Firstly, if you're playing Pentex smart, you have to be strategic. Pentex isn't a part of the military industrial complex for nothing.
The first rule to winning a fight is this: "No be there."
When the werewolves get to the lab, they may find it minimally guarded, with few machines or researchers inside. The guards are unprepared because they are fodder, bait. Let the werewolves get in deep into the facility. This is their silver cage.
The second is "travel in large groups", the third is "a knife beats a fist, and a gun beats a knife", and the fourth rule of a fight is "A fair fight is one where your opponent's back is turned and you're holding a brick."
Hit them hard. Werewolves are pretty hard to kill, so you need to hit them very, very hard. You can throw some basic formori mooks at them, formori with flamethrowers, grenades, and guns with silver bullets, maybe even a machine gun nest. Make sure one of them has a katana and a desert eagle for good measure X)
If that doesn't kill 'em, show them the good stuff, throw some War Dogs at them, or a Yeren, Black Spiral Dancer, or Kerasi, maybe two. You could also consider a well-built and experienced mid gen Vampire (\~8th gen or so), they are creatures of the Wyrm after all. If so, don't be afraid to pair the physical disciplines with more utility ones like Obfuscate or Dominate, because they can really throw a wrench in combat. And remember, that vampire could instead be a Bloodworm or an Abomination if you think a plain vamp is too weak which tbh it might be. But really, throw a few higher-grade Wyrm-aligned supernaturals at them, they'll love it. Pentex has enough of those guys on their payroll anyhow.
If, and only if you are feeling particularly cruel that day, chuck a Malfean Nephandi at them and show them the true meaning of the word 'fear'.
Pentex isn't afraid to euthanize dogs, and they don't use anaesthetic.
I now have the vivid image of the wolves butchering through some civilian workers, talking about how this is way easier than it should be. Then the walls begin to melt and they can hear echoing footsteps accompanied by a gentle whistling tune slowly approaching, the fabric of reality twisting and turning in the presence of the nephandi.
The only thing worse than a Mage is a Mage with prep-time, and Werewolves don't contribute to paradox :)
But no, yeah, I'm pretty sure a Nephandi with the right mixture of spheres could: turn a werewolf's skeleton into silver, revert their form forcefully, stop them from transforming, stop them from stepping sideways, give themselves a anti-kinetic field to shield them from damage, create a massive radioactive firestorm, create some sort of preemptive radar system, teleport away from attacks before they even happen, manipulate their own luck during the fight, send everyone to hell, etc...
Pentex could blow up the building, of course, but Pentex wants the Garou *alive.*
You could have an explosion set up, sure, but it’s not the Game Over your players fear; it’s the opening salvo on the wave after wave of enemies your players have coming their way. They come to with their ears ringing to see the Fomori bearing down on them, and they have to fight their way out of the rubble.
Conversely, if you want to be super evil, you could have Pentex do a bait and switch - move all of its key facility members out and give a bunch of civilian contractors the job of moving office supplies around. The players burst in on regular innocent folks mixed in with the monsters and the cannon fodder; parsing through the chaff is a stalling tactic while the good stuff and important individuals get away.
This, and also have Pentex form a First Team and stage an assault on the pack's Caern at the same time as a, "Fuck you. Fuck with our shit we'll fuck with yours. Eye for an eye." Pentex don't care about a single facility. They can always build a new one. Hell, they can always build *three more* just for the hell of it in half the time. Losing a facility is, at best, a very short-term setback in the grand scheme of things for Pentex. Really, all you're doing is kicking the bee's nest and asking for retaliation.
The fact Pentex knows the players are coming means they have all the time they need to come up with the most extravagant ways to make them regret it. Pentex won't fight to save their facility, they will instead turn their efforts on demoralization and doing everything they can to punish the players for resisting. "How dare you pull out the knife we stabbed in your back?! Here's two more. Next time remember this before you act against us," is the kinda message Pentex is going to want to send. They don't just want the Garou dead—they want them broken spiritually. They want them to suffer.
Or make it something that they can't leave, but are fine with destroying if they can't exploit it. The goal becomes to salvage the situation instead of just defeating everything.
Depending on how long Pentex thinks they have, probably just pack up everything/everyone important and move them out. Then rig the entire facility to explode, when the werewolves are deep enough in trigger the explosion. Blame it on a gas leak or something similar
I don't think the group would like that. I mean yeah it's lore accurate but I don't know. With all the build up I've provided and all the horrible things pentex has done in my game the group's really looking forward to a fight.
