult to create. When the roll to add the second spirit goes badly they actually explode sending silver shrapnel in all directions. lol

The first batch of fetish creations will be tested using the version in the house rules. The next batch of fretish creations will be tested using the version Chris lists. We will compare results and review for future use.


As a counter point to the power gaming comment:
Gravitating towards lower powered spirits provides low powered fetishes in my opinion. If you want something that heals damage per round and go to a wee lil water sprite you might end up with a fetish that heals 1 lethal damage/2 rounds. Going to a raging water spirit with a good amount of umph behind it will be a bit more difficult to bind but may reflect 2 agg. damage/1 round.

Note - If you take my healing idea, then good on you. Fuck Armor!

I think Trumans well thought out and detailed proposal is a bit more tolerable that the one originally proposed. If we HAVE to introduce a new mechanic then I hope we go with that one.

However I still think that this is excessive.

If there is a problem with Fetishes from outside then tell them not to bring them. Use your authority as an ST to limit what gets put on item cards instead of thrusting more rules upon the players. I know my argument falls on deaf ears, but seriously you ST's have the power to correct this by virtue of your own authority. Extra rules are just unnecessary.

Yeah... as a note I don't think I'll be attempting fetish creation anytime soon... maybe Skippy, Chris, Chris, or Matt will give it a go...

And that would be your choice clearly. If other people in our game would like the benefit of having fetishes created, they're welcome to go for it.

To close loopholes, so that I do not become a victim of them. How long must one wait between attempts? What if one makes fetishes in other games?

Time Frames: Consecration time frames need to be redone and dealing with the spirit(s) involved. If you fail sometimes spirits get pissed.

Making Fetishes In Other Games: If you like another game's ruling, why not transfer there instead? We don't like Mommy/Daddy stuff in Heartland. It's not really polite to do that sort of gaming.

It's less like mommy daddy and more like irresponsible uncle, but I totally agree.