Rank 1 Gifts on GarouMUSH

What is a gift?
Gifts occasionally fail to work
Learning gifts

Rank 1 gifts

What Is a Gift?

The exact nature of what a gift is is subject to philosophical debate by the Garou. It could be that it is a spirit teaching a Garou to use a secret magic known to certain types of spirits. It could be the garou serving as a conduit for the spirit into the physical realm. It could be the spirit empowering the garou with magical energies or a special spiritual attunement.

On GarouMUSH, a gift represents the ability to use a special power. Gifts are "one trick ponies." They do just one thing, but they tend to do so relatively well. For example: Sense of the Prey is described thusly: "A Garou with this gift can track her prey (if she knows anything about it, and it is not actively hiding) as rapidly as she can travel." So this gift can be used to track someone down, but it cannot be used to backtrack to find out where the "prey" came from beforehand.

Gifts Occasionally Fail to Work

First and foremost, gifts do not always work. While this is obvious with some gifts (Open Seal, Lambent Flame, Spirit of the Bird), it is not obvious with detection gifts (Truth of Gaia, Sense Wyrm), which won't register anything out of the ordinary.

Learning Gifts

Learning a Gift From a Garou

In the majority of cases, gifts are learned from another garou. To learn a gift this way, you RP asking around IC who might have the gift, convince them to teach it to you, and then both you and the other player submit a +learn (or +teach) request.

Learning a Gift From a Spirit

On rare occasions, a spirit can be convinced to teach a garou a gift. Generally this is only acceptable on GarouMUSH in two situations: (1) cubs who're on or just completed their RoP are granted their gifts by spirits or (2) no one on the game has the gift.

To learn a gift from a spirit, the garou must have access to a caern of equal or less rating that the level of the gift. This is one reason that caerns are important and why being a member of a caern has distinct priviledges.

With the exception of cubs learning gifts during or right after their RoP, learning a gift from a spirit carries with it a significantly higher chance for failure.

If you attempt to learn a gift from a spirit, you will need to locate a GM to roleplay the spirit. Along with the +learn request, you will also need to submit a detailed explanation/justification to the wizards of how and why the PC is going about this task.

The Mentors and Allies Backgrounds

If no one on the MUSH has the gift you want to learn and you have a Mentor or Ally background (that is a Garou), you can apply that background towards your +learn attempt and greatly increase the chases of success (depending on the Mentor or Ally background rating).

Garou with the Mentor background have a higher success rate for all their Rite and Gift +learn attempts.

How Likely Is a Gift +Learn To Succeed?

As a rule of thumb, about 30% of gift +learns between two garou will fail.

As a rule of thumb, about 75% of spirit +learns will fail.

These base numbers can be adjusted up or down based upon a number of factors:

• Did you RP the teaching? (Automatic failure if the teaching was not RPed out.)
• How recent was your last gift +learn?
• How many gifts do you already have? (The more you have of one rank, the harder it is to learn more--for game balance purposes.)
• How many times have you done a +teach in comparison to how many times you've done a +learn from others? (A history of "leeching" begets a higher failure rate.)
• Do you have the Mentor background? (You will always get a positive "fudge factor" with rite and gift +learns if you do.)

Learning Gifts Out of Your Breed/Auspice/Tribe

Best of luck! Only about 10% of these attempts ever succeed--and only if there is a good reason for it.

If you simply must have an out of tribe/breed/auspice gift, your best bet is to write the background for acquiring the gift into your application and then buy it with 7 freebie points in character generation.

Learning a tribe-exclusive gift--Aura of Confidence (Shadow Lords only), Lambent Flame (Silver Fangs only), or Camouflage (Wendigos only)--when you are not a member of that tribe is all but impossible.

A Garou that teaches another garou outside of the tribe a tribe-exclusive gift is likely to be hunted down and killed if his action is ever discovered--it's an outright betrayal of a tribe's secret knowledge and what makes a tribe unique and special. The gift learner could be in equal or greater danger.

Planning on learning an out of tribe-breed-auspice gift from a spirit? Don't waste your time submitting the +learn: just RP out the failure.

Rank 1 Gifts

The rest of this page contains a number of the most common R1 gifts on GarouMUSH.

Gifts that have been revised for GarouMUSH--and thus deviate from the sourcebooks--are in the bulleted list below. Modifications were made to either accomodate the MUSH environment or to provide better game balance between R1 gifts as a few were massively overpowered in comparison to the other gifts--especially Mother's Touch and Resist Pain.

