Hi guys, a player in my group is starting a new character. He chose another Clawdite, this time from the "No Disintegrations" book as opposed to the species menagerie. His point of view is that since Clawdites shun society, including their own and most others generally distrust them, according to the book, they should have a higher willpower than presence. After reading the Clawdite section and the sections concerning willpower and presence I'm kind of inclined to agree with him.

My questions are:

1) Is this written correctly or is there an upcoming errata that fix it if it's wrong?

2) Am I missing something? Does it sound right to anyone else?

The unofficial Species menagerie, is well... Unofficial. So no it's not errata, but yes no disintegrations is now the official stats for clawdites.

With regards to the Unofficial Species Menagerie, not the very first word is "unofficial," in that any species write-up that Cyril or I did is ultimately a placeholder until such time as FFG prints an official version.

As for the fluff text vs. the stats, the writers are generally of the opinion that stats trumps fluff text. So even if the fluff text suggests one thing, what really matters is the stat block. I don't have my copy of ND handy, but guessing that Clawdites are listed with 2's in both Willpower and Presence. It's possible that in the early development the writer chose to give Clawdites a 3 in Willpower and a 1 in Presence, with those numbers being changed during playtesting.

ND stats them with Willpower 1, Presence 2. My guess is they felt this would better balance the changeling special ability.

A species that shapeshifts will naturally be doing a lot of acting and improv to pretend to be the people they are changing into, that's presence.

Bumping willpower up to 3 is only 50 out of the 95 starting XP which still allows an upgrade to any attribute after that, so I don't really see there being that much of a problem

I'm not familiar with the write up in the book, but based on your description of shunning society and being distrusted I have to wonder what about that translates to high willpower?

3 hours ago, RedEyeManiac said:

A species that shapeshifts will naturally be doing a lot of acting and improv to pretend to be the people they are changing into, that's presence.

Personally I think that sort of thing would fall more under the realm of Deception (maybe a bit of Skulduggery), and thus Cunning.

Well either way, its a Cunning of 3 and a presence of 2 so you're sorted

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I'm not familiar with the write up in the book, but based on your description of shunning society and being distrusted I have to wonder what about that translates to high willpower?

That part has nothing to do with willpower, it is the reason that makes me wonder why the presence is higher (than willpower) though.

If I give in and let him swap willpower and presence skills do you think it will cause an OP or unbalanced situation? If so how?

No its really hard to really g o OP in this system. Presence is actually considered a dump stat by many.

As far as ive seen the only OP stuff you can do is crazy weapon mod or crafting stuff or like crazy amounts of XP

The Shapeshifting ability takes strain to activate. I imagine your player wants the higher Willpower to increase his threshold. If it was me, I wouldn't let him do it.

5 hours ago, Oden Gebhac said:

The Shapeshifting ability takes strain to activate. I imagine your player wants the higher Willpower to increase his threshold. If it was me, I wouldn't let him do it.

Solid point! Thanks Oden That's the kind of thing I was looking for. For some reason that little nugget eluded me.

And thanks for everyone who posted. It's great to have a such a helpful resource for a fairly new GM.

Whatever is in the official stats soups be what he can go with. If that means allowing him to rebuild, I'd have no problem with it. However if it's the opposite and he w wants to go with the unofficial species menagerie stats that would be at your discretion.