How do you balance Werewolves and Vampires?
It's seems like between the esoteric magic, hypnotism, and ability to make hundreds of thralls Werewolves don't stand a chance.
Hell one could argued without the crippling effect of being vaporized by the sun Werewolves could operate easier and gain more power without having a easily discernable pattern to mortals. But beyond that what do they have super speed, strength, and reflexes once a month? Hell some incarnations of Vampire also get that for free
So how do you balance them? Also how do you have them in your personal setting?
Wolfman/Leech man thread
>>46075366
I made too many mistakes while typing that
>>46075366
I prefer my Wolfman and vamps to be able to be in their supernatural forms at will, or at least functional powers at night. Werewolf are the big YUGE brawlers that will maul your shit, while a vampire would rely on shadows and magic to shove a sword up your ass.
Other than that, the usual weaknesses and powers, except for the control of forms.
>>46075366
You forgot to mention that Vampires also get to shapes gift into any creature of the night and also have a monstrous form
>>46075631
Shapeshift*
Fuck off spellchecker
>>46075366
You don't.
Powerful things should be powerful.
They are "balanced" in that they are uncommon.
Gamist fags are cancer and why so many settings are boring.
>Whoa! Can't have the protags ever encounter an opposing force that they'll never be able to defeat
>>46075559
I like the idea of there being a risk of a werewolf getting permanently stuck in their beast form when they shapeshift.
>>46075366
Give each vampire a different vampire power. One runs fast, one turns into a bat, one hypnotizes people, one turns into mist, etc.
>>46075676
That can work. Powerful war chiefs of a wolf clan can be purely bestial, while the warriors/pups are more human save for some aggressive personalities.
>>46075366
I don't. Vampires, as they are portrayed, are the apex of night creatures, endangered by Werewolves only in direct conflict. I feel as though there's no real need to change this.
It's just like Liches being more dangerous than Vampires on the undead scale.
>>46075657
Nigguh, "balanced" doesn't mean "easy enough to kill if you don't suck". It's almost as if you're under the impression balancing only happens to current player levels and not to respective CRs. Totally fine to 'accidentally' introduce a monster a few CRs up (dragon encounter is popular around here), only to have it more or less flex muscles, scoff at the puny humanoids, then bugger off because they aren't worth his time, etc.
Now, here's the other side of the coin for your argument. What happens when you end up really fucking buff and powerful after a long and successful campaign, and THEN bump into a werewolf? A mother fucking decked out and high leveled party versus a werewolf. You either accept that they are going to flay that dog alive or admit you fucked up on the concept of balance and on-the-stop mess with the stats so the party still insta-dies because you have no concept of scale.
Goooooooooo fuck yourself.
>>46075366
I think WoD does a good job.
Werewolves are like the Hulk to Vampire's Captain America. That is to say, not only do they win 1v1 but could win 1v10 quite easily as well.
>>46075366
Well World of Darkness is pretty much the definitive vampires and werewolves setting, and while they're not intended to be balanced against each other it does a pretty good job of giving them distinct strength and weaknesses. The major edge that werewolves get is that they can regenerate any wound and get some nice stat boosts from their alternate forms without having to pay anything, while every time a vampire uses their superhuman powers they dip into their blood reserves and eventually have to go eat someone. Of course the werewolf never gets access to the powerful stealth and mind control abilities that most vampires can get, though they both have a healthy selection of esoteric magic shit to pursue.
>>46076984
Well what the fuck does "balance" mean when you're comparing D&D monsters to each other directly? Why does a werewolf need to be as powerful as a vampire when they can just fill different niches in a campaign?
>>46075366
Who said Vampires have those powers? Original Mythology Vampires could be stabbed to death with knives.
>>46075366
First off, if you're not looking to make a vampire vs werewolf kind of campaign, don't bother with balance. They are different beings with different power levels. The classic werewolf is supposed to turn once a month and wreck moderate shit, while the vampire is supposed to live in his castle and wreck shit silently in the shadows. Anything beyond that is setting-dependant.
Now, if you actually want to do a Vampire vs Werewolf kind of game, there are some ways to balance that. Vampires are usually depicted as the apex of night creatures, always powerful and with many skills. But you can say those are strong vampires, they exist but only get so strong after centuries of magic study, power hunts and sacrifices in general. A normal vampire can have some lesser powers and a potential to unlock new abilities as he ages and learns, possibly speeding the process by feeding on strong creatures and warriors. At the baseline, a vampire is only a charismatic guy with above-human stats all around.
Werewolves, however, is when things get interesting. You can choose the iteration that better fits the setting: the once-a-month turn is good for low to no magic worlds, while the berserkish "turn when life is endangered, learns to control it with time" is great for a mid-level power scale. You also have the "turn at will" kind, which while cool is basically a shapeshifter if you ask me, but grants any player the flexibility to work around most problems. You can also grant two forms to a werewolf that learns to control its feral form: a werewolf form and a full animal form, just like the werecreatures in D&D. You won't be able to balance a thousand year old vampire with a werewolf unless you give high-level werewolves "pack control" like an alpha male in nature AND some strong magic resistance.