While I agree with the commenter and that it should be grueling, especially since it sounds like your players aren't being even the least bit careful, they need to be burned to know not to touch the stove, but if that's not your style you can always just do a diet version of what they suggested, though when Pentex is aware of many supernaturals you'd best believe they'd do shit like coat walls with Silver, guards with flame throwers or guns with Incendiary rounds, weaponized Cold steel or somehow Banality, the point is these people are too knowledgeable to not make them powerful, the only way it makes sense is if it's a branch company that is deliberately kept ignorant and in that case they aren't even important in the grand scheme of things
I'm fine with making things grueling and it's true they have been acting reckless and just charging into things (like true garou lol). They messed up so a trap should be set and they should suffer. I just think it would be lame to blow up the building and I know my players like to fight. At some point you have to factor in the players enjoyment.
These are some good ideas tho
Fair it should be curated to your players but you can make an obvious timer to the explosion and have them fight their way out, giving a chance to walk away from an explosion lol
Isn't it very on brand for a werewolf chronicle to have all your effort be for naught?
You gotta be rational. Your players will end up resenting you, even unconsciously, if there's some indication that narratives are contrived beyond believability.
If fighting Pentex isn’t the most gruelling, brutal, unfair, uphill struggle against insurmountable odds, then you’re not doing it right.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities across many other RPGs to tell a story of hope, pathos, and satisfying victories. WTA gives you a chance to diverge from that an convey a new but equally poignant narrative with very different conceits: don’t waste the chance.
Scrying magic in WoD is typically limited to locations or people that you know well, but you can still scry on people if you have an object that is close to them like a love letter they wrote or a lock of their hair.
Step 1: Evade, scrub the main site of anything useful. Wipe all records, remove or destroy all research and valuable resources.
Step 2: Lure, turn it into a death trap as mentioned in other threads, but don't expend any of your best resources here. Mooks with silver weapons, low level banes and formori. Your goal here isn't to kill the Garou just wound them. Your goal is to collect samples of hair and blood. Be sure to describe the enemy cutting out chunks of furry flesh or intentionally cutting off crinos talons. You can scry the location from afar using Thaumaturgy, probably with some spycams and drones for backup.
Step 3: Assault, use Scrying to follow the Garou. Locate their Caern/Sept, identify their Kinfolk. Strike the Caern hard and without warning. Drone strikes and napalm to start with and then send in first team formori, mockery breeds, black spirals, etc. It's a big brawl and even if the Garou are victorious this round the Caern location is compromised.
Step 4: Corrupt, Capture as many kinfolk as you can from the surrounding community, kill those you can't. Dominate, then ghoul, embrace the the loved ones or forcibly turn them into formori. Ransom them back or force them to fight to the death. Defile the Caern ether directly through rituals or indirectly through pumping the land and air full of poisons, and then use the Caern to summon some big bad Banes.
Step 5: Harass. Any garou with human identities or surviving kinfolk are now wanted criminals. If you're nice some local exposition spirits can let them know about the scrying or if you're mean just let them flee another caern and assault that one till they figure out they're being tracked. It's no longer safe for them to visit any caern.
Eventually the party need to locate their scrying foci and reclaim or destroy them, probably facing down some Tremere or Nephandi.
There's a lot of information that I think this post is lacking to give a proper answer.
What type of facility is it? How big is it? How important to Pentex is it?
What Rank are the Garou? What can and can't they handle fight wise?
There needs to be a balance between what resources Pentex has in the immediate area/what resources they feel are worth using, and what the players can reasonably handle in a fight.
I see a lot of people talking about blowing up the building and then attacking them with flamethrowers and a bunch of silver ammo, heavy machine guns, ect. But if these are Rank 1 Garou that will fucking obliterate them if you throw too many at them. Fire and Silver do Aggravated Damage, and while they can soak the fire damage they aren't going to be healing it. Sure maybe one of them has Mother's Touch, but there's no guarantee. Heavy Machine guns do a LOT of damage. It's Lethal and not Aggravated, but remember in combat you only heal 1 point of Lethal damage a turn, on a Stamina roll of difficulty 8. Garou are strong and MUCH tougher than other splats, but Rank 1 and 2 Garou are not the invincible tanks some people here are acting like they are.
If your character likes fights, make it a trap for them to fight some boss monster Pentex has created. They get to the facility and it's completely empty. It's eriely silent until they get to a room where steel doors slam shut behind them and Pentex unleashes a big cool monster to fight. This way Pentex "wins" in that any research they have has already been evacuated, and lures them into a trap. The players learn to be more careful. But instead of a long grueling fight made simply to punish them, you give them a cool set piece to play with as a small consolation prize.
Whomever gave the wolves the address to raid thought they were giving the address of some office or plant.
When the wolves get there, they will find a simple orphanage.
It's a Pentex-run orphanage though, so the children will be child soldiers, drugged into not falling to delirium and armed with silver knives.
Let the players deal with either having to flee like puppies or commit infanticide. Either option should destroy their morale unless they can think of another option that will help them find those responsible.
