Thinking Outside the Box: Creative Use of Gifts

This was a thread I started up back on the old boards, and with the addition of the new addendum, it seems like as good a time as any to start it back up. I'll be taking a look at gifts that sometimes get overlooked and how they can be used creatively to advantage.


Let's start with

Apecraft's Blessings: This is an amazing gift. A lot of people look at it and dismiss it because it has relatively limited combat potential. Yes, you can get a three-trait bonus to an attack with a gun or sword, but you have to spend an action and three mental traits to do so, and it can't be a fetish weapon.

Well, that's true--though it's certainly a nice combat gift for, say, a sniper. The real use of the gift, though, is in its non-combat applications. The ability to add three bonus traits when using a tool made by man is ASTOUNDINGLY versatile.

Hacking into a Pentex server? Three bonus traits on the check. Picking a lock? Three bonus traits. Disarming a bomb? Three bonus traits. Painting a picture or forging a sword? Three bonus traits.

Essentially, what this gift is doing is giving you an improved Ability Aptitude with a whole slew of different abilities...and better still, it stacks with Ability Aptitude.

Another gem that makes me wish I were still playing a Bone Gnawer:

Trash is Treasure Out of the book, this gift is great. As translated for MES, it's amazing. Repair ANY broken object, and if you spend a Willpower, the repair lasts forever.

Think about that. Really think about it. Think about the kinds of broken objects that are out there. Trashed computer hard drives full of juicy secrets. That really sweet Lamborghini that would be just great if it hadn't been hit with a LAW rocket.

You can fix them, instantly, and permanently. The Glass Walkers are going to ENVY you.

Mw ha ha ha ha ha

Spider's Song I like this gift a lot. As long as you have a cellphone in sight, you can listen in on the full conversation being held. If you're in the Umbra and peeking, you have the cellphone in sight. Keep in mind how utterly ubiquitous "I hold my fingers up to my ear to call Bob" cellphone conversations are in LARPs. Keep in mind that encryption isn't going to prevent this eavesdropping. Very, very useful; a worthy addition to any Ragabash's arsenal of tricks.

Where is the addendum. I only saw one up for Forsaken.

http://www.mindseyesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/GarouAddendum2.3.141.pdf

is the new link.

Spirit Snare: Good gravy, this is an amazing gift. If it had been available back when I was playing Wishbone, it would have been right at the top of my "Must Buy This" list.

By beating a spirit in a mental challenge, you debuff them to the tune of 2 Rage, 2 Gnosis, and 2 Willpower for the rest of the scene. That doesn't necessarily sound like so much until you consider that those traits are on a scale of 1-10, and are used for everything the spirit does. That means that, at the very least, this represents a 20% across-the-board reduction in power; for most spirits, it's going to be more than that.

Remember that in MES, most spirits multiply one of these values by 2 to determine how many traits they have in a given challenge, and very powerful spirits multiply it by 3. Thus, just for starters, this is going to equate to a 4 or 6-trait penalty on all attacks of any kind. It gets better than that, though. Since spirits also use their Rage to determine how much damage they do in combat, this is also a significant debuff to damage; even gifts like Blast are likely to have their damage drop by a point as the result of this gift, in addition to being more difficult to activate by virtue of the debuff to Gnosis.

All in all, this is a MASSIVE penalty for a single gift to impose; I can't think of another gift that's comparable in terms of how much bad stuff it heaps on all at once. This would be an excellent gift as an Intermediate; but they made it a Basic. When fighting spirits, this should be the opening salvo for any Theurge.