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

[Haru]

I think in the matter of the more obscure catches, you should not only take the general availability and/or knowledge into account, but also the intention of the player.

I feel myself writing "like sinker said" a lot the last few days, and this is one more occasion, I see. 

A +0 catch for a WCV would probably mean, that the catch does not really appear on screen, except in really dramatic scenes where it adds to the suspension. On the other hand, you could value the exact same catch as +5*and could add a vampire hunter, who lost his one true love to a vampire of the white court and everything he does is motivated by the love for this one person, making him the most dangerous person to a WCV from house Raith.

And I would treat the combined catch the same. +0 if it isn't really supposed to come up, more if it is supposed to be a bigger part of the story. And not every catch would have to come up, just pick one and create a cool threat around that.

*just a number I drew out of my hat, I am not sure how I'd actually price this

[benign]

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.

But I think it would be likely to tell you that Skavis are vulnerable to hope, and Raith to love. You could adapt your tactics from there.

I mean, knowing a BCV vampire is vulnerable to sunlight doesn't help you against them if you think they are a zombie, but that isn't "personal knowledge" in the same way that the Nicodemus example was. I guess another way to say it is to exploit a Raith's weakness you don't need knowledge of what makes them, personally, a different being unique from every other creature in the world. You just need to know how his species works. With Nicodemus you really need to know quite a bit about the man/demon himself.

[Tedronai]

But I think it would be likely to tell you that Skavis are vulnerable to hope, and Raith to love. You could adapt your tactics from there.

Now go ahead and take that knowledge to a fight against the assembled Houses of the Court, and see how well you fare.

[benign]

Now go ahead and take that knowledge to a fight against the assembled Houses of the Court, and see how well you fare.

I'm not sure what you mean. I only meant to say that when you know the catch for one Skavis you know the catch for all of them, and likewise for Raiths. To me, that means their Catch is more widely available to be discovered than for someone whose Catch is unique to them. I would reflect that by offering a 1 pt refund.

There is a measure of table preference in this, as in many things in DFRPG, and I'm just tossing my 2 cents out there. I respect that you disagree, and I think your point of view is supportable. So agree to disagree time, I think.

[Tedronai]

What I mean by that is that the difference between knowing to press that well-worn wedding ring into the eye socket of a Raith (assuming you've actually managed to determine that that wedding ring is even a meaningful symbol of True Love) and knowing to press that high school diploma (same caveat substituting True Hope) into the face of a skavis when all either of them are trying to do is eviscerate you with strange looking knives is a matter of personal knowledge of the WCV in question.
I do not thing that up-to-date WCV geneologies are common in wizard's libraries, nor in any library save those of the White Court itself.

You can even go about it from the other end and say that applying a WCV's Catch requires 'personal', non-library-attainable, knowledge of the supposed Catch-item itself, as not just any old wedding ring will do, and there is no evidence that a simple divination would suffice any more so than would for Nicodemus' noose to tell you which one will burn and which will simply provoke mocking laughter.

[KOFFEYKID]

Thats a bit of a stretch Tedronai. I mean, technically the same applies to any creature with a catch, its a matter of knowing "This is a skavis white court vampire" or "this character is a red court vampire."

It is indeed personal in the sense of needing to know what type of nasty any given character is, but the catch as a whole is not Personal to one character but to a group of them instead, which means that it is more than a personal bit of knowledge.

[Tedronai]

A horde of RCVs charging at you in their true forms all have identical catches.
A horde of WCVs charging at you shining like the moon do not have identical catches, and are largely indistinguishable unless A) they do something to distinguish themselves or B) you know them well enough to identify them personally with respect to their house affiliation, and possibly, their personal feeding habits.

[KOFFEYKID]

See but your argument can be applied on a larger scale just as easily, see below:

A horde of vampires are charging you in their "average joe forms" (however the gain such a form is irrelevant), they do not have identical catches and you must identify which type of vampire they are (Black, White, Red or Jade) in order to determine their catch.