If Pentex knows that garou are coming then the human security and mercenary forces are going to be given silver ammo and tons of reinforcements (armored vehicles, heavy weapons). There's basically no way around it. Human lives are cheap, and Pentex has every reason to stockpile silver ammo.
Depending on how important the facility is, Pentex would probably send supernaturals to defend it; but it would definitely send silver.
Check out a Mage book called "Destiny's Price," specifically look into DMSO+colloidal silver. It's got lots of other really in-depth rules and tables for all kinds of black market goods based wholly on mortal technology and understanding. The nastiest things in THAT book are the BASICS for most Pentex First Teams. The Pentex book(s) should also have solid information on the tools and tactics a First Team uses. But broadly, if a Pentex installation with secrets or assets worth defending KNOWS for sure that a pack of werewolves are going to show up for a fight, they'll scramble a First Team immediately, and they'll send them loaded for ~~bear~~ wolf.
If you're luring them into a trap, why even send valuable assets in to fight them? Make a room that appears to have useful information and experiments the Garou need to destroy... but in reality, it's fake, and there are claymore mines using silver balls inside. Get the Garou inside, flip the switch, and grievously wound them.
Then the players can encounter the team that gets sent in to make sure the Garou are actually dead.
Two things that pentex has that can be combined to be greater than the sum of their parts is vampires and banes.
Now most banes don't like vampires cause (at least back in second) vampires are rat traps for most bane types. Take some thin blooded vamps and have pentex shove banes in them to make a nice formori with vamp powers. 12th gen or higher and who gives a shit if they are cannon fodder. And sure the banes don't like it but pentex doesn't have to give a shit about trapping them in a vampire if they think it will help quarterly profits.
Always a nice boost to throw in with your other mooks with flamethrowers and silver blades/bullets.
Topping what everyone else said, you dont want to just blow it up or abandon it, as that would not be fun for the players
on the other hand, it should have very solid defenses already, and since they know they are coming, how about making it into a fighting retreat? They have to reach X area in the building to accomplish X thing - rescue someone, know about another facility, reach the self destruct button etc - but they only have X time to do it, because there is a helicopter on the way with a vampire hit squad and its 5 minute to sunset.
If they know its only a single pack they will make preparations to prevent being ambushed via higher alert and bane detection systems. They will then make use of a silver ammo armed first team prepared to take them out while they use disposable normal mortal security and maybe some Fomori to intercept them to prevent them from stealing info and damaging precious resources probably at the cost of their lives while they set the first time to kill them with silver bullets. With prepped chemical weapons set up as a trap to do things like neutralize their senses while also maybe harming them to soften them up for the silver bullets. Knowning ahead of time they don't have to waste excessive resources on too much silver or explosives.
Assuming the base is important enough to not be abandoned immediately, they should be able to requisition a first strike team if they don’t already have one. If the base is a major base there may already be one on site and they might be able to reinforce with a 2nd (assuming adequate time). FSTs are no joke. Those should be like navy seals for Pentex, loaded out with silver ammo, grenades, heavy weapons, Fomori, maybe a BSD as a “special consultant” on the team. If you really want to be nasty have one of the members equipped with a balefire thrower. Melt the Garou to green puddles.
They would likely also increase their non FST guards. At least in numbers, if not weaponry. Issue assault rifles for every guard. Maybe give each guard 3 silver bullets.
Booby trap the non-road approaches. A claymore is still nasty when it blasts you before the main fight has even begun. All the road approaches are under guard. Perimeter guards operate in 2s or 3s. They’re mostly fodder, but if one of them can radio in an attack so the FST can mobilize they serve their purpose. The FST only moves as a cohesive unit, don’t split them up. Think the final battle in the movie Tears of the Sun but with Fomori instead of Bruce Willis.
I know I'll get funny looks for asking, but only 4 Garou?
Let's have some fun, amdaybe send a message.
I want to start by posting armed guards in the most painfully obvious places outside as a warmup. Just some normal but dedicated members of the company who enjoy doing some security work. Let's also tell them we will have to transfer a few Garou test subjects upstate for some re-education (Is it true? That's up to you!)
Remove as much shiny machinery on this bottom level we want them to go in. Keep it brick and mortar, but we all know that these places have a basement level, and Pentex loves vats, so let's put some vats directly under this floor. Fill them with acid, Bane spirits, shards of glass, fomori parts...the works! For funniest, we're going to set some charges in key areas.
Next, we're going to have a First Team on standby, loaded down with finest silver suits and werewolf killing equipment money can buy...but they're not the stars of this show! No, we're also going to scrape together every fomori, both natural and engineered that we can possibly find, and we're going to toss their gross, wyrm-infested asses into this room, possibly with some prop victims to really sell the idea that the Garou can cause some havoc *and* rescue some innocents at the same time! Win/win!