• Beast Speech----Animals have limited cognitive/linguisitic abilities, limiting any response from them to a single sentence with just two words. The gift does not confer animal friendship nor willingness to help.
• Mother's Touch----Minorly depowered from the sourcebook in order to make it more in line power-wise with the other R1 gifts. House rules to prevent "touch tag" healing, particularly of badly wounded garou. Clarifications on gnosis expenditure and healing non-garou.
• Resist Pain----Minorly depowered from the sourcebook in order to make it more in line power-wise with the other R1 gifts. A garou using this gift still feels pain, but to a lesser extent. They can ignore two level's worth of damage with respect to the negative effects of pain. (They don't gain two additional health levels) If a garou suffered 6 levels of damage (Crippled, -5 to rolls), a garou with Resist Pain would function as if merely at 4 levels (Wounded, -2 to rolls)--even though 1 more level of damage would render them Incapacitated and an additional point above that would kill them.
• Scent of Man----In addition to frightening off wild animals, this gift confers a "Persuasion" gift-like bonus for interacting with domesticated animals.
• Speed of Thought----Clarification that it does not provide extra attacks, only doubles the movement speed for one scene.
• Sense Wyrm/Weaver/Wyld----Badly needed clarification of how this is an area affect gift that cannot be used to pinpoint the source of the Wyrm/Wyld/Weaver influence except under very specific, controlled conditions.
• Spirit Speech----Clarifications on use and that Beast Speech does not work with animal spirits.
• Truth of Gaia----Clarifications and social/renown/honor implications of using the gift on other garou, particularly in a frivolous or public manner.

Beast Speech

A Garou with this gift can speak with animals, but animals have an animal intelligence and often do not have particularly useful information or a long-term memory.

As a general rule of thumb, if an animal cannot respond to a question with a single two-word sentence (not two or three two-word sentences strung together), it is beyond their mental capacity to respond.

"Did a human pass by here just now?" is within most animals' capabilities to answer ("Yes/No.")

"Did a man with a yellow hat pass by here yesterday?" is not going to get any information unless the man in question did something memorable--like kick the animal or feed it--particularly if it's in a location where multiple people pass by each day.

Also note that just because you can talk to an animal doesn't mean that it wants to talk back or trusts trusts you, nor does it mean it will do what you say. Beast Speech does not magically enable animal friendship. Prey animals, if given the option, are simply going to run like hell from a wolf rather than speak to it.

Blur of the Milky Eye

This gift does not make you invisible.

This gift does not make you invisible.

This gift does not make you invisible.

This gift blurs the outline of your body, which helps to break up your character's silhoutte. This makes it somewhat harder to see your character (+1 or +2 to difficulty) if he or she has not yet been spotted.

Once a blurred character is spotted, the gift's effect is negated; however, if the spotter is distracted and takes his eyes off the ragabash, the +1 to +2 difficulty to relocate the ragabash applies again.

This gift is useful in getting a slight edge on sneaking up on or past people. This gift works against spirits, too.

Blur does not reduce noise or mask scent.

Call of the Wyld

Maximum hearing range for the gift is about 15 miles for someone in crinos, hispo, or lupus--about double the distance they could normally hear a very loud howl.

Maximum hearing range for the gift is about 4 miles for someone in homid or glabro--about double the distance they could normally hear a very loud howl.

Note that it takes time to travel to the source of a howl. If there's a fight and you're miles away, that fight will likely be long since over by the time you get there--even running top speed in lupus.

Call of the Wyld does not carry over across the gauntlet, so a howl originating in the umbra cannot be heard in the realm.

Camouflage

This gift does not make you invisible.

This gift provides excellent camouflage for the garou that uses it, but only if they are in the wilderness. It is useless within a city or on someone's front lawn or even a meadow or park.

The gift confers no benefit to being quiet or disguising scent.

Once the Garou is spotted, this gift is useless unless the spotter can be distracted and takes his eyes off the Garou in question--just like with Blur of the Milky Eye.

Control Simple Machines

This gift works only with relatively simple, non-electric devices.

Use your imagination and you'll come up with a number of interesting uses for this gift. Almost every Glass Walker with this gift knows the trick of using CSM to have an opponent's clip drop out of their gun--or turning the safety back on.

