Catch Ideas

[Quazar]

Even after reading the section in the book a dozen times, I'm still not clear how determine the value of a Catch.  How about we provide some more example Catches and try to puzzle out what we think their value should be?

Weapons Forged with Magic
Suspension Above the Ground/Floor
Running Water
Meteor Rock (thank you Smallville  )
Left-handed people
People born in a month ending with -ber (don't ask)

[HobbitGuy1420]

A lot of these would depend on what the critter in question is - an obvious earth elemental?  Gonna be very easy to figure out that if you separate it from Mother Earth it'll lose its power.  John HumanGuise who happens to be a scion of Gaea?  less obvious.

[admiralducksauce]

My favorite one is from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle:

"Bullets!  My secret weakness!"

[Drashna]

No offense meant, but it's rather straight forward:

o If your abilities only protect you against something specific, you get a +2 discount. If they protect you against
everything except something specific, you get nothing.
o If the Catch is bypassed by something that anyone could reasonably get access to, but usually doesn’t carry on them (like cold iron), you get a +2. If it is bypassed by something only a rare class of people in the world have (like True Magic), you get a +1. If it is bypassed by something only one or two people in the world have access to or could produce (like a Sword of the Cross), you get nothing. Even the mere presence of the thing that satisfies your Catch will cause you discomfort (and may be grounds for a compel or something similar).
o If almost anyone with an awareness of the supernatural knows about the Catch or could easily find out (like from the Paranet, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula if you’re a Black Court vampire), you get a +2. If knowledge of the Catch requires access to specific research material
that could be restricted (like a wizard’s library), you get a +1. If knowledge of the Catch requires knowing you personally to learn about it (like the effect of Judas’ Noose on Nicodemus), you get nothing.

The first "plus" is against everything but, or just against that one thing.
The second "plus" is availability of the catch item.
The third "plus" is the "availability" of knowledge against said catch.

Cold Iron is generally +3.  Nothing because it's against only cold iron, +2 because iron/steel is *very* easy to find. Grab a crowbar, or tire iron (tehehe).  And +1 because faeries try to hide that knowledge, and varying legends argue it (some say iron, some say silver, et cetera).

I'm just assuming in all these, that the catch is protection against everything but listed items.
Weapons forged with Magic: +0 (most likely), +0 (this is going to be rare, it's not common at all), and +??? (this depends on the creature, really) which totals a +0 catch rebate for this. Maybe more, if it's common knowledge.
Suspension: +0 (again, most likely), +1 (it's *easy* to do, but setting it up may not be, feel free to argue), and again +???, is it common knowledge?  So, this is +1-2. Maybe more.
Running Water:  +0 (I sense a theme), +2 (easy, very. Got a shower? river? fire hydrant?), +??? (is it well known?)  This one is probably a +3, as the knowledge may be available.
meteor: +0, +0 (this can be argued but it's going to be very hard to find. Very), +???
Left handed people: +0, +1 (well, they are common enough, but not *all that common*), +0, I'm sure this is obscure. Very. I could be wrong. So that leaves this at a +1.
-ber born people: +2 (you can very much argue only protects them from people not born in those months), +2 (one out of three people, statistically speaking. VERY COMMON), +0 (maybe more, but this would be very uncommon in my reckoning. as always, depends)

So, why people born in the cold months?

[sinker]

meteor: +0, +0 (this can be argued but it's going to be very hard to find. Very), +???

Hey, it depends on the universe. If we're using superman as an example then it would be much higher because all of krypton seems to have fallen to earth. Lost your piece of kryptonite? There's another one chilling in the gutter over there.

[Peteman]

Hey, it depends on the universe. If we're using superman as an example then it would be much higher because all of krypton seems to have fallen to earth. Lost your piece of kryptonite? There's another one chilling in the gutter over there.

I remember hearing of a Silver Age comic where some movie directors accidentally thwarted Superman because they used  real Kryptonite as props because it was cheaper than getting realistic looks fakes.