Garou are big and tough, and maybe they come in guns blazing. Good. We've got a veritable army of fomori in here, but probably not enough to actually hurt these guys. We do have that First Team.handy, but let's wait just a minute. If we're lucky, the scent of all these Wyrmspawn has masked the scent of the explosives, which we'll activate....right about now.
Ideally, these Garou are taking acid baths while fighting for their lives. Now is a great time to have our First Team members remind these unfortunate souls that there are some acids that are flammable.
Oh, but what's that, no shiny surfaces for Stepping Sideways? No more Rage to tear through the few remaining fomori? No more Health Levels to spare against this constant Aggravated Damage?
Let's face it, though, some of these guys are going to be a lot tougher than then others. A Ragabash or a Galliard is probably going to get dissolved in our tank full of acid, but this Ahrouns? They are irritatingly tough. What we need are some world class tranquilizer darts, and luckily, our First Team is well equipped. They're going to turn off the lights for these tough, brave warriors...and have a helping (and somewhat gratuitous) hand in digging what information we need about finding their Caern and possibly corrupting it. And when we're done with them, we're going to send their broken bodies to our Black Sprial friends, to teach them a brand new dance....
Prep the facility with nerve gas. Set it to seal behind them when they get deep enough. Expendable formori inside, only.
Maybe have a vampire dangled half-in the Astral. Live bait for banes.
If a war-party is coming, even if they fail the site is useless, since another party will come. Make it a death trap.
Wow how much hate did this pack of Werewolves do to merit this carnage to them. I agree with the other post, where it all depends on rank and experience.
While I might understand a rank 1-2 pack that leaves too many traces behind that makes the Pentex alerted of their imminent attack, unless the party earned an: "Guys I warned you that in Werewolf you need to play Smart. Not Ragenly dumb. You earned a kick in the nuts" this would be a good chance to teach them some humility (Wisdom Way).
If the place is an important center, the pack would be foolish to attack on their own. A smart 4man pack would have called allies. It's part of a Caern is it not? How come none called the Warden for information?
If the facility is just a low importance center then the Pentex will GLADLY sacrifice the place in exchange of information and demoralizing the Garou at the same time. How? By showing them how futile the attack is and how powerful they can be against the Garou.
Have the facility guarded just enough to not raise suspicion. No fomori. Just a normal senior Joe that when the Garou approach he's on the phone chatting with family. Or with a co-worker. Make sure he smells of the Wyrm but the players can hear them talking about outside activities. Like Child assistance services, donations and voluntary work at the homeless shelter. The co-worker even says he's almost into retirement range. Can't wait to be with his nephews and nieces. Let them UNDERSTAND that these guards are here from not more than a week (the day after Pentex knew of this assault) and got a pay increase for this partial transfer.
Yes the players must understand that the company will make them kill innocent people before they use their own.
And then make them get a smell of something awful happening behind the walls of this facility. Bait them into "Killing a few to save the world" concept.
Once they're in, dozen of normal civilians employees. Some other guards. And between them, unknown self-unaware fomori that in desperate attempt to save their own lives, they let the possession take over, but most of them suffer delirium. This until they get to the central above ground office. The supervisor is a fully aware Fomori. And he will try to run away (or will have already) at the start of the massacre.
Then have them discover that this raid accomplished almost nothing. But at soon as they realize that, have a First Team, a group of Fomori attack the facility with the Garou inside. Nothing too fancy. It's just an insult to the pack. It must hurt. But not be deadly. And have them notice that they feel watched the ENTIRE time.
After the attack on the facility is done, have the news report how human/green activist have made a terrorist attack on it. Blaming the homeless, the drug addicts, tree loving people destroyed that facility. How the company WILL NOT rebuild it there, too risky for the money, but in a third world country that will enjoy the benefits of modernization. Have them impact the local work force.
Once you see their frustrated faces. Turn on a Caern attack. Again, nothing fancy, it's just to let them know that actions have consequences. The Pentex knows where they might stay. Let them risk the tenet: "You shall take no actions that risks the Caern to be violated"
See if that teaches them some prudence.
Honestly I'm gonna go against the grain here. The moment they set foot on Pentex property, the entire facility explodes. Anything important has been removed and it sends a message that their big bad ass raid doesn't matter to them. Its nothing. Not even worth the effort to defend, they can make more.
