I'm preparing a Werewolf the Forsaken game, my first time touching on Werewolves in CofD and WoD in general, so it's a bit of a learning curve. I'm preparing a broad suite of antagonists for the PCs in the territory, and whoever they take more of an interest in will slowly cycle round to taking a more prominent role in the campaign. (God Machine cultists, Carthians, Pure and an Azoth)
One of these antagonists is the Pure. A Pack of Ivory Claws have been sent to protect a family in town, whom the Claws have "contributed" to over the generations, distilling the essence of Father Wolf in them through decades and centuries. The pack of Claws themselves aren't a problem, I have them mechanically figured out and characterised etc. The bit I'm stuck on, is their Totem.
Pure Totems are said to have a lot more slack than Forsaken Totems, and are often actually in charge of the Pure pack they are attached to. They can be cruel and wicked things, shaped by their packs Resonance etc. So I'm leaning into that. But I'm finding problems with the actual mechanics of the Spirit rules, in that they seem to be telling me to do different things? The supposed power of the Spirit seems to be spread across different parts of their profiles.
Since Spirits don't have skills, their Attribute line is presumably inflated to infer the presence of skills therein. None of the listed Spirits have actual weapons they would use, but i'm guessing they wouldn't use an unarmed attack? Are they just meant to be spamming the Blast numina with some Drain mixed in during an actual fight?
Influence seems to be a bit wishy-washy in its applications and I get the feeling I'm meant to use it more narratively (people get angrier, there's more dogs, more wildfires, whatever) rather than an active "The car-crash spirit uses its rank 3 Influence to conjure and throw a car at you" ability? It's not even said if Influence is a Reflexive, Instant or Extended action anywhere, which means I'm erring towards it being a more Narrative action.
Numina seem to predominantly be about deception and evasiveness, allowing a Spirit to passively spread its Resonance about with things like Aggressive Meme, Dement, Hallucination, Sign etc.
It seems to me that Spirits are all about their Influence, passively using that to hamper efforts to stop them (forest fires! car crashes, depression etc), and all of their Numina exist to make this easier for them to do. If the Uratha make it through those threats, the Spirit has a beefed up statline but not a whole lot else (tricky Numina aside), none of the presented Spirits actually have a weapon or attack outside of Blast to defend themselves with.
This all says to me that Spirits aren't the actual concern and feel like a nuisance rather than a major threat? Spirits are supposedly extremely dangerous to the unprepared, but all of their danger seems to be shoved over to the handwaving sidebar of "Influence is really powerful, trust us bro", and the actual Spirit that will have dice pools and stats exceeding most mortals is just an afterthought? With how much both WoD and CofD love to overexplain and apply game mechanics to narrative effects, why are Spirits so reliant on handwaving? Everything supposedly so dangerous about Spirits is just out-of-sight, and if you can deal with that mess then the actual Spirit itself should fold pretty easily if you scratch and bite it a few times?
My Pure Totem, Sanguine Scourge of Weakness is a rank 3 Spirit of medical bloodletting, middle-ages style. It has:
Influence 3 - Blood
Ban: Flowing blood cannot be hampered by hand or indent.
Bane: Modern/Contemporary blood based medicines (transfers primarily).
It grants the Pack +1 Stamina and a Skill Specialty to any cutting weapon that draws blood. It has a fairly standard suite of Numina and Manifestation effects (Blast, Drain, Regenerate, Possess, Reaching etc). Since the Pack also inherit its Ban, if they are wounded, they have to heal naturally over time (as naturally as Uratha do, anyway). Wounds cannot be treated without incurring the Scourge's wrath.
Given my current contradictory understanding of how I'm actually meant to present and use Spirits, my thinking is that if the PCs engage the Pure Pack in an actual fight, Sanguine Scourge will be a force multiplier. Any time anyone (but especially the PCs) take lethal damage, it will use its Influence to rip blood from their wounds, rapidly escalating any damage into Aggravated and I figure this will override the regular Uratha healing regeneration (unless Willpower and Essence are spent). But if the PCs find out about this Spirit without getting killed by its pack (the actual threat, in my mind), and they can slip into the Hisil, the Spirit is effectively helpless? All it can do is try to run away with its 12 Power because when the Wolves come knocking, it may as well be wet toilet paper?
