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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: KOFFEYKID on December 25, 2011, 03:03:05 AM
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So a White Court Vamp generally has a +0 catch of one of the big three (Hope, Love & Courage). My question is this: What if you have an Omnivore vampire, somebody who feeds on Lust, Fear and Despair, their catch would then be Hope, Love and Courage.
What sort of rebate are all three worth?
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+0
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Why +0? Articles of Courage are likely really common. A sword used in battle for example would qualify, an article of hope is a bit more vague, but likely more common that an article of love.
The value of the rebate given by the catch is judged based on how common the item(s) in question are. Having three times as many types of items which can satisfy the catch should mean that the rebate would be higher.
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Not to sound snippy, a 2 symbol reply just isn't a good reply. I'd prefer some of your reasoning behind the statement, and "+0" just isn't helpful.
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Getting more catches doesn't actually increase your refund, oddly enough. Only the highest one counts.
Anyway, True Love should actually be a +2 Catch by the RAW. The WCV writeups just ignore this for some reason. So all three together ought also to be +2.
PS: True Courage is not so common as you seem to think, I think.
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Anyway, True Love should actually be a +2 Catch by the RAW. The WCV writeups just ignore this for some reason. So all three together ought also to be +2.
This is an incredibly contentious issue, and not nearly so conclusive as you would have it appear, Sanct.
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If you say so. It seems pretty simple to me, and a quick search reveals no good arguments justifying the +0 value.
People have pointed out that Love is difficult to make or find or weaponize, but the Catch rules don't take such things into account. It's not unique and it doesn't require unique knowledge, so +2.
Is there a flaw in my reasoning?
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If you say so. It seems pretty simple to me, and a quick search reveals no good arguments justifying the +0 value.
People have pointed out that Love is difficult to make or find or weaponize, but the Catch rules don't take such things into account. It's not unique and it doesn't require unique knowledge, so +2.
Is there a flaw in my reasoning?
Off the top of my head?
The availability of True Love (or other True emotions) in the Dresdenverse has never been conclusively determined.
The feeding patterns of a particular WCV, and thus its vulnerability(/ies) do constitute personal knowledge.
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Silver, iron, virgin blood, fire, bullets tothe head, sunlight, holy objects, garlic, and belly wounds are all far more common that "true" emotions. (at least as far as I can tell in this universe)
I'm not going to bother weighing in on my opinion of the actual point total, no one really cares about other people's opinions on catches (I bet they vary table to table).
I think it should certainly be less than +3, likely less than +2, but whatever.
To answer the OP. Ask your table. I'd likely give a +1 bonus to having multiple catches even if they are all rare. (I'm likely a minority in such an opinion). So if your table says +0 try for +1, if they say +1, try for +2...and so on. I wouldn't bet on getting that bonus, but why not try?
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Sometimes I think we over estimate the amount of knowledge out there in the Dresdenverse.
For example, in one book a minor practitioner was surprised to learn that there were more than one type of vampires. This was someone who had contacts in the supernatural community who didn't know about the "common" courts.
Then there's White Council trained Harry - who has to be told about the White Court's weakness by Thomas. He knew about the White Court but not their weakness (or their sub-houses) until he started to hang around with Thomas. And he learns about the weakness after the start of the Red Court war - which means no one sent around a "this is how you deal with the White Court allies of the Red Court" memo. Heck, Harry didn't even hear the name "Jade Court" until one of the later books.
Based on how Harry had to hang around with Thomas a while before he learnt about the catch, +0 makes sense.
Richard
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Heck, Harry didn't even hear the name "Jade Court" until one of the later books.
I wouldn't call book 5 a later book (The only mention of the Jade court is made by Shiro), especially when the vampire courts weren't even introduced until the end of book 3. Prior to that, Bianca was the only vampire depicted, and Harry just called her "a vampire".
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Richard makes a good point though. Harry is consistently short of knowledge or simply incorrect in his assumptions...at least until Bob brings him up to date.
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I wouldn't call book 5 a later book (The only mention of the Jade court is made by Shiro), especially when the vampire courts weren't even introduced until the end of book 3. Prior to that, Bianca was the only vampire depicted, and Harry just called her "a vampire".
Sorry, I misremember which book it was mentioned in.
But still:
Book 3 - ends with War!!!
Book 4 - big conference, the brute squad is gone, lots of scrambling. At this point you'd think they would send out a "here are the known facts about Vampires memo", but no.
