I'm a terrible person, doing it twice in one day, but I've got what I've been looking for. I'm not going to append a huge 2 page post onto a small response I have for cobalt.. soo.. here ya go.
Acrozatarim said:
Well, Hunt of Fire and Ice has the win!
HoFaI is one of those Weather Facets that directly affects the local weather. It has a high Essence cost and using it is an Extended action but, if it's successfully invoked, you can look forwards to it holding effect for hours. The Facet affects a large area, the exact size of which scales off your Wisdom Renown. What it actually does is straightforward - it slaps either the Extreme Cold or Extreme Heat environmental Tilts down.
For those of you who need a refresher on what those Tilts do, they prevent natural healing and slow supernatural healing, inflict a cumulative -1 penalty to all rolls each hour, and once it hits -5 start inflicting Lethal damage. A foe facing a wise Uratha wielding the Hunt of Fire and Ice will find the world itself becomes a hostile place, slowly weakening them even as they desperately try to keep ahead of their hunters. Of course, finding shelter might offer respite, but the wise Uratha knows exactly that, and uses it to herd the prey and drive them precisely where the pack desires...
Next is Dominance Gifts- this one is perhaps the least fleshed out of them all- and only talks about the impression that the author wanted dominance gifts to get in. This post was made during the redline stage of the book too- so lots of things could of changed
Acro Said:
So, those thoughts about the Dominance Gift...
The 1st edition Dominance Gift list had the much-maligned targeting restrictions, but it was also already rather narrowly focused. Three powers that amount to 'shout at someone to get them to do A Thing', one minor defensive buff and one to strip Willpower off a target. What you could inflict on a target with the command Gifts was extremely limited until you got to the fifth dot. Low-dot Dominance was also extremely costly to use due to being fuelled off Willpower. To me, it was an underwhelming Gift list until the 4th dot, providing an overly complex system for achieving relatively minor control capabilities over very limited periods of time.
So, when looking at redoing Dominance for 2nd edition, I knew I wanted to significantly change the Gift up.
Before setting to work on the 2nd edition Gifts, I spent some time mulling over the new Blood & Smoke Discipline write-ups. It was useful to gauge what sort of changes had been made, how they had been empowered, and what stuff vampires had that I specifically didn't want to then cover with Gifts. I knew already that I didn't want Dominance to just be Werewolf Dominate and, as I read over them, it was clear that the vampiric 'social' Disciplines do a particular thing where they offer an end-run round the social system. A Ventrue with Dominate or a Daeva with Majesty just twists a victim's mind like a pretzel. For the Gift of Dominance, I wanted something that took a different approach - to have at least some of its Facets work within the new social manoeuver system rather than bulldozing over it.
To lay out the obvious, Dominance should be about asserting dominance, not about mind control.
I went through the existing Dominance Gifts to see what I might want to keep and what to get rid of. Warning Growl - a low worth combat boost that's basically a speed-bump. Combat Dominance should be about putting the other guy or girl right in their place with a display of power, not making them a bit nervous. Cut. Luna's Dictum, Voice of Command and Tug the Soul's Strings - just ascending forms of a command power that take a massive amount of word count for little worth, and I don't want such blatant 'mind control' in the new Gift with all the accompanying verbage and wrangling about what you can and can't do; I'm happy for that to remain more of a vampire thing. Cut. Break the Defiant - the only one I actually seriously think about keeping, but for various reasons to do with Willpower in the new edition I decide it's better off gone. Cut.
So... having at this point decided I'm binning the entire existing mechanical structure for Dominance, I have to rebuild it. With 2nd edition, there's the added wrinkle that there need to be five distinct powers that are not inter-reliant, each reflecting a different Renown and each as viable as the others - they don't all need to be specifically balanced in 'power' compared to one another, but they all need to be desirable to at least some characters.
When I sit down and sketch out what I have in mind for new Facets, some are straightforward and come quickly to mind. Two that are enhancements that work within the existing social manoeuver system - one for the alluring and sexy predator or the charming wolf-in-sheep's clothing, an easy fit for Cunning, and one for the dominating, snarling in-your-face werewolf that slots into Purity nicely. Both help you get what you want, but they're both short-term. The Cunning Facet works smoothly as long as you don't push the prey too hard and make them realise your true nature; Purity just goes full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes and any consequences of getting what you want right now. With the former, they might never know they were even prey; with the latter, there's no mistaking their place in the chain of dominance.
I knew I wanted a solid combat-useable Facet that lent itself to the sort of physical challenges that Uratha tend towards - a genuine social attack, dominance through raw violence. Assert your superiority through hammering the other guy's head against the wall. Into Honor this one goes.
Thing is, Dominance Through Violence (or, as the Facet is actually called, Lay Low The Challenger) might seem to fit better in Glory - and I do have a system for how I place Facets in given Renowns - but in this case, I had two solid reasons for it going into Honor. One is that it does serve as a tool - a violent tool - for asserting position and status within pack organisation; the other is that I already knew what I was going to put into Glory. Some Facets play around with Lunacy, custom-tailoring it, and I had one in mind for Dominance. After figuring out exactly what it did, it was obvious that Glory was the slot for it.
One left - Wisdom. A few possibilities here, but some crossed over too closely into Inspiration territory. In the end I went for something a bit different - a more beneficial take on dominance, one that fiddles with the boundaries of the pack and is more about allies than intimidation.
Five Facets in place, then; Purity is the closest to the old Dominance powers, but the whole Gift gives several tools for approaching social situations, violence and the pack. The most niche is probably the Wisdom Facet, but that's ok - there are still characters for whom it is a solid choice, especially as it offers some serious synergy with other Gifts and Rites.
So, I go over the list again, tweak it, adjust powers, make things a bit more streamlined. The Purity Facet gets a dice roll element removed so that it just gives the benefit if the price is paid. The effects of Lay Low The Challenger get modified several times as I seek the right balance so that it isn't just a no-brainer combat choice for every werewolf, but remains an actively useful tool in both violence and social actions. Glory gets poked with a stick a bit but basically does what I want it to do quite well. I've torn out the old Dominance limitations on targets, and nothing in rewriting or playtesting makes me feel like there's any reason to put it back in.
End result - a Gift of Dominance that has none of the old powers in it but, to my mind, offers the key features of what dominance should include - not control via carefully chosen words and directions but rather power through violence, through raw force of personality, through sex and through glorious terror.
