White Court Vampire - The Omnivore and The Catch (Hope, Love & Courage)

[KOFFEYKID]

So a White Court Vamp generally has a +0 catch of one of the big three (Hope, Love & Courage). My question is this: What if you have an Omnivore vampire, somebody who feeds on Lust, Fear and Despair, their catch would then be Hope, Love and Courage.

What sort of rebate are all three worth?

[Tedronai]

+0

[KOFFEYKID]

Why +0? Articles of Courage are likely really common. A sword used in battle for example would qualify, an article of hope is a bit more vague, but likely more common that an article of love.

The value of the rebate given by the catch is judged based on how common the item(s) in question are. Having three times as many types of items which can satisfy the catch should mean that the rebate would be higher.

-edit-

Not to sound snippy, a 2 symbol reply just isn't a good reply. I'd prefer some of your reasoning behind the statement, and "+0" just isn't helpful.

[Sanctaphrax]

Getting more catches doesn't actually increase your refund, oddly enough. Only the highest one counts.

Anyway, True Love should actually be a +2 Catch by the RAW. The WCV writeups just ignore this for some reason. So all three together ought also to be +2.

PS: True Courage is not so common as you seem to think, I think.

[Tedronai]

Anyway, True Love should actually be a +2 Catch by the RAW. The WCV writeups just ignore this for some reason. So all three together ought also to be +2.

This is an incredibly contentious issue, and not nearly so conclusive as you would have it appear, Sanct.

[Sanctaphrax]

If you say so. It seems pretty simple to me, and a quick search reveals no good arguments justifying the +0 value.

People have pointed out that Love is difficult to make or find or weaponize, but the Catch rules don't take such things into account. It's not unique and it doesn't require unique knowledge, so +2.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

[Tedronai]

If you say so. It seems pretty simple to me, and a quick search reveals no good arguments justifying the +0 value.

People have pointed out that Love is difficult to make or find or weaponize, but the Catch rules don't take such things into account. It's not unique and it doesn't require unique knowledge, so +2.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

Off the top of my head?
The availability of True Love (or other True emotions) in the Dresdenverse has never been conclusively determined.
The feeding patterns of a particular WCV, and thus its vulnerability(/ies) do constitute personal knowledge.

[Silverblaze]

Silver, iron, virgin blood, fire, bullets tothe head, sunlight, holy objects, garlic, and belly wounds are all far more common that "true" emotions. (at least as far as I can tell in this universe)

I'm not going to bother weighing in on my opinion of the actual point total, no one really cares about other people's opinions on catches (I bet they vary table to table).

I think it should certainly be less than +3, likely less than +2, but whatever.

To answer the OP.  Ask your table.  I'd likely give a +1 bonus to having multiple catches even if they are all rare.  (I'm likely a minority in such an opinion).  So if your table says +0 try for +1, if they say +1, try for +2...and so on.  I wouldn't bet on getting that bonus, but why not try?

[Richard_Chilton]

Sometimes I think we over estimate the amount of knowledge out there in the Dresdenverse.

For example, in one book a minor practitioner was surprised to learn that there were more than one type of vampires.  This was someone who had contacts in the supernatural community who didn't know about the "common" courts.

Then there's White Council trained Harry - who has to be told about the White Court's weakness by Thomas.  He knew about the White Court but not their weakness (or their sub-houses) until he started to hang around with Thomas.  And he learns about the weakness after the start of the Red Court war - which means no one sent around a "this is how you deal with the White Court allies of the Red Court" memo.  Heck, Harry didn't even hear the name "Jade Court" until one of the later books.

Based on how Harry had to hang around with Thomas a while before he learnt about the catch, +0 makes sense.

Richard

[Nyarlathotep5150]

Heck, Harry didn't even hear the name "Jade Court" until one of the later books.

   I wouldn't call book 5 a later book (The only mention of the Jade court is made by Shiro), especially when the vampire courts weren't even introduced until the end of book 3. Prior to that, Bianca was the only vampire depicted, and Harry just called her "a vampire".

[UmbraLux]

Richard makes a good point though.  Harry is consistently short of knowledge or simply incorrect in his assumptions...at least until Bob brings him up to date. 

[Richard_Chilton]

   I wouldn't call book 5 a later book (The only mention of the Jade court is made by Shiro), especially when the vampire courts weren't even introduced until the end of book 3. Prior to that, Bianca was the only vampire depicted, and Harry just called her "a vampire".

Sorry, I misremember which book it was mentioned in.

But still:
Book 3 - ends with War!!!
Book 4 - big conference, the brute squad is gone, lots of scrambling. At this point you'd think they would send out a "here are the known facts about Vampires memo", but no.
Book 5 - There are unknown vampires in Asia? Really? Wow.  "Um, do you think any of them made the trip to the US?"
No, that question was never asked - Harry assumes that they will have no bearing on the case so ignores their existence.

There are thousands upon thousands of things in the Nevernever.  Some are tiny, some are huge, and Harry (with his starting Lore of Good) has never heard of most of them.  He didn't know anything about the Fairy Queens (other than they existed) or about the Erlking or even about Summer's Shock Troops - the Gruffs.  First time he saw a Gruff he thought that maybe it was a were-goat...

But back to the White Court - someone with a Lore of Good didn't know their weakness. He didn't know it until a White Court vampire revealed it to him.  That strikes me more of a "If knowledge of the Catch requires knowing you personally to learn about it" type thing.

Especially when an average practitioner (with contacts in the supernatural community) doesn't seem to know that there are different courts of vampires...

Richard

[benign]

I like the perspective about how well known (or not) these things actually are in the Dresden verse, although the White Court weakness and the existence of the Jade Court still trike me as worth +1. The guideline for that price level is, if I recall, something like you need access to an arcane library and the know-how to research it, which is very much like Dresden going and asking Bob for the 411. A +0 refund catch is more like Nicodemus' noose, which as far as we know Harry is the only person in the world to figure out, and even he had to figure it out over the course of struggling against him. So a little more exclusive than the White Court's Achilles heel.

[sinker]

More than anything I usually like to use how often it will come up instead of how rare/hard to find out it is.

The white court catch specifically? The book lists it as +0, but think about how often it's come up in Thomas' life (and he's relatively young). As far as Thomas is concerned I think I'd give it a much higher value, but for Lara, or most of the others it seems to come up a lot less.

[Tedronai]

Figuring out the White Court's Catch isn't good enough, though, if you don't have personal knowledge (aka +0) of the WCV in question to know its particular feeding habits.
ie.  Going into your arcane library to research the White Court might (and that's a very big 'might'), for instance, tell you that many WCVs are susceptible to True Love, but that likely won't help you if you're facing off against a Skavis.