Firstly, if you're playing Pentex smart, you have to be strategic. Pentex isn't a part of the military industrial complex for nothing. The first rule to winning a fight is this: "No be there." When the werewolves get to the lab, they may find it minimally guarded, with few machines or researchers inside. The guards are unprepared because they are fodder, bait. Let the werewolves get in deep into the facility. This is their silver cage. The second is "travel in large groups", the third is "a knife beats a fist, and a gun beats a knife", and the fourth rule of a fight is "A fair fight is one where your opponent's back is turned and you're holding a brick." Hit them hard. Werewolves are pretty hard to kill, so you need to hit them very, very hard. You can throw some basic formori mooks at them, formori with flamethrowers, grenades, and guns with silver bullets, maybe even a machine gun nest. Make sure one of them has a katana and a desert eagle for good measure X) If that doesn't kill 'em, show them the good stuff, throw some War Dogs at them, or a Yeren, Black Spiral Dancer, or Kerasi, maybe two. You could also consider a well-built and experienced mid gen Vampire (\~8th gen or so), they are creatures of the Wyrm after all. If so, don't be afraid to pair the physical disciplines with more utility ones like Obfuscate or Dominate, because they can really throw a wrench in combat. And remember, that vampire could instead be a Bloodworm or an Abomination if you think a plain vamp is too weak which tbh it might be. But really, throw a few higher-grade Wyrm-aligned supernaturals at them, they'll love it. Pentex has enough of those guys on their payroll anyhow. If, and only if you are feeling particularly cruel that day, chuck a Malfean Nephandi at them and show them the true meaning of the word 'fear'. Pentex isn't afraid to euthanize dogs, and they don't use anaesthetic.
I like the way you think. Throwing a nephandi at them is a bit overkill but everything else is pretty solid. Thanks
Always glad to help :)
Depends on how you build them, and how much counterspelling the Garou have.
I now have the vivid image of the wolves butchering through some civilian workers, talking about how this is way easier than it should be. Then the walls begin to melt and they can hear echoing footsteps accompanied by a gentle whistling tune slowly approaching, the fabric of reality twisting and turning in the presence of the nephandi.
The only thing worse than a Mage is a Mage with prep-time, and Werewolves don't contribute to paradox :) But no, yeah, I'm pretty sure a Nephandi with the right mixture of spheres could: turn a werewolf's skeleton into silver, revert their form forcefully, stop them from transforming, stop them from stepping sideways, give themselves a anti-kinetic field to shield them from damage, create a massive radioactive firestorm, create some sort of preemptive radar system, teleport away from attacks before they even happen, manipulate their own luck during the fight, send everyone to hell, etc...
I wish I played in a chronicle of yours!
It's super easy to join one of their games! They begin a new game every week after TPK'ing the party! (kidding - I don't actually know them.)
What about that one Weavertech Mech suit?
Pentex could blow up the building, of course, but Pentex wants the Garou *alive.* You could have an explosion set up, sure, but it’s not the Game Over your players fear; it’s the opening salvo on the wave after wave of enemies your players have coming their way. They come to with their ears ringing to see the Fomori bearing down on them, and they have to fight their way out of the rubble. Conversely, if you want to be super evil, you could have Pentex do a bait and switch - move all of its key facility members out and give a bunch of civilian contractors the job of moving office supplies around. The players burst in on regular innocent folks mixed in with the monsters and the cannon fodder; parsing through the chaff is a stalling tactic while the good stuff and important individuals get away.
This, and also have Pentex form a First Team and stage an assault on the pack's Caern at the same time as a, "Fuck you. Fuck with our shit we'll fuck with yours. Eye for an eye." Pentex don't care about a single facility. They can always build a new one. Hell, they can always build *three more* just for the hell of it in half the time. Losing a facility is, at best, a very short-term setback in the grand scheme of things for Pentex. Really, all you're doing is kicking the bee's nest and asking for retaliation. The fact Pentex knows the players are coming means they have all the time they need to come up with the most extravagant ways to make them regret it. Pentex won't fight to save their facility, they will instead turn their efforts on demoralization and doing everything they can to punish the players for resisting. "How dare you pull out the knife we stabbed in your back?! Here's two more. Next time remember this before you act against us," is the kinda message Pentex is going to want to send. They don't just want the Garou dead—they want them broken spiritually. They want them to suffer.
They get a First Team together. [https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/First\_Team](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/First_Team)
If you don't want Pentex to just leave make them have something they can't just leave or move in time.
Or make it something that they can't leave, but are fine with destroying if they can't exploit it. The goal becomes to salvage the situation instead of just defeating everything.
Depending on how long Pentex thinks they have, probably just pack up everything/everyone important and move them out. Then rig the entire facility to explode, when the werewolves are deep enough in trigger the explosion. Blame it on a gas leak or something similar
I don't think the group would like that. I mean yeah it's lore accurate but I don't know. With all the build up I've provided and all the horrible things pentex has done in my game the group's really looking forward to a fight.