[zerogain]

Regarding kryptonite, that just serves as an example for how whatever you catch is, the value can slide based on the world.  While Sinker is nominally right and it's rough to find a meteorite piece (though a large cottage industry displays a significant talent for it) what really matters to the Catch is how often it will appear in the game.

For the native american scion of Raven in my game her Catch is the "Honest Intent Of My Kinsmen" -- in the ancient past these scions were created to protect the tribes from outside threats (in this case the Uncheglia - choose your definition on them, wikipedia or Marvel... we still haven't settled) but they were never intended to rule those tribes either.  So if one of the scions got uppity and decided to lord it over her tribe, she'd find out quite rapidly that all her powers were nothing when her tribe came after her for some good ol' "woodshed justice".

Now since we're playing in the Pacific Northwest, and there are a ton of reservations out here, it's highly possible that one of her kinsmen might be convinced that she's a bad guy, and come up against her.  As a result we're judging that +2, since the requirement is anyone with 1/4 Amerindian blood or more.  Because not a whole lot of time has passed since one of these scions last walked the Earth, it's kind-of difficult to find out what her catch is, though it's more than likely that the wizards' libraries in Edinburgh and elsewhere might well have this information, as well as a number of shamans and medicine men who still keep the old ways alive.  For us then, we give her Catch a total value of +3.

Now, if we were going to set this game say somewhere in Europe, then the likelihood of running into her catch would be significantly less (or so I would think and therefore judge at the table) and would have set that value then at +1 or maybe even +0, but my player thought ahead of me on that one and in our case we're actually combining Raven and Morrigan (the goddess, no the video game fighter...) into the same rough entity, and since her father is directly descended from the Tuatha Dé Danann (her mother is Makah, a tribe native to Washington state in the US) then that extends the available pool to anyone who shares a similar bloodline.  This makes me more comfortable with the +2 for availability of the catch.

[Quazar]

Well the examples don't always follow the rules then.  Cold Iron is clearly a +4 catch.  It's easily acquired and anyone who knows anything about magic knows about faeries and cold iron.  For many of the little faeries it makes sense to be only +1 or +3 because you can't have a catch that equals your Toughness and Recovery together.  But an Elder Gruff still gets +3, despite his Supernatural Toughness and Inhuman Recovery.  Is this just a typo then?

The whole process is very subjective, so when your players come up with far out catches the creation process definitely bogs down.  I guess that's unavoidable in this system.

[Peteman]

Actually, the Trolls also have more than enough in Toughness and Recovery powers that they could warrant a +4, but only have +3. I would say that while iron and its variants are dirt cheap, the knowledge of overcoming them is not the kind of public knowledge that killing vampires are.

[MijRai]

I would say Cold Iron is public knowledge... To those in the know. All those wizards and vampires and such know it, but does the new kid on the block know it? Do the average people who read books about Red-Caps with iron-shod boots and a pike know about it?

[Quazar]

"If almost anyone with an awareness of the supernatural knows about the Catch or could easily find out, you get a +2."
- YS185

Cold iron vis-a-vis faeries definitely fits this.  At least it's arguable.

[Peteman]

At least they're consistently inconsistent. All the Fey examples with huge Toughness and Recovery abilities don't get more the +3 (Gruffs, Trolls, Giant Scarecrow...)

[Sanctaphrax]

An argument could be made that although the weakness of Faeries is widely known, the fact that a given being is a Faerie isn't. The vampireness of a BCV is obvious, but the Feyness of a gruff isn't.

I don't actually agree with this argument, but it's at least reasonable.

[TheRealMe]

Pardon me, but aren't the fairy tale references to cold iron intended to be cold-forged-iron?  That is, iron that has been beaten into shape with pure strength using a hammer, and without the use of fire at all.  This would be a thing more rare than a common tire iron. 

[Peteman]

Maybe, but considering that Lady Aurora, one of the upper tier Sidhe got taken out by a bunch of WyldFae using Box Cutters, it appears that claim is fairy tale itself.