Very simple locks (deadbolt, chain latches, keyed padlocks) can sometimes be opened, but the gift is nowhere near as effective as Open Seal, which can handle electronic keypad locks, combination padlocks, and safes.

Cooking

Just think! You could eat the blandest oatmeal (or unflavored ramen noodles) every day for the rest of your life! What fun! Just add old discarded gym shorts and water!

If used on food that is already palatable, it will make it taste bland--not better.

Create Element

Creates one or two cubic feet of plain old fire (approximately 3 levels agg damage), water, earth, or air at a distance of up to 1 foot from the garou, making its use as a weapon pretty useless.

Created matter (water, earth, air) is permanent. Fire that is created flashes into existence briefly and is gone unless it ignites something. Air and water, inless contained, go where they please after created.

Faerie Light

Creates a light source that works like it's remote controlled. Range is as far as the Garou can see. Illuminates about 10' out from the light source. Works in the umbra, too.

The Falling Touch

This gift unbalances the target and causes them to fall.

It doesn't throw the target across the room into a wall to cause tons of additional damage. It just unbalances them, which causes the target to fall if successful.

This gift has a pretty good chance of working, too--about an 80-90% success rate. Fallen opponents can, of course, still attack from the ground that same turn--but fighting from the ground is usually not very advantageous.

Find the Prize

By thinking about a generalized object (gun, knife, bicycle, fried chicken), the garou can get an idea of where to come across something similar in the nearby area. However, that does not mean that the item isn't owned by someone else or otherwise free for the taking or accessible.

If there are multiple similar items in the area, the gift generally points out the immediate location of the nearest object. For instance, if a Garou saw a thug shoot someone with a 9mm pistol the night before and uses this gift to try and find the pistol the next morning, he's far more likely to get directed to a nearby cop, drug dealer, a gun shop, or a home than directions to the gun used by the thug. If the object is moving or moved before found, the garou's information becomes obsolete.

Heightened Senses

This gift effectively doubles how well your character can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.

If the gift user is in homid or glabro, the enhanced senses are almost on par with those of a wolf or dog.

If the gift user is in crinos, hispo, or lupus, the enhanced senses incredibly powerful--well beyond that of a wolf or dog.

Also important, there is no safety mechanism to prevent loud noises or the like from stunning a garou using this gift--or temporarily "blinding" a sense by overwhelming it. There is also no filter to cull out unwanted background noises.

Someone that activates this gift while in crinos/hispo/lupus and in the city will almost certainly be awash in white noise from sensory overload--if not stunned outright by any loud noises nearby.

Mother's Touch

This gift allows the user to head another garou, human, or animal of a couple levels of damage. The gift user cannot use this gift on themselves.

The undead and spirits are not affected by this gift.

It takes a full combat round of contact to use this gift on another. If either the user or recipient is moving or attacking/defending, the gift will fail--or botch. You can't go "Tag, you're healed!"

Once Mother's Touch has been used on a garou (even if it failed or botched), it cannot be used again on the same garou until the recipient garou has fully healed.

If a second garou with MT attempts to use the gift on someone that has already had MT performed on them (even if it was a failure or botch), the attempt automatically fails.

The following table gives a breakdown of how many levels of damage a garou can heal with MT--based upon the gift-user's Intelligence score and the wounded garou's rage.

An extra level of damage can be healed if the MT-user expends a point of Willpower, but the maximum number of levels healed can never exceed the user's Intelligence score.

Humans and kin are difficult to heal with MT, having an difficulty equivalent to a Rage 6 garou (because of their lack of spiritual affinity).

Each use of Mother's Touch requires the expenditure of one point of gnosis.

A battle scar may be healed if MT is used on it immediately after combat is over.

Healing a normal battlescar requires two gnosis points (and two combat rounds), but healing an oh-my-god battlescar requires 3 points (and three combat rounds).

It will be obvious to anyone watching--and the Garou that MT is being performed on--what is happening. Garou who are healed of a battlescar lose permanent renown greater than what they earned in the battle fought. Garou who are regularly getting battlescars healed after fights will never gain renown (or rank) as they are essentially erasing their badges of honor and glory.

Open Seal

If you plan to do go through any locked doors, either bring a ragabash or bring a battering ram.