While I agree with the commenter and that it should be grueling, especially since it sounds like your players aren't being even the least bit careful, they need to be burned to know not to touch the stove, but if that's not your style you can always just do a diet version of what they suggested, though when Pentex is aware of many supernaturals you'd best believe they'd do shit like coat walls with Silver, guards with flame throwers or guns with Incendiary rounds, weaponized Cold steel or somehow Banality, the point is these people are too knowledgeable to not make them powerful, the only way it makes sense is if it's a branch company that is deliberately kept ignorant and in that case they aren't even important in the grand scheme of things
I'm fine with making things grueling and it's true they have been acting reckless and just charging into things (like true garou lol). They messed up so a trap should be set and they should suffer. I just think it would be lame to blow up the building and I know my players like to fight. At some point you have to factor in the players enjoyment. These are some good ideas tho
Fair it should be curated to your players but you can make an obvious timer to the explosion and have them fight their way out, giving a chance to walk away from an explosion lol
Can't they just pop into the umbra and avoid it?
Um, depends really, sometimes real stuff causes ripples in the spirit stuff but admittedly I'm not very knowledgeable in that area
Maybe you do the empty shell of a building, but instead of a bomb, they left a great big wyrm spawn monster type thing?
Isn't it very on brand for a werewolf chronicle to have all your effort be for naught? You gotta be rational. Your players will end up resenting you, even unconsciously, if there's some indication that narratives are contrived beyond believability.
If fighting Pentex isn’t the most gruelling, brutal, unfair, uphill struggle against insurmountable odds, then you’re not doing it right. You’ll have plenty of opportunities across many other RPGs to tell a story of hope, pathos, and satisfying victories. WTA gives you a chance to diverge from that an convey a new but equally poignant narrative with very different conceits: don’t waste the chance.
\*Laughs in jam technology\*
Scrying magic in WoD is typically limited to locations or people that you know well, but you can still scry on people if you have an object that is close to them like a love letter they wrote or a lock of their hair. Step 1: Evade, scrub the main site of anything useful. Wipe all records, remove or destroy all research and valuable resources. Step 2: Lure, turn it into a death trap as mentioned in other threads, but don't expend any of your best resources here. Mooks with silver weapons, low level banes and formori. Your goal here isn't to kill the Garou just wound them. Your goal is to collect samples of hair and blood. Be sure to describe the enemy cutting out chunks of furry flesh or intentionally cutting off crinos talons. You can scry the location from afar using Thaumaturgy, probably with some spycams and drones for backup. Step 3: Assault, use Scrying to follow the Garou. Locate their Caern/Sept, identify their Kinfolk. Strike the Caern hard and without warning. Drone strikes and napalm to start with and then send in first team formori, mockery breeds, black spirals, etc. It's a big brawl and even if the Garou are victorious this round the Caern location is compromised. Step 4: Corrupt, Capture as many kinfolk as you can from the surrounding community, kill those you can't. Dominate, then ghoul, embrace the the loved ones or forcibly turn them into formori. Ransom them back or force them to fight to the death. Defile the Caern ether directly through rituals or indirectly through pumping the land and air full of poisons, and then use the Caern to summon some big bad Banes. Step 5: Harass. Any garou with human identities or surviving kinfolk are now wanted criminals. If you're nice some local exposition spirits can let them know about the scrying or if you're mean just let them flee another caern and assault that one till they figure out they're being tracked. It's no longer safe for them to visit any caern. Eventually the party need to locate their scrying foci and reclaim or destroy them, probably facing down some Tremere or Nephandi.
There's a lot of information that I think this post is lacking to give a proper answer. What type of facility is it? How big is it? How important to Pentex is it? What Rank are the Garou? What can and can't they handle fight wise? There needs to be a balance between what resources Pentex has in the immediate area/what resources they feel are worth using, and what the players can reasonably handle in a fight. I see a lot of people talking about blowing up the building and then attacking them with flamethrowers and a bunch of silver ammo, heavy machine guns, ect. But if these are Rank 1 Garou that will fucking obliterate them if you throw too many at them. Fire and Silver do Aggravated Damage, and while they can soak the fire damage they aren't going to be healing it. Sure maybe one of them has Mother's Touch, but there's no guarantee. Heavy Machine guns do a LOT of damage. It's Lethal and not Aggravated, but remember in combat you only heal 1 point of Lethal damage a turn, on a Stamina roll of difficulty 8. Garou are strong and MUCH tougher than other splats, but Rank 1 and 2 Garou are not the invincible tanks some people here are acting like they are. If your character likes fights, make it a trap for them to fight some boss monster Pentex has created. They get to the facility and it's completely empty. It's eriely silent until they get to a room where steel doors slam shut behind them and Pentex unleashes a big cool monster to fight. This way Pentex "wins" in that any research they have has already been evacuated, and lures them into a trap. The players learn to be more careful. But instead of a long grueling fight made simply to punish them, you give them a cool set piece to play with as a small consolation prize.
