Revision as of 20:30, 23 November 2014

The combat mechanics of World of Darkness, as written, leave much to be desired. Combat is clunky, involves a ton of dice rolling, and is very damage/kill focused. In the real world, violent confrontations can end in any number of ways beyond one party killing or beating the other into unconsciousness. From The Ashes: Detroit By Night uses the following conventions, instead. We believe that these alternate rules give players legitimate alternatives to lethal force as a means to emerge victorious from a conflict (without removing lethal force as a legitimate option).

This system also abstracts combat (in particular hand-to-hand, or claw-to-fang engagements) away from the blow-by-blow, where every punch, parry, bob, and weave gets its own dice roll into a contested dice roll between combatants meant to reflect a longer period of time. The reality of a fist fight is that many dozens of punches may be thrown in a very short time, but in the end the results will boil down to a chaotic mix of skill, good fortune, and comparative grit.

These rules are new, should be considered to be 'in beta' and as with anything on From The Ashes: Detroit by Night, players may feel free to agree to resolve things per RAW or whatever other system all participants in the scene agree to.

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Basics: How To Combat

This section covers the fundamentals of resolving combat scenes in WoD. If you're new to WoD, running combat scenes, or just like going back to basics read this section carefully, first. If you're familiar with WoD combat systems in general, you can skim here.

Structure of a Combat Round

A combat in World of Darkness, and by extension From The Ashes: Detroit By Night, is broken down into Combat Rounds which represent fifteen seconds of in-character time passing. Because of the nature of World of Darkness' various supernatural powers, Combat Rounds are broken down into Phases. Phases are then broken down into individual characters' actions.

Initiative: At the start of each Combat Round, players roll a single D10 to which is added the sum of their Wits and Dexterity scores. In From The Ashes: Detroit By Night this is handled automatically by the +init command. Initiative represents a combination of a character's mental presence and awareness of the current conflict as well as their ability to swiftly act upon opportunities that present themselves. Ties in initiative are resolved by comparing the non-rolled component (usually Wits+Dexterity, but sometimes other bonuses apply), with the highest non-rolled component being considered to have scored higher. In the case that these are also tied, combatants should declare simultaneously (via paging the storyteller, rather than out-loud) and the ST will declare for both of them at once. Their actions resolve simultaneously as well.

Phase Structure

Characters declare their intended actions beginning with the lowest initiative and moving progressively higher until finally the highest initiative declares last (and thus benefits from knowing what all other actions happening in the combat are). Actions are, however, resolved in the reverse order. Higher initiative characters will be able to interrupt, obsolete, or obviate earlier actions declared in the round. A character who's action is no longer viable or possible may attempt to salvage their action by aborting to another action. See the aborting section in Permutations below.

Every Combat Round has, at a minimum, a Main Phase which proceeds as described above. The Main Phase happens first, after initiative has been rolled. The presence of characters who are entitled to additional actions (Vampires, through Celerity; Werewolves, through the expenditure of Rage; Mages through a variety of means, usually Time magick; and Changelings through the Quicksilver cantrip), called Haste Actions, triggers additional phases called Haste 1, Haste 2, Haste 3, etc. until all participants have used their Haste Actions. In any given Haste Phase, only those characters with actions to spend may be pro-active, characters without Haste actions may only react to attacks made upon them. Consider the following example:

Jane, Frank, Teddy, and Paulo engage in a combat. On the initiative roll, Jane scores a 17, Frank a 9, Teddy an 11, and Paulo a 19. They declare actions in the order of Frank, Teddy, Jane, Paulo. Actions are resolved in the order of Paulo's, Jane's, Teddy's, and finally Frank's. Frank, as part of his declaration, announces that he has a Time Magick effect that gives him a Haste Action so Teddy, a Ghural, announces he will spend two Rage points for additional haste actions.

As a result, this Combat Round will have a Main Phase with the order described above, followed by the Haste 1 Phase, which will feature only Frank and Teddy, with frank Declaring first, and Teddy resolving first. This will, in turn, be followed by the Haste 2 Phase, during which, only Teddy is entitled to act, he declares and resolves in the same go. After this, a new Combat Round begins, starting with a new initiative roll.

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