Take a couple hair pins and paper clips, lock yourself out of your own house, and attempt to pick the lock. Feel free to give up after 4-8 hours. Lockpicking is hard, even when using the right tools, and takes a great deal of training and skill to accomplish. Even a skilled lockpick is going to need 5-30 minutes to open a door. Thus, Open Seal is a fabulously useful gift.

The probability of this gift's success depends upon the local gauntlet rating and the ragabash's gnosis score.

A Garou with a gnosis of 3-4 has about a 50-50 chance of popping open a lock (or whatever) in an average part of the city.

Unfortunately, this gift has a very high failure rate if used "straight up," so most ragabash spend a point of willpower when attempting to use this gift. (A locked door in a high-tech facility or lab basically requires a WP expenditure to open. A padlock on a bike left in a park? Not a problem!)

If the gift fails, the ragabash cannot try a second time with the same lock/seal. However, a second ragabash can give it a go--and then make fun of the first for failing afterwards.

Persuasion

What persuasion is not: "When I snap my fingers, you will do what I say."

Persuasion gives a Garou a slight edge when attempting to talk a person into doing something they might not normally be inclined to do for the garou.

A bouncer, after chatting for a few minutes, might be inclined to let a Garou into a nightclub when he normally wouldn't--and was reasonably sure he wouldn't catch flak for it later.

A tight-lipped person might be inclined to let a tidbit of information slip, but isn't going to spill their guts either.

A cop could be talked out of giving your Garou a speeding or parking ticket, or let you off with a warning.

But no matter how much talking you do, a cop is not going to be talked into handing his gun over to let you see it, a ghouled bouncer for a vampires-only nightclub isn't going to let you in even if you claim to be the caterer and just left your card at home, and no one is going to change their mind from something that goes completely against what they're inclined to do--or not do.

Persuasion gives a garou an edge to potentially nudge people that are thinking "You know, I probably shouldn't do that" towards "Eh... maybe this one time for you." Persuasion does not turn a hard "No" into an "Okay."

Persuasion is not an instant effect gift. It takes some verbal finangling--which also plays a big factor in the outcome of the attempt. If your persuasive argument isn't persuasive in the first place, the gift won't work. This can make for some interesting RPed scenes.

Resist Pain

Once a PC invokes Resist Pain, they feel less pain than usual--but are not immune to pain. (It still makes you go "ow!") They are simply better able to resist it. A garou with Resist Pain active (costs 1 point of WP to activate) can act as if they are two health levels above what they currently at--until they hit Incapacitated at seven levels of damage. Wounds that would normally cripple a garou (6 levels) affect Garou with Resist Pain active as if they were merely wounded (4 levels of damage).

Scent of Sweet Honey

This gift creates a minor nuisance (at best) in a combat situation and is typically far more effective/damaging/embarrasing in social situations.

Scent of the True Form

Detects Garou with about 95% accuracy, but doesn't tell tribe

Detects Bete and Other Shifters about 95% of the time, but does not inform the gift user as to what they are beyond "Like a Garou, but not"--unless the garou has used the gift successfully on a specific kind of Bete or Other Shifter before. (Basically, if you haven't "scented" it before, you don't know what it is you're smelling other than "similar but different.")

Detects vampires and fae about 30-40% of the time, which register as "Not Garou" and cannot be classified as vampire or fae unless the Garou has successfully detected them with this gift before.

Detects mages about 20-30% of the time, which register as "Not Garou" and cannot be classified as being a mage unless the Garou has successfully detected them with this gift before.

One use checks one individual. This gift can not be used to detect kinfolk.

If a Garou is expecting the target to be something supernatural, it is commonplace to expend a point of willpower in order to greatly enhance the odds of success.

Sense Magic

Detects magic (talens/rituals/fetishes/gift-use) in about a 10-30' range depending on how potent the magic is. Subtle magic is harder to detect at greater distances whereas powerful magic is easier to detect and can be detected further away.

If magic is detected, the Garou can sometimes distinguish the type of magic (Garou, Vampire, Mage, Spirit, Demonic, Fae, Talen, Fetish, etc.)--though it generally requires the expenditure of a point of WP in order to get that information.

Sense Wyrm/Wyld/Weaver

What this gift is not: "That guy over there is all Wyrmy!"

What this gift is: "This place feels.... Wyrmier than it appears/Wyrmier than it normally does."

This gift gives no indication of direction or distance the source is coming from.

