There's an unwritten quirk with the creeds. Each creed is an expression of a primary virtue (which is clearly articulated by the rules), mixed with a secondary virtue. The easiest ones to spot are the secondary Zeal creeds. Avengers, Martyrs, and Waywards all get an additional point of Conviction, and that tracks with them being the most "zealous" representatives of their virtue. Vision and Mercy are a little harder to spot as secondaries. Defenders share a lot with the Mercy creeds, and while it's a little insulting, it's not completely inaccurate to describe the Hermits as trying to shirk away from the horror that Visionaries see. IIRC, Redeemers put a higher priority on understanding monsters, as do the Judges, leading to equating them as having a secondary virtue of Vision. As I said, it was never something explicitly stated in the rules, but the Creeds do follow a pattern of (Primary Virtue/Secondary Virtue), with the Hermits being the only one that don't easily fit into that structure (which is somewhat fitting when you think about it.)
A Hunter life is to die, but in their death they will inspire others to face the monsters of the World of Darkness, and even in death they will be remembered by those they inspire.
Or not. Only select few get out from Monster's grip over Hystory's and Society's controls. A Hunter life is to die. And whether that struggle and death had any meaning remains to be seen.
Just fix the rolls every so often for the players, you can call it “An Act of God/The Messengers. Works with the lore and allows your players to survive otherwise deadly situations
Great video Lazar. Fun little fact about creeds. There are Extremist Paths. It's in the book Fall from Grace. They come in Divine, Corrupted, and Independent. Also, there is info that World of Darkness was originally tied in to Exalted. That info leads to the Imbued being lesser Solar Exalted. There is trivia that the World of Darkness Lucifer was tied to the Unconquered Sun. That is wild. By the way Lazar, do you intend on covering the Renegade and Heretics of Wraith? There are a lot to cover in old world of darkness alone. New World of Darkness provides a lot more.
I'd love some more content on the more niche monsters which are not in vampire or werewolf. It'd be nice to explore more of the world of darkness and what the hunter's face.
Huge fan of your work, especially on hunters and humans of WoD I have a question: will you work with Hunter: The Vigil lore in the future? Thanks in advance for your good work
I always found the idea of Hunters having an innate power kind of weird. Like, the point is to be someone fighting against the supernaturals. So the idea of them also being a supernatural feels hypocritical. I get that that may be the point, but I think I would’ve preferred that any magic used by Hunters essentially be Numina used by normal people. Hunter, imo, should be about normal people trying to fight against the creatures that go bump in the night, despite said creatures having built the world itself to make that goal as hard as possible. Essentially a group of people(or even just one person) using any skills they had before learning of supernaturals to try to fight back, and in the end mostly being incapable of doing so. Essentially a group reenactment of Death Wish.
I would have to agree with you. Even if their powers are not something they are born with, but rather something they are given without even their consent, it still changes them in such a way that it kinda soils the whole "Normal humans vs the monsters" feel the game tried to capitalize on
@@tomtom7955 Hunter: The Parenting It’s an animated show on RU-vid done by Alfabusa, sort of a parody of Hunter the Reckoning but it still tells a really good story I’d highly recommend it
Hunter the Parenting seems to be completely unrelated to HtR (btw aside from the fact that none of these characters seem to have manifested any edges, they all have likely had exposure to the supernatural prior to the year 1999, disqualifying them from the imbuing)
That series got me finally interested in World of Darkness. I have heard about vamire masquerade, but didnt look that much into the lore. Now I am hooked and consuming as much lore as possible.
@@lazarofstygia2241 The fans are debating that currently. Some are arguing that Big E is a redeemer based on how he deals with The Great and Mighty Kevin
I played this game long before Supernatural and then watched the entire show and not once did I try to relate hunters in that to WoD. Same with any monsters to any WoD equivalent. Just didn't feel the same.
@@joshshin6819 because it isn't the same lol, he's just drawing correlation if because they both have some of the same elements, supernatural is it's own thing tho
I really like this video since I've always found HTR lore to be a bit confusing. But I've always found it weird that WW had to invent a new type of supernatural instead of just expanding on the rules for playing baseline human hunters, like giving us more Numina powers or maybe anti-supernaural weapons. It's not that the Imbued aren't cool, they definitely can be, but I guess I just prefer the idea of a mortal hunter wielding the holy powers of True Faith or fighting vampires with an enchanted whip and sheer grit, rather than the off-brand divine powers of the Imbued.
