And now, with all the mechanical bullshit out of the way, I can finally bring you the full, mechanical demonstration of why Changing Breeds is broken dreck.
I'll get this out of the way first: yes, this demonstration will be using the most obviously overpowered breed in the system. However, that is the point. Munchkin asshats will be munchkin asshats, and when your response to colossal power imbalances is
, I'm not inclined to show you much mercy.But now, it's time for the main event.
In the red corner: a human with five dots in every single skill and attribute, making him the pinnacle of human perfection at anything he could ever try to do. He will not be using Fighting Styles, as adding even more complexity to this would be a major hassle and hard to make digestible. Suffice to say, this man is the strongest, smartest, most charismatic man possible when it comes to raw statistics.
An artist's half-assed depiction of The Man Your Man Could Kill Like.
This is a man who, when pitted up against a zero EXP werewolf, not only stands his ground instead of instantly losing his mind and fleeing, but actually kills the thing. This one man can go toe-to-toe with (what's supposed to be) one of the scarier things in the World of Darkness and get himself a sweet new head for his trophy wall. He doesn't use guns either, because they are for sissies and he wants to give his prey a sporting chance. He uses a giant fucking battleaxe.
Mechanically, he uses a colossal by human standards, still frightening by supernatural standards 16 dice to attack with his battle axe (Strength 5 + Weaponry 5 (Battleaxe) + 5 damage weapon). Combined with the axe's 9-again ability, this means that he rolls an average of about six or seven successes per attack against a helpless opponent. This is enough to instantly knock an average person unconscious and make them start bleeding out.
Surely, if he can kill a werewolf at character creation when it's in Warform, no zero EXP character (barring Mages being Batman) could possibly give him any trouble, right?
In the blue corner: a zero EXP Mhole-Rho.
The Mhole-Rho breed starts out with Extra Limb (Trunk), 4L tusks, and an animal form three times the size of a human being. Also, they get Natural Armor, a Favor, as an Aspect, meaning it's purchasable during creation with the seven free Aspect dots. Boom, six dots sunk in means a permanent -4 to all melee attacks against him, and -3 to gun attacks, as well as downgrading the attack to bashing damage. This means that shooting this guy with a gun, regardless of whether it's a pistol or an anti-tank rifle, is strictly worse than stabbing him with a knife when you have the same dice pool. Yes, this means charging the giant elephant with a battle axe is going to work better than shooting it with a fucking anti-materiel rifle. Changing Breeds!
Oh, but we're not done yet. You see, not only is the Mhole-Rho Warform a ridiculous improvement compared to the Werewolf Warform, it's squat diddley compared to its animal form. Elephant form gives +5 to Strength and Stamina, only lowers Manipulation - a social stat that focuses on making people do what you want - by one, boosts Size from 5 to 15, increases its Speed by 6, and adds a bonus die to perception because why the fuck not. The size boost combined with the stamina boost means that you get twenty more health levels compared to your normal human form. For reference, the average human has seven health levels, and The Ubermensch in the red corner has ten. Mr. Elephant here, without skewing his stats at creation to game the system, can have 29 health levels. This means you need to either rack up 87 bashing damage (and remember, guns do bashing to him!), 58 lethal damage, or 29 aggravated damage to kill him. In a system where getting more than five successes in combat is a sign that you just wiped the floor with somebody for the round, this is essentially impossible.
With the last Aspect dot left over, we get a Aspect that boosts Strength and Size by one more each because fuck you.
Now, for the fight itself. All damage will be done as averages, and I won't be showing all my work for the sake of removing clutter.
To be generous, we give Big McLargeHuge the initiative. The elephant's armor means his normally earth-quaking attack is now downgraded to merely bone-rattling, and he deals three lethal.
The elephant gets its turn, and immediately heals one lethal damage due to its regeneration. It, by virtue of having absurd strength and giant tusks, has a base attack pool of 13 dice before any skill is factored in. We'll give it Brawl 2 to make it bog average, and a nice round 15 dice. Big McLargeHuge's perfect reflexes give him a Defense of 5, meaning that the elephant is attacking him with the same dice pool of 10, resulting in three lethal damage. However, the health level discrepancy makes his attack much more punishing in comparison.
Oh yeah, and due to the fact that he has a trunk, he attacks twice every round. Granted, this attack does not gain the bonus from the tusks, but that still means he just clobbered Big McLargeHuge upside the head for two bashing damage.
By repeating this round once more, Big McLargeHuge is incapacitated, having only dealt 12% of the damage necessary to even knock his opponent out. You can translate this to him being able to take on five or six McLargeHuges at once and still coming out on top.
With Changing Breeds, you can easily make a character who, at creation, can effortlessly swat the absolute best humanity has to offer. Meanwhile, Vampires can be roasted by an average man with a spraycan and a lighter, Werewolves can be fucked up by an average man with a silver slug shotgun, Mages and Sin-Eaters don't count because they fucking cheat, Prometheans are too worried about the entire town coming after them with torches and pitchforks, and Changelings are busy making sure the True Fae don't realize they're around.
This book can eat all the dicks. All of them.
Next time: I actually go into depth about the breeds instead of picking one and rambling about it.
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