It all comes down to what iteration of each you're comparing. Most works do the "mid-level vampire vs turn-at-will werewolf" with some minor twist, but it's your choice.
>>46077180
Balance? To take it literally? Meaning both 'win' and 'lose' are equally possible and it can quite easily go either way, that is to say, not stacked in either direction.
As for comparing them directly, balancing to CR gives you a baseline to work with. Why does a werewolf need to be as powerful as a vampire? I didn't say they did. I don't pay enough attention to anybody else to remember if they did either.
All this is solved by independence, you know. Want to fill a niche? Fill a niche. Want a nice campaign with two opposing but mostly balanced sides of dogs and bats? Write it up. Want either side to be outrageously overpowered compared to the other? Write that up, too. Want to depict one side as inherently evil and the other as struggling with a curse to remain good, strong, and lively? You guessed it. Write it the fuck up if you like.
The why only ever applies to the person doing the writing when it comes to narrative. If you volunteer to give away your ability to write narrative and only ever follow what other people write, stop fucking complaining, because your why goes nowhere.
>>46078386
>Why does a werewolf need to be as powerful as a vampire?
If you're going to have faction vs faction then they need to be on equal footing.
>>46078493
Faction vs Faction, rather than one vs one, is a key thing.
Vampires are paranoid, reclusive, power-grabbing leeches. They are greed and want.
Werewolves are power and pack madness and insane crowds turning on people.
If every vampire in the setting got together, they'd conquer it.
But no vampire is going to work with other vampires unless they're enthralled - and the weak thralls/spawn are not a threat, they're mooks.
The big, powerful vampires - the Count Draculas - they're not going to relinquish a single iota of power or control. They will take what they can, they will war with each other by proxy, and they will have plots that span centuries.
Vampires and Werewolves in a typical fantasy setting should not come to blows.
>>46078549
>But no vampire is going to work with other vampires unless they're enthralled - and the weak thralls/spawn are not a threat, they're mooks.
Why? You need a reason why vampires are diametrically opposed to each other for an actual reason not "vampires all somehow have the same personality traits that means they refuse to work together for a common goal"
>The big, powerful vampires - the Count Draculas - they're not going to relinquish a single iota of power or control
No reason for them not to even if it means a thin veneer of camaraderie to solidify vamp control over a larger region than any single vampire could alone then after the territory is nice and big then start playing vampire political games.
>>46078493
Again, depends on what the writer wants. If that's you and you say they need to be equals, I'm down for that. But don't assume that there isn't a narrative or aren't combat encounters that work fantastically with unequal factions.
Next anon brings up an important distinction,
>>46078549
>Faction vs Faction, rather than one vs one, is a key thing
Do you balance the faction against each other? (if so, how the fuck do you manage that?). Or, do you balance a single vampire against a single werewolf? Each statblock can be horribly uneven and you can spin off the 'faction tactics' to even those odds. Perhaps vampires routinely despise each other because of their terrible personalities and never group up, but the wolves have this weird pack mentality thing going on and they have each others' backs, or maybe it's the other way around and werewolves are truly feral and they don't help each other at all, but vampires are intelligent enough to group up against common enemies (dogs).
See? All comes down to how you want the narrative to play out. I'd play either of those settings and still be satisfied with how the events unfold.
Last note:
>should not
The wording is terribly important and too many people on /tg/ have become extremely lax and resort to simply stating how things are, or should, or need to be rather than remembering they are just one opinion among the mix. Tell me to fuck off and do your own thing if you like, too.
I tend to do it where Werewolves are effectively DnD warriors, buff, simple, and have two states: murder-machines and defeated. While Vampires are more bloodmage/dnd sorceror/whatever where their max power level is much higher, but to use it consumes a limited resource, which is also used to stay ambulatory. If a vampire has to keep fighting for too long they quickly run out of blood and become useless/dead, while a werewolf can potentially last longer.
I suggest different werewolf and vampire factions with different powers. Each vampire faction should have the basic vampire strengths plus something extra. Ditto the werewolf factions.
The something extra can be as simple as making one of the traits stronger--for example, All werewolves have regeneration, but only one clan gets the combat regeneration that allows them to just ignore most threats. All werewolves have damage reduction to anything but silver, but only one clan is completely immune to everything except silver--but silver is deadly poisonous to it, while most werewolves treat silver wounds like a normal human treats normal wounds. All vampires can transform into beasts, but only one clan can transform into a greater, dire animal that can command actual animals of that type.
Different factions of vampire and werewolf should be at varying odds with each other for different reasons. Some should be bitter enemies, others could be trusted allies.
So now you have vampires vs. werewolves vs. vampires and werewolves vs vampires and those other vampires vs. werewolves vs. themselves.
Any settings out there that are predominately Vampire and Werewolf that aren't WoD?
>>46082762
>Any settings that are WoD that isn't WoD?
>>46075366
Balance? Are you designing a wargame?
RPGs do not require balanced power, only balanced fun.
>>46075366
>How do you balance Werewolves and Vampires?
I don't, vampires rule the night and all it's creatures.