Book 5 - There are unknown vampires in Asia? Really? Wow. "Um, do you think any of them made the trip to the US?"
No, that question was never asked - Harry assumes that they will have no bearing on the case so ignores their existence.
There are thousands upon thousands of things in the Nevernever. Some are tiny, some are huge, and Harry (with his starting Lore of Good) has never heard of most of them. He didn't know anything about the Fairy Queens (other than they existed) or about the Erlking or even about Summer's Shock Troops - the Gruffs. First time he saw a Gruff he thought that maybe it was a were-goat...
But back to the White Court - someone with a Lore of Good didn't know their weakness. He didn't know it until a White Court vampire revealed it to him. That strikes me more of a "If knowledge of the Catch requires knowing you personally to learn about it" type thing.
Especially when an average practitioner (with contacts in the supernatural community) doesn't seem to know that there are different courts of vampires...
Richard
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I like the perspective about how well known (or not) these things actually are in the Dresden verse, although the White Court weakness and the existence of the Jade Court still trike me as worth +1. The guideline for that price level is, if I recall, something like you need access to an arcane library and the know-how to research it, which is very much like Dresden going and asking Bob for the 411. A +0 refund catch is more like Nicodemus' noose, which as far as we know Harry is the only person in the world to figure out, and even he had to figure it out over the course of struggling against him. So a little more exclusive than the White Court's Achilles heel.
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More than anything I usually like to use how often it will come up instead of how rare/hard to find out it is.
The white court catch specifically? The book lists it as +0, but think about how often it's come up in Thomas' life (and he's relatively young). As far as Thomas is concerned I think I'd give it a much higher value, but for Lara, or most of the others it seems to come up a lot less.
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Figuring out the White Court's Catch isn't good enough, though, if you don't have personal knowledge (aka +0) of the WCV in question to know its particular feeding habits.
ie. Going into your arcane library to research the White Court might (and that's a very big 'might'), for instance, tell you that many WCVs are susceptible to True Love, but that likely won't help you if you're facing off against a Skavis.
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I think in the matter of the more obscure catches, you should not only take the general availability and/or knowledge into account, but also the intention of the player.
I feel myself writing "like sinker said" a lot the last few days, and this is one more occasion, I see. ;D
A +0 catch for a WCV would probably mean, that the catch does not really appear on screen, except in really dramatic scenes where it adds to the suspension. On the other hand, you could value the exact same catch as +5*and could add a vampire hunter, who lost his one true love to a vampire of the white court and everything he does is motivated by the love for this one person, making him the most dangerous person to a WCV from house Raith.
And I would treat the combined catch the same. +0 if it isn't really supposed to come up, more if it is supposed to be a bigger part of the story. And not every catch would have to come up, just pick one and create a cool threat around that.
*just a number I drew out of my hat, I am not sure how I'd actually price this
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Figuring out the White Court's Catch isn't good enough, though, if you don't have personal knowledge (aka +0) of the WCV in question to know its particular feeding habits.
ie. Going into your arcane library to research the White Court might (and that's a very big 'might'), for instance, tell you that many WCVs are susceptible to True Love, but that likely won't help you if you're facing off against a Skavis.
But I think it would be likely to tell you that Skavis are vulnerable to hope, and Raith to love. You could adapt your tactics from there.
I mean, knowing a BCV vampire is vulnerable to sunlight doesn't help you against them if you think they are a zombie, but that isn't "personal knowledge" in the same way that the Nicodemus example was. I guess another way to say it is to exploit a Raith's weakness you don't need knowledge of what makes them, personally, a different being unique from every other creature in the world. You just need to know how his species works. With Nicodemus you really need to know quite a bit about the man/demon himself.
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But I think it would be likely to tell you that Skavis are vulnerable to hope, and Raith to love. You could adapt your tactics from there.
Now go ahead and take that knowledge to a fight against the assembled Houses of the Court, and see how well you fare.
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Now go ahead and take that knowledge to a fight against the assembled Houses of the Court, and see how well you fare.
I'm not sure what you mean. I only meant to say that when you know the catch for one Skavis you know the catch for all of them, and likewise for Raiths. To me, that means their Catch is more widely available to be discovered than for someone whose Catch is unique to them. I would reflect that by offering a 1 pt refund.
There is a measure of table preference in this, as in many things in DFRPG, and I'm just tossing my 2 cents out there. I respect that you disagree, and I think your point of view is supportable. So agree to disagree time, I think.
