Combat Mechanics

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.

Action Structure

Actions, in a combat, tend to fall into one of three categories: Attacks, Defenses, and Miscellany. Attacks are broken up into basic, powerful, feinting and grappling attacks. An attacker is NOT considered to have abandoned their defense. Defenses, by comparison, are someone abandoning the attack in order to prevent personal harm, they come in blocks, dodges, escapes, and grapple defenses - which are a special case. These are broken out, and discussed below.

Miscellaneous actions represent actions during a combat that are not pertaining to the combat, for example: trying to hack a locked door's keypad while a Garou is trying to chew your face off is a Miscellaneous action. (Also ill-advised.)

Attacks

Basic Attack: By hook, crook, or cannon, you attempt to hurt the other person. The attacker's pool is based on the means of harm. Bare-handed would use Brawl. A sword or the like would use Melee. A gun would use Firearms. A Magickal attack would use whatever the proscribed pool is.

Power Attack: Basic attacks include an understood level of concern for one's own safety. When you're throwing that away to pile on the hurt, you may add 1 to your attack's difficulty (making an opponent's counter-attack more likely to prevail), and add 2 to your subsequent damage pool.

Feinting Attack: The opposite end of the spectrum is an attack that doesn't have the full force behind it, the focus is instead on getting through an strong opponent's defense. -1 difficulty on the attack, and it suffers from -2 damage pool.

Grappling Attack: Reaching out and grabbing someone. This is how someone who wants to start a non-consensual grapple does so. Brawl is the only ability that makes sense here, and is either paired with Dexterity or Strength, depending upon the type of grappling technique used. Grapples are unique situations that have their own mechanics, see the Grappling section below.

Defenses

Blocking Defense: Using your weapon to intercept or deflect an incoming attack. Importantly, the pool used for this defense depends upon the type of attack. Defending against a Brawl attack uses Brawl. Defending against a Melee or Ranged attack may use Brawl or Melee. Defending against Ranged attacks comes at +2 difficulty for launched projectiles (bolts, slings, and arrows), and +4 versus gunfire, freakin' laser beams, and other beyond-sight attacks. The base difficulty for blocking is 4 with same-pool, 5 with different pool.

EXAMPLES: Tony is engaged in fisticuffs with Juan. He uses a blocking defense against Juan's punch. His roll is Dexterity + Brawl, difficulty 4. Elsewhere, Maria was caught empty handed against a Ninja with a sword. She uses a Blocking defense to deflect the Ninja's sword, using Dexterity + Brawl, difficulty 5. Finally, Jake - a total badass - is facing off against a psycho with a machine gun with nothing but a titanium spork. He attempts to block the bullets with the spork, because he's that badass. His roll is Dexterity + Melee, versus difficulty 9. Good luck, Jake.

Dodging Defense: Evasion is always an option, and for ranged attacks usually much easier. The roll is usually Dexterity + Athletics, but other rolls can be asked for if the situation warrants. (Dodging an anti-tank missile while driving your 1964 Dodge Dart is a Dexterity + Drive roll, for example.) The difficulty for hand-to-hand attacks is generally 5. Against ranged attacks, the difficulty depends on the availability of nearby cover: Being half-hidden behind a brick wall would be difficulty 3. Having a counter close-by enough that one could dive and land behind it would be difficulty 6. Standing alone in an open field is difficulty 9.

Escape Defense: Not always an option, but sometimes it makes no sense to block or dodge, but rather to get the hell out of dodge. Generally this will involve Dexterity + Athletics, but as with dodging, creative escape techniques call for different dice pools. The difficulty is 6, but a successful defense, in addition to negating the attack, starts you with a head-start for a subsequent chase. As with grapples, chases are unique. As a form of extended conflict with potentially violent circumstances, chases are covered in our combat rules, in the Chases section, below.

Grapple Defense: Aikidoka, Wrestlers, and people taught to fight in Krav Maga classes, of by a military learn that sometimes the best way to end a fight isn't necessarily to inflict wounds - but to take control of and immobilize the attacker. When you're not willing to initiate violence, but still want this as an option, you may initiate a grapple in response to an attack. See the Grapple section, for how to handle this situation. The only functional difference between a Grapple Defense and a Grapple Attack is that the Attack variant starts the grapple, period. The Defense variant only begins the grapple if one is attacked, similar to Guarding.

Guard: A special-case defense. Sometimes you have low initiative and want to attack, but ONLY if the other person is going to be violent. Guarding leaves you the option of attacking in this case, even if your initiative is low. If a person in a Guard defense is attacked, this action automatically converts to an Attack action against the first person to attack them. If they are not attacked, they do nothing.