[Tedronai]

See but your argument can be applied on a larger scale just as easily, see below:

A horde of vampires are charging you in their "average joe forms" (however the gain such a form is irrelevant), they do not have identical catches and you must identify which type of vampire they are (Black, White, Red or Jade) in order to determine their catch.

Knowing a particular WCVs personal feeding patterns, which may, in fact, differ even from those of their house as a whole, is not the same as knowing that a particular 'vampire' is a member of the Red Court species.

[KOFFEYKID]

It is reasonable to assume that a Raith WCV feeds off lust, a Raith vampire who feeds off of despair is an exception not the rule.

[sinker]

Meh, it actually works both ways. The literal wording is that in order for someone to know your catch they must know you personally. The reason why they must know you personally makes no difference whatsoever.

On this one I tend to agree with Richard though. We see this world through Harry's eyes. Harry happens to have a white court vampire as a brother, so he knows a lot about the white court. This does not mean that all wizards know anything about them (or even have access to this knowledge). In fact I could see a lot of evidence that Harry wouldn't disseminate this knowledge to the white council (he cares for his brother and doesn't have a lot of trust for the council).

I'm a little surprised you're arguing this so vehemently though, Tedronai. You've been around long enough to know that this is one of the few questions that there is no hard answer to. That even among us veterans there is no agreement. Seems silly to speak with such authority on the matter.

[Tedronai]

I'm a little surprised you're arguing this so vehemently though, Tedronai. You've been around long enough to know that this is one of the few questions that there is no hard answer to. That even among us veterans there is no agreement. Seems silly to speak with such authority on the matter.

My first post not made in direct response to the OP which explicitly included a presupposition of the appropriateness of a +0 catch for a single-emotion WCV:

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

[benign]

I think the clearest way to state my personal preference on the matter is this. If a character has a catch that is identical to other catches from other members of his group (species, brotherhood, whatever), then knowing his catch does not require "personal knowledge", it requires knowledge of his group. Such a catch grants a minimum +1 refund for its secrecy.

If a character has a catch that is unique to her and her alone, regardless of what other catches for other characters in her group are (if indeed she can be said to belong to a group at all), then there is a good chance that her catch is +0 for secrecy. Now if she become so famous that her catch is known to every Joe, Dick, and Sally monster-hunter out there, you can reevaluate the value of that catch. But at least as an individual catch it has the potential to be worth +0, whereas group-wide catches do not.

I'm not planning on changing anyone's mind with this post, mind you. I just wanted to put as clear a cap on my point of view in this matter as I could think of while full of Xmas leftovers and wrapped in a comfy blanket.

[toturi]

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...

Richard

Perhaps his Good Lore reflects the fact that he had Bob in his possession. Or that his not-knowing about the Erlking or the Gruffs were Compels, forcing him to ask Bob or refer to his books.

[Becq]

First, to address the original question, see the writeup for Madrigal Raith.  He has "The Catch [+0] is True Love and True Courage", which seems to be a good example of the Catch not increasing for multi-vores.

As a brief response to the other discussion, many of the sample Catch values used in Our World seem to ignore the pricing formula from Your Story.  I tend not to like the way the formulas were written (the sample values seem quite a lot more reasonable), but that's a horse that's been beaten enough for now.

One question I do have is this: Emotional Vampire specifies that the character must specify one emotion that can be fed from.  Madrigal can feed from two emotions, and the OP asked about a character with a three-emotion apetite.  So how have various tables handled this?

a) Ignore the single-emotion requirement in Emotional Vampire; a WCV can feed from any emotion they can Incite (or possibly any emotion period, with Incite just making certain emotions more convenient); Madrigal has dual-emotion Incite and can therefore feed from both.
b) Feeding capabilities are driven at least partially by aspects; Madrigal's "Fear and Lust" aspect opens up the second emotion asa an option.
c) Being able to Incite two emotions is seperate from feeding capabilities, and any character that wants to feed from two emotions just takes Emotional Vampire twice; Madrigal's character writeup was incomplete and should have included Emotional Vampire (Lust) and Emotional Vampire (Fear).

Or something else (possibly just GM fiat that "your character has managed to learn how to feed from a new emotion through practice")?