The original books kind of talk around the reason why the hunters exist. Mostly it's in a lot of stray teasers. There's a hunter (I forget who, Maybe Ticket312) that was digging into archeology finding Hunter signs from millennia prior in the middle east. What they were hinting is Exalted. When you read between the lines, the Imbued were supposed to be understood to be a modern reemergence of Exalts. When you really start digging into Exalted lore the whole thing clicks together pretty smoothly. History is circular, the past is the future, ect. First Edition Exalted was pretty explicit about this, and tried to neatly graft a flavor of Exalt to each of the major game lines from World of Darkness. So, what you get is that the Imbued are supposed to be the first hints of what would become Solar Exalts. There's not a lot that you can directly point to that proves this point (though one of the splat books does go directly from talking about these bronze age tablets with hunter marks on it, and places the image for that directly opposite an ad for the (then) upcoming Exalted.) Except, after Exalted released, a lot of the foreshadowing was completely dropped. The remaining Hunter books completely ignored the mystery of what the Hunters were, or where they came from, and just went back to chewing on creating more updates for the world moving forward. It's not clear how much of that was simply a function of time (Exalted dropped pretty close to the end of the World of Darkness), and all of the Apocalypse books basically ignore the Imbued entirely. (They get a Chapter in Time of Judgement, and a nod in the Demon chapter of the same book, but that's it. Then they're gone.) I think they eventually showed up in V:TES, and got their own card set there. They did get a series of twin stick shooters on the PS2 (and maybe the original XBox), but after Exalted released, basically any forward movement on, "what's the real history of the Imbued," was shuffled over there. By Second Edition, Exalted had also abandoned this, and the idea that the Age of Sorrows and World of Darkness were different eras in the same world were basically forgotten. As for the Imbued themselves, there were a couple details about them in the rules that were really easy to miss. For one thing, Cleave and Impact did NOT deal aggravated damage. Hunters had a parallel concept, called "unsoakable damage," but it literally could not be soaked at all. (Normally, if you're wearing armor, Agg can be soaked using your armor's dice pool, you just can't add anything to it.) There's also situations where Awakened Mages and the Brujah can soak Aggravated damage, which do not work against a Hunter using Cleave. Additionally, their Unsoakable damage cannot be healed through supernatural means. This usually true of aggravated damage, but again the rule is distinct. Additionally, and even wilder than that, Imbued cannot receive aggravated damage. They simply don't acknowledge the concept. Stuff like a Werewolf or Vampire's claws, will deal hideous amounts of lethal damage to them, but a Redeemer (or anyone with the two dot Redeemer Edge) can heal that off as if it was non-supernatural in nature. Also, this is supported in the Splatbook fluff. There's a story of a Redeemer supernaturally healing off injuries from combat with a vampire. There's also a case (in Time of Judgement) where an Imbued (somehow) used Impact on a handgun, and shot Lucifer, with the fallen angel unable to regenerate the wound at all. (Normally you can't use Impact with a firearm.) I'm sure there's more that I haven't picked up on. Even some of their basic powers, like a Hunter being able to flick on Second Sight to instantly purge any mental control over them (including instantly breaking blood bonds or outright ignoring Delirium) is pretty wild when you think about it. As is their ability to become completely undetectable when Second Sight is off. As in, a Vampire with Auspex cannot pick out an Imbued unless they have Second Sight running, which gets really crazy when you realize they have Edges running and still be undetectable. The short version is, Hunters were deliberately designed to break a lot of rules for how the World of Darkness worked. They're not just, "humans with some extra superpowers," they're one of the only times where White Wolf really went out there, picked through pop culture, and created something new.