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What I mean by that is that the difference between knowing to press that well-worn wedding ring into the eye socket of a Raith (assuming you've actually managed to determine that that wedding ring is even a meaningful symbol of True Love) and knowing to press that high school diploma (same caveat substituting True Hope) into the face of a skavis when all either of them are trying to do is eviscerate you with strange looking knives is a matter of personal knowledge of the WCV in question.
I do not thing that up-to-date WCV geneologies are common in wizard's libraries, nor in any library save those of the White Court itself.
You can even go about it from the other end and say that applying a WCV's Catch requires 'personal', non-library-attainable, knowledge of the supposed Catch-item itself, as not just any old wedding ring will do, and there is no evidence that a simple divination would suffice any more so than would for Nicodemus' noose to tell you which one will burn and which will simply provoke mocking laughter.
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Thats a bit of a stretch Tedronai. I mean, technically the same applies to any creature with a catch, its a matter of knowing "This is a skavis white court vampire" or "this character is a red court vampire."
It is indeed personal in the sense of needing to know what type of nasty any given character is, but the catch as a whole is not Personal to one character but to a group of them instead, which means that it is more than a personal bit of knowledge.
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A horde of RCVs charging at you in their true forms all have identical catches.
A horde of WCVs charging at you shining like the moon do not have identical catches, and are largely indistinguishable unless A) they do something to distinguish themselves or B) you know them well enough to identify them personally with respect to their house affiliation, and possibly, their personal feeding habits.
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See but your argument can be applied on a larger scale just as easily, see below:
A horde of vampires are charging you in their "average joe forms" (however the gain such a form is irrelevant), they do not have identical catches and you must identify which type of vampire they are (Black, White, Red or Jade) in order to determine their catch.
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See but your argument can be applied on a larger scale just as easily, see below:
A horde of vampires are charging you in their "average joe forms" (however the gain such a form is irrelevant), they do not have identical catches and you must identify which type of vampire they are (Black, White, Red or Jade) in order to determine their catch.
Knowing a particular WCVs personal feeding patterns, which may, in fact, differ even from those of their house as a whole, is not the same as knowing that a particular 'vampire' is a member of the Red Court species.
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It is reasonable to assume that a Raith WCV feeds off lust, a Raith vampire who feeds off of despair is an exception not the rule.
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Meh, it actually works both ways. The literal wording is that in order for someone to know your catch they must know you personally. The reason why they must know you personally makes no difference whatsoever.
On this one I tend to agree with Richard though. We see this world through Harry's eyes. Harry happens to have a white court vampire as a brother, so he knows a lot about the white court. This does not mean that all wizards know anything about them (or even have access to this knowledge). In fact I could see a lot of evidence that Harry wouldn't disseminate this knowledge to the white council (he cares for his brother and doesn't have a lot of trust for the council).
I'm a little surprised you're arguing this so vehemently though, Tedronai. You've been around long enough to know that this is one of the few questions that there is no hard answer to. That even among us veterans there is no agreement. Seems silly to speak with such authority on the matter.
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I'm a little surprised you're arguing this so vehemently though, Tedronai. You've been around long enough to know that this is one of the few questions that there is no hard answer to. That even among us veterans there is no agreement. Seems silly to speak with such authority on the matter.
My first post not made in direct response to the OP which explicitly included a presupposition of the appropriateness of a +0 catch for a single-emotion WCV:
This is an incredibly contentious issue, and not nearly so conclusive as you would have it appear, Sanct.
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I think the clearest way to state my personal preference on the matter is this. If a character has a catch that is identical to other catches from other members of his group (species, brotherhood, whatever), then knowing his catch does not require "personal knowledge", it requires knowledge of his group. Such a catch grants a minimum +1 refund for its secrecy.
If a character has a catch that is unique to her and her alone, regardless of what other catches for other characters in her group are (if indeed she can be said to belong to a group at all), then there is a good chance that her catch is +0 for secrecy. Now if she become so famous that her catch is known to every Joe, Dick, and Sally monster-hunter out there, you can reevaluate the value of that catch. But at least as an individual catch it has the potential to be worth +0, whereas group-wide catches do not.
I'm not planning on changing anyone's mind with this post, mind you. I just wanted to put as clear a cap on my point of view in this matter as I could think of while full of Xmas leftovers and wrapped in a comfy blanket.