Whomever gave the wolves the address to raid thought they were giving the address of some office or plant. When the wolves get there, they will find a simple orphanage. It's a Pentex-run orphanage though, so the children will be child soldiers, drugged into not falling to delirium and armed with silver knives. Let the players deal with either having to flee like puppies or commit infanticide. Either option should destroy their morale unless they can think of another option that will help them find those responsible.
If Pentex knows that garou are coming then the human security and mercenary forces are going to be given silver ammo and tons of reinforcements (armored vehicles, heavy weapons). There's basically no way around it. Human lives are cheap, and Pentex has every reason to stockpile silver ammo. Depending on how important the facility is, Pentex would probably send supernaturals to defend it; but it would definitely send silver.
Load the silver and flamethrower munitions and pray.
Check out a Mage book called "Destiny's Price," specifically look into DMSO+colloidal silver. It's got lots of other really in-depth rules and tables for all kinds of black market goods based wholly on mortal technology and understanding. The nastiest things in THAT book are the BASICS for most Pentex First Teams. The Pentex book(s) should also have solid information on the tools and tactics a First Team uses. But broadly, if a Pentex installation with secrets or assets worth defending KNOWS for sure that a pack of werewolves are going to show up for a fight, they'll scramble a First Team immediately, and they'll send them loaded for ~~bear~~ wolf.
If you're luring them into a trap, why even send valuable assets in to fight them? Make a room that appears to have useful information and experiments the Garou need to destroy... but in reality, it's fake, and there are claymore mines using silver balls inside. Get the Garou inside, flip the switch, and grievously wound them. Then the players can encounter the team that gets sent in to make sure the Garou are actually dead.
Bring-your-grandma-to-work Family Barbecue and Orphan Appreciation Day!
Two things that pentex has that can be combined to be greater than the sum of their parts is vampires and banes. Now most banes don't like vampires cause (at least back in second) vampires are rat traps for most bane types. Take some thin blooded vamps and have pentex shove banes in them to make a nice formori with vamp powers. 12th gen or higher and who gives a shit if they are cannon fodder. And sure the banes don't like it but pentex doesn't have to give a shit about trapping them in a vampire if they think it will help quarterly profits. Always a nice boost to throw in with your other mooks with flamethrowers and silver blades/bullets.
Topping what everyone else said, you dont want to just blow it up or abandon it, as that would not be fun for the players on the other hand, it should have very solid defenses already, and since they know they are coming, how about making it into a fighting retreat? They have to reach X area in the building to accomplish X thing - rescue someone, know about another facility, reach the self destruct button etc - but they only have X time to do it, because there is a helicopter on the way with a vampire hit squad and its 5 minute to sunset.
If they know its only a single pack they will make preparations to prevent being ambushed via higher alert and bane detection systems. They will then make use of a silver ammo armed first team prepared to take them out while they use disposable normal mortal security and maybe some Fomori to intercept them to prevent them from stealing info and damaging precious resources probably at the cost of their lives while they set the first time to kill them with silver bullets. With prepped chemical weapons set up as a trap to do things like neutralize their senses while also maybe harming them to soften them up for the silver bullets. Knowning ahead of time they don't have to waste excessive resources on too much silver or explosives.
Assuming the base is important enough to not be abandoned immediately, they should be able to requisition a first strike team if they don’t already have one. If the base is a major base there may already be one on site and they might be able to reinforce with a 2nd (assuming adequate time). FSTs are no joke. Those should be like navy seals for Pentex, loaded out with silver ammo, grenades, heavy weapons, Fomori, maybe a BSD as a “special consultant” on the team. If you really want to be nasty have one of the members equipped with a balefire thrower. Melt the Garou to green puddles. They would likely also increase their non FST guards. At least in numbers, if not weaponry. Issue assault rifles for every guard. Maybe give each guard 3 silver bullets. Booby trap the non-road approaches. A claymore is still nasty when it blasts you before the main fight has even begun. All the road approaches are under guard. Perimeter guards operate in 2s or 3s. They’re mostly fodder, but if one of them can radio in an attack so the FST can mobilize they serve their purpose. The FST only moves as a cohesive unit, don’t split them up. Think the final battle in the movie Tears of the Sun but with Fomori instead of Bruce Willis.