@@StarkeRealm I heard about how Hunter was implied to be connected to Exalted. I always found thought that was a really cool idea, but I've always felt like the Imbued felt a bit out of place and underdeveloped IMO, which is made worse by all of the WoD games having a their own semi-separate histories and cosmologies that all conflict, which annoys me to no end and makes HtR feel, like I said, sorts out of place since they're being slotted into a world with lore that conflicts with itself between games and meant to interact with all of them (or at least werewolf, vampire, and wraith). But I get what you mean about the Imbued being more than superpowered human, and you're right about them being unique and interesting, I just feel like they (and WoD overall) would fit better if the games conflicted less and encouraged crossovers more between them, instead of vampire only dealing with vampire things, and werewolves only dealing with werewolf things, y'know? Where are the Wyrm-worshipping changelings, or Imbued fighting against Pentex, wouldn't that be awesome to see? I'd pay to read a splat about an Imbued fighting a Wyrm-corrupted technocrat allied with a Black Social Dancer!
@@ThewarriorDraganta I feel like nWoD was made with the idea of cross-play from the beginning, and while I honestly really like parts of nWoD, I wish we'd get essentially "WoD 3.0" where it's a cleaned up, freshened up version of the oWoD lore, adapted to fit the current era technologically, and with cross-play designed from the beginning. Never gonna happen with the current IP owners, though. :/
Have you ever played Bloodborne? Was thinking of a good campaign that gels with World of Darkness / Hunter the Reckoning lore and the storyline from Bloodborne. The latter starts off in Victorian tropes full of werewolves and beasts and slowly changes into eldritch horrors. Especially the subplot in Bloodborne where Hunters were exposed to bloodborne pathogens, which wasn't even the start of it when you consider the unending collective nightmare of its denizens and the madness brought upon by eldritch insight. Indeed, a constant theme of the game was that the player often fought with monsters that were formerly Hunters, as they succumbed to the environs of Yharnum and to a vague curse that placated them since their discovery of an alien being that washed ashore in a fishing village. I was sort of imagining a game system that follows that balancing act for Hunters in Hunter the Reckoning, but I can't quite make it out yet. Any recommendations?
@@imonke5303 There were three Hunter: The Reckoning video games back in the mid-2000s. These were basically twin stick shooters, and you should be able to dig up reviews for them on RU-vid.
Since Vampire The Mascarade is cursed when it comes to video games I think Hunter the Revkoning might be a more interesting video game adaptation of the World of Darkness.
Oh wow, so big D in hunter: the parenting is an imbued hunter/judge . Maybe he's imbued with all of them at once? That explains why he is the way he is lmao
I don’t know if it’s relevant buuuut in a book called “The Master of Mankind,” a certain Big D Emperor did, indeed, do battle with an all powerful entity he called “The First Murderer.” So in at least one reality, big D has fought with Caine himself. Didn’t kill him, but did slow him down quite a lot.
While Bruva Al hasn't confirmed nor denied it, Big D isn't imbued. He has had exposure to the supernatural prior to the year 1999, which automatically disqualifies him from the imbuing
@@__-vu3bv he also talks about events like witch burnings like he was there. And he’s a grandfather who looks like he’s in his late 20s-early 30s at most. He also has children, real living human children, biological as far as we can tell, who have children of their own. So he can’t be a mummy or something like that. He’s not undead but he’s also clearly no mere mortal. Something is going on with him.
It really depends on the tribe and creed. Generally, though, it's probably a case of "stay out of each others way" - until a Werewolf starts to kill a few too many people and draws attention to themselves.
So, thoughts: >Waywards are 'defective squad leaders' of the Hunters. >Always active second sight, wholeheartedly dedicated to the war (it isn't a 'hunt'). >They're not savage berserkers- they are tactical planners, methodical and patient even >They're tend to have one mental issue related to violence, but they're capable of functioning White Wolf Also says they somehow always just kill a whole bunch of people and will use their allies as meat shields... ...this makes no sense. >It's a war, and in a war you don't *waste* lives- especially one where you're outnumbered and outmatched. Now, your allies' lives might be *spent* but you're not going to allow that unless it's very much worth the payoff and there's no other options. >Anyone who knows anything about a war will let you know- it's very hard, if not impossible to accomplish the mission if you've been killing the local population in your recklessness. Every one of those locals is a potential asset for you, in some way. If nothing else, you don't want to draw attention and get yourself arrested or scare away your enemy. But hey, it's White Wolf. Best enjoyed if about thirty percent of everything they make is disregarded.