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There are thousands upon thousands of things in the Nevernever. Some are tiny, some are huge, and Harry (with his starting Lore of Good) has never heard of most of them. He didn't know anything about the Fairy Queens (other than they existed) or about the Erlking or even about Summer's Shock Troops - the Gruffs. First time he saw a Gruff he thought that maybe it was a were-goat...
Richard
Perhaps his Good Lore reflects the fact that he had Bob in his possession. Or that his not-knowing about the Erlking or the Gruffs were Compels, forcing him to ask Bob or refer to his books.
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First, to address the original question, see the writeup for Madrigal Raith. He has "The Catch [+0] is True Love and True Courage", which seems to be a good example of the Catch not increasing for multi-vores.
As a brief response to the other discussion, many of the sample Catch values used in Our World seem to ignore the pricing formula from Your Story. I tend not to like the way the formulas were written (the sample values seem quite a lot more reasonable), but that's a horse that's been beaten enough for now.
One question I do have is this: Emotional Vampire specifies that the character must specify one emotion that can be fed from. Madrigal can feed from two emotions, and the OP asked about a character with a three-emotion apetite. So how have various tables handled this?
a) Ignore the single-emotion requirement in Emotional Vampire; a WCV can feed from any emotion they can Incite (or possibly any emotion period, with Incite just making certain emotions more convenient); Madrigal has dual-emotion Incite and can therefore feed from both.
b) Feeding capabilities are driven at least partially by aspects; Madrigal's "Fear and Lust" aspect opens up the second emotion asa an option.
c) Being able to Incite two emotions is seperate from feeding capabilities, and any character that wants to feed from two emotions just takes Emotional Vampire twice; Madrigal's character writeup was incomplete and should have included Emotional Vampire (Lust) and Emotional Vampire (Fear).
Or something else (possibly just GM fiat that "your character has managed to learn how to feed from a new emotion through practice")?
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I would make the omnivorous WCVs pay the premium only once: on the Incite Emotion power. That has the added benefit of sort of somehow maybe balancing out anyone's issues with keeping the Catch at +0.
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I could be wrong here, but wasn't there something in one of books (I'm thinking Proven Guilty) that implied all White Court start with lust and that some twist themselves until they are able to feed off of other emotions? I don't have the book handy, but it would be when Thomas is explaining things to Harry (who had no idea that White Court vampires could feed off of anything except sex).
Richard
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I would make the omnivorous WCVs pay the premium only once: on the Incite Emotion power. That has the added benefit of sort of somehow maybe balancing out anyone's issues with keeping the Catch at +0.
Don't you think that's too cheap? I'd think almost anyone contemplating a WCV character would pick up multiple emotions very quickly. After all, there's a lot of flexibility in being able to manipulate different emotions.
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Don't you think that's too cheap? I'd think almost anyone contemplating a WCV character would pick up multiple emotions very quickly. After all, there's a lot of flexibility in being able to manipulate different emotions.
I tend to agree with devonapple, though I wanted to see what others thought (thus the question). Consider that the difference between a baseline WCV and an 'omnivore' WCV would only be flexibility as to the names given aspects or consequences inflicted. No increase in actual effectiveness (in terms of range or strength), though there might well be cases in which inflicting fear-based aspects might attact less attention than lust-based ones, and vice-versa. There is a slight disadvantage in that an omnivore might need to be good at both Intimidation and Deceit to be effective.
But all of this is already covered by the Incite Emotion rules and costs; you pay -2 refresh to turn single-emotion Incite into omni-Incite. So the only real difference between a fully omniverous WCV and a single-appetite WCV with omni-Incite is the ability to say "and I benefit from that guy I just killed" after attacking with the Incite of choice -- and in return there is a slight extra weakness added to the Catch. And I'm not sure that amount of difference is worth an another extra -2 refresh over the Incite costs.
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Don't you think that's too cheap? I'd think almost anyone contemplating a WCV character would pick up multiple emotions very quickly. After all, there's a lot of flexibility in being able to manipulate different emotions.
It already costs refresh to be able to Incite the new emotion. This is how the example omnivore, Madrigal Raith (OS 214), is written up.
And as a player, I'd be inclined to beef up the Incite Emotion power in other ways (range, effectiveness) before adding new Emotion options.
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Perhaps I misunderstood, you're not advocating paying only 1 point of refresh for multiple emotions? Apologies if I've misunderstood, but that's how I read your post...ignoring the "Additional Emotion" power.