There's always a degree of background Wyrm/Wyld/Weaver around. For instance, it's very difficult to figure out the source of Wyrm in the city--there's just so much "noise" that it's all but impossible to single out one thing as being the big source. (Is it that bum in the alleyway, the man passing by in the car, the person in the apartment next door, the shopkeep in the cafe, something nasty in the dumpster, or something vile beneath the ground in the sewer drain?)

However, in the deep wilderness or on the bawn near the caern, if it's just one Garou in a spot he's familiar with, another werewolf strolls up, and a quick use of Sense Wyrm indicates there's significantly more Wyrm in the vicinity than earlier that day--it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together. Thus, Sense Wyrm is very valuable in familiar areas that are Wyld in nature and quite useful for screening newcomers to the caern/bawn/sept. But it is not very useful in areas that have high concetrations of Wyrm where the garou is unfamiliar with the spiritual resonance.

Sense Weaver and Sense Wyld work in basically the same way as Sense Wyrm.

Shroud

A 10' sphere of blackness that no one can see into. And guess what? You and your friends can't see out of it! Of very limited offensive use, but great for defensive use, particularly against foes with ranged weapons.

Smell of Man

When activated, wild animals will do their best to avoid you--regardless of whether you are in homid form or not, they'll treat you as being human. This gift also makes it slightly easier for the garou to befriend domesticated animals (but not tamed wild animals)--acting much like Persuasion does on people.

Speed of Thought

You move twice as fast as you normally do. You do not get twice the number of actions, nor does this confer the ability to dart in and out to attack without being touched at all, nor does this provide additional dodge bonuses or difficulty to hit unless circumstances truly warrant it.

Spirit Speech

Like the Garou's Mother Tongue, Spirits have Spirit Speech. To speak the language of spirits, a garou must have the Spirit Speech gift.

Just as some Garou have Spirit Speech, the occasional spirit can also speak with garou--but might not advertise that fact.

Note that Beast Speech, another Rank 1 gift, will not work in communicating with the spirits of animals.

Unlike the Mother Tongue used by the Garou, Spirits do not have their own language that can be learned. Spirit Speech is more akin to an empathic universal translator. A Garou using Spirit Speech speaks as he normally would, using English or the mother tongue or whatever language they understand--it doesn't matter, so long as it's a language. Other Garou, if they speak this language, can understand what is being said by the Spirit Speaking Garou. The spirit's responses, however, cannot be understood by the bystanders.

Truth of Gaia

The following table gives a rough probability of success for a philodox to determine if the person being questioned is telling the truth or lying.

If the roll is successful (the philodox rolls under the appropriate number listed in the table), then the garou using ToG *knows* beyond any doubt whatsoever that the response given was truthful or a lie.

Lengthy responses can contain a mix of truths and lies, which can give an unclear response. Experienced philodoxes are very careful to phrase their questions so as to be pointed and with no wiggle room. Some even restrict garou to answering "yes" or "no" to their questions. Typically the Garou that respond evasively are assumed to be hiding something or not telling the truth--or are simply outraged that they have had their honor assaulted and are intentionally being difficult in order to infuriate the garou that has challenged them as well as make their attempt to use the gift a very frustrating endeavor.

A "truth" is classified as such according to the belief of the questioned person. For example, if Bob Garou saw someone that looked like Joe Garou pee in the campfire, and Bob was asked who did it and he said Joe, that'd ring as being true: it's what Bob truly believes to be the truth. Now if Joe was actually Phillip disguised as Joe, that's something that doesn't come out. The truth is always subjective. Intentional lying, however, is not. Heaven help the Garou that gets caught intentionally lying to a philodox.

ToG should never be used lightly, particularly in public. Use of this gift publicly without grounds for doing so is considered a tremendous faux pas in garou culture--it is basically stating that the garou using ToG believes the target garou is a liar, which is certainly a direct challenge to that garou's honor. The garou being challenged can opt to enter a formal challenge with the ToG-using Garou. A philodox that makes a false accusation and ToG fails to prove them correct loses a substantial amount of honor.

Nothing prevents a Garou with ToG from using the gift, knowing that the response given was truthful, and then claiming that the response was actually false. Rumor has it that some particularly dishonorable philodoxes (often Shadow Lords for some odd reason) have falsely accused garou in the past and gotten away with it--for whatever nefarious reasons. As such, if available, a third party is often brought in to mediate in these instances--but even a third party can be bribed or swayed.