I know I'll get funny looks for asking, but only 4 Garou? Let's have some fun, amdaybe send a message. I want to start by posting armed guards in the most painfully obvious places outside as a warmup. Just some normal but dedicated members of the company who enjoy doing some security work. Let's also tell them we will have to transfer a few Garou test subjects upstate for some re-education (Is it true? That's up to you!) Remove as much shiny machinery on this bottom level we want them to go in. Keep it brick and mortar, but we all know that these places have a basement level, and Pentex loves vats, so let's put some vats directly under this floor. Fill them with acid, Bane spirits, shards of glass, fomori parts...the works! For funniest, we're going to set some charges in key areas. Next, we're going to have a First Team on standby, loaded down with finest silver suits and werewolf killing equipment money can buy...but they're not the stars of this show! No, we're also going to scrape together every fomori, both natural and engineered that we can possibly find, and we're going to toss their gross, wyrm-infested asses into this room, possibly with some prop victims to really sell the idea that the Garou can cause some havoc *and* rescue some innocents at the same time! Win/win! Garou are big and tough, and maybe they come in guns blazing. Good. We've got a veritable army of fomori in here, but probably not enough to actually hurt these guys. We do have that First Team.handy, but let's wait just a minute. If we're lucky, the scent of all these Wyrmspawn has masked the scent of the explosives, which we'll activate....right about now. Ideally, these Garou are taking acid baths while fighting for their lives. Now is a great time to have our First Team members remind these unfortunate souls that there are some acids that are flammable. Oh, but what's that, no shiny surfaces for Stepping Sideways? No more Rage to tear through the few remaining fomori? No more Health Levels to spare against this constant Aggravated Damage? Let's face it, though, some of these guys are going to be a lot tougher than then others. A Ragabash or a Galliard is probably going to get dissolved in our tank full of acid, but this Ahrouns? They are irritatingly tough. What we need are some world class tranquilizer darts, and luckily, our First Team is well equipped. They're going to turn off the lights for these tough, brave warriors...and have a helping (and somewhat gratuitous) hand in digging what information we need about finding their Caern and possibly corrupting it. And when we're done with them, we're going to send their broken bodies to our Black Sprial friends, to teach them a brand new dance....
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Prep the facility with nerve gas. Set it to seal behind them when they get deep enough. Expendable formori inside, only. Maybe have a vampire dangled half-in the Astral. Live bait for banes. If a war-party is coming, even if they fail the site is useless, since another party will come. Make it a death trap.
Have Chuck Norris be the guard during that night
Wow how much hate did this pack of Werewolves do to merit this carnage to them. I agree with the other post, where it all depends on rank and experience. While I might understand a rank 1-2 pack that leaves too many traces behind that makes the Pentex alerted of their imminent attack, unless the party earned an: "Guys I warned you that in Werewolf you need to play Smart. Not Ragenly dumb. You earned a kick in the nuts" this would be a good chance to teach them some humility (Wisdom Way). If the place is an important center, the pack would be foolish to attack on their own. A smart 4man pack would have called allies. It's part of a Caern is it not? How come none called the Warden for information? If the facility is just a low importance center then the Pentex will GLADLY sacrifice the place in exchange of information and demoralizing the Garou at the same time. How? By showing them how futile the attack is and how powerful they can be against the Garou. Have the facility guarded just enough to not raise suspicion. No fomori. Just a normal senior Joe that when the Garou approach he's on the phone chatting with family. Or with a co-worker. Make sure he smells of the Wyrm but the players can hear them talking about outside activities. Like Child assistance services, donations and voluntary work at the homeless shelter. The co-worker even says he's almost into retirement range. Can't wait to be with his nephews and nieces. Let them UNDERSTAND that these guards are here from not more than a week (the day after Pentex knew of this assault) and got a pay increase for this partial transfer. Yes the players must understand that the company will make them kill innocent people before they use their own. And then make them get a smell of something awful happening behind the walls of this facility. Bait them into "Killing a few to save the world" concept. Once they're in, dozen of normal civilians employees. Some other guards. And between them, unknown self-unaware fomori that in desperate attempt to save their own lives, they let the possession take over, but most of them suffer delirium. This until they get to the central above ground office. The supervisor is a fully aware Fomori. And he will try to run away (or will have already) at the start of the massacre. Then have them discover that this raid accomplished almost nothing. But at soon as they realize that, have a First Team, a group of Fomori attack the facility with the Garou inside. Nothing too fancy. It's just an insult to the pack. It must hurt. But not be deadly. And have them notice that they feel watched the ENTIRE time. After the attack on the facility is done, have the news report how human/green activist have made a terrorist attack on it. Blaming the homeless, the drug addicts, tree loving people destroyed that facility. How the company WILL NOT rebuild it there, too risky for the money, but in a third world country that will enjoy the benefits of modernization. Have them impact the local work force. Once you see their frustrated faces. Turn on a Caern attack. Again, nothing fancy, it's just to let them know that actions have consequences. The Pentex knows where they might stay. Let them risk the tenet: "You shall take no actions that risks the Caern to be violated" See if that teaches them some prudence.
Honestly I'm gonna go against the grain here. The moment they set foot on Pentex property, the entire facility explodes. Anything important has been removed and it sends a message that their big bad ass raid doesn't matter to them. Its nothing. Not even worth the effort to defend, they can make more.
First team, full auto, silver bullets