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I could easily be wrong, but I read devonapple's opinion as what I called option (a) above. That is, you pay -1 refresh per additional emotion to upgrade your existing Incite Emotion power, and as a (free) side effect you can use Emotional Vampire with the same additional emotions. This would "upgrade" your Catch and would make make your Feeding Frenzy effect from Emotional Vampire more "flexible", as well.
I see this as optional (that is, you could decide to be able to Incite the additional emotions but keep your Emotional Vampire and Catch at the baseline).
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Ah, I did misunderstand in that case. I do agree with you on not needing to buy "Emotional Vampire" multiple times.
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Here's a bit from Proven Guilty - one that talks about a Raith feeding on Fear:
My half brother smiled and worked the action of the shotgun again. “I doubt my
father cares,” he replied. “He wouldn’t mind losing a nephew. Particularly not one
who has been consorting with scum like House Malvora.”
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“A phobophage,” I said quietly. “He feeds on fear the way you feed on lust.”
Thomas’s expression turned a bit nauseated. “Yes. A lot of the Malvora do.”
Madrigal’s pale, strained face twisted into a vicious smile. “You should try it
some night, coz.”
“It’s sick, Mad,” Thomas said. There was an almost ghostly sense of sadness or
pity in his tone, so subtle that I would not have seen it before living with him.
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“The difference is that once you’ve started, you can’t let them go running off to
report you to the authorities,” Thomas said. “You keep them until they’re dead.”
Richard
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Other folks have echoed what I had intended to connote, so all is well!
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I'm not sure that's proof for all WCVs starting on lust, Richard. It certainly says that the Raith look down on the Malvora, and that Thomas personally finds the practice wrong (no specificity as to whether he dislikes Madrigal specifically doing it or the Malvora as a whole), but it's a bit of a jump to all white court vampires feed initially on lust.
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Here's a bit to back it up:
Until Proven Guilty, several books into the war against the Vampires, Harry didn't know that some White Court vampires feed on Fear - or anything other than Lust. Which seems to imply that no one talking to Harry (during the time that Harry is helping to train the Baby Wardens) mentioned anything about how some White Court feed on anything except lust.
Which makes me think it's either rare for one of them to feed on anything except lust - implying that fear and despair might be acquired tastes.
As for multiple emotions - I could be wrong here (that book isn't handy) but in White Night, didn't Madrigal feed on lust (or did another vampire trigger Molly's orgasmic flashback)? Which does open the door to beings feeding on more than one emotion.
Richard
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Here's a bit to back it up:
Until Proven Guilty, several books into the war against the Vampires, Harry didn't know that some White Court vampires feed on Fear - or anything other than Lust. Which seems to imply that no one talking to Harry (during the time that Harry is helping to train the Baby Wardens) mentioned anything about how some White Court feed on anything except lust.
Which makes me think it's either rare for one of them to feed on anything except lust - implying that fear and despair might be acquired tastes.
As for multiple emotions - I could be wrong here (that book isn't handy) but in White Night, didn't Madrigal feed on lust (or did another vampire trigger Molly's orgasmic flashback)? Which does open the door to beings feeding on more than one emotion.
Richard
Harry is an eminently fallible narrator.
The list of 'facts' he's gotten wrong through the books truly would be impressive.
With regards to this one, Raith is the most prominent of the three major Houses of the White Court, and though the 'major houses' bit implies the existence of other houses, not even the WC characters have mentioned them in any way, nor were they seemingly present during the ghoul incursion incident (or at least not recognized as present by our narrator).
Being the most prominent House, and moreover the one most active locally, Raith draws more attention and gives Harry less excuse to be ignorant of their workings, not that the comparative absence of excuses prevents Harry from being largely ignorant anyway until his brother lets him in on family secrets.
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Harry is an eminently fallible narrator.
The list of 'facts' he's gotten wrong through the books truly would be impressive.
Yet in game terms he starts the first book with Great Lore - implying that any PC with Great Lore should have a similar batting average.
Just something to think about.
Richard
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Good Lore, actually.
Regardless, I don't think it's a good idea to take the novels too seriously as a gaming resource.
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If I was statting Harry up, he'd have the aspect "Why does nobody ever tell me anything?"
It seems to come up often enough and explains why he's caught unawares by "baddie-of-the-book" (almost) every time.