Let's Fight! – It's Fight Week here at worldofdarkness.com as we take a look at how combat works in the new Storytelling System. Of course, combat should always be a last resort and the story comes first and… okay, let's fight!
Rolling with (and for) the Punches – When a character attacks an opponent, he does so with a bare fist or a high-powered rifle, you resolve the action with a single die roll. As with almost all other rolls in the game, this dice pool is the sum of an Attribute and a Skill. For throwing a punch, the dice pool is Strength (Attribute) + Brawl (Skill). At its most bare-bones, an attack is resolved by just rolling that dice pool. Every success (a die that comes up 8 or more) inflicts a wound on the opponent. No one is rolling other dice to defend or to “soak” damage or for any other reason. One attack means one roll of the dice.
Where the variation comes in is in modifiers to that dice pool. We mentioned last week how favorable and negative conditions can add or subtract dice, and nowhere is that truer than in combat. You add dice to your pool for anything you have that makes your attack more effective (like a special move or the damage rating of your weapon). You lose dice for anything the opponent does to avoid getting hurt. Most importantly, every character has a Defense trait, which represents his ability to bob and weave or otherwise make himself harder to hit, and this serves as a penalty on any close-combat attack. Armor and defensive actions can also penalize attacks.
Therefore, maximizing bonuses to your attacks and penalties to your opponents' attacks is the key to winning a fight.
An Example (with an illustration by Durwin Talon): Sandy never should have opened that box her great aunt sent to her. Now something is loose, something with long claws and sharp teeth, something that's chased her into her own kitchen. Sandy grabs a butcher's knife off the counter and turns around to strike back. Sandy's 2 Strength and 1 Weaponry grant her player three dice. Her knife, with a damage of 1, adds one bonus die to that pool. The creature has a Defense total of 2 but no armor. That means two dice are removed from Sandy's player's pool. She is left with two dice, and her roll yields a 6 and a 9. That's one success, so the creature takes one wound.
Ouch, That Hurt! – Unless you're doing something special (like grappling to immobilize or using a special vampiric ability), a fight is going to mean damage to the opponent. (It may also mean damage to your character, of course). So let's take a look at Health and damage, shall we?
Every character has a trait called Health. This trait is tied to the Stamina Attribute, so (quite logically) the tougher your character is, the more damage she can endure. Health is marked on your character sheet and has both dots and points. Your character's dots are filled in on your character sheet, representing her total capacity for enduring damage. Her points represent her current state of health, and they are tracked in the corresponding boxes beneath the dots. Every time your character loses a Health point to damage, mark off the kind of injury inflicted from left to right. You'll begin suffering dice penalties as the number of wounds grows. When dots and filled boxes are equal (she has lost all of her Health points), your character is badly hurt or dying.
Damage comes in three basic types: bashing (from blunt attacks), lethal (from guns and knives) and aggravated (from special supernatural attacks). The harsher the damage type is, the longer it takes to heal and the more life-threatening it is. Bashing damage heals quickly (one point every 15 minutes), and if your characters last Health box is filled with bashing damage, you simply have to make Stamina rolls for the character to remain conscious and active. Lethal damage heals more slowly, and if your Health boxes are filled with lethal damage your character becomes incapacitated and needs immediate medical attention. (Otherwise, existing lethal wounds begin to upgrade to aggravated damage.) If your Health boxes are all full of aggravated damage, your character dies.
Unless your Health track is full of lethal wounds, healing just takes time. Your character can still go about his or her business. Medical attention and supernatural powers can speed healing, however.
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