WoD Combat will never be good.

[Username17]

The basic mechanics of combat in the new World of Darkness is that you roll a pile of dice, and a third of them come up successes. Just like SR4 really. Depending on what kind of thing you are doing to your enemies, you either take a very small number of dice out of your pile before rolling them, or your opponent rolls a resistance test (that is in general 2/3 the size of your attack test on a good day) and their successes cancel yours 1 for 1.

But in most circumstances, the acting player always has a net positive dice pool, and thus getting 1-3 net hits is almost assured. What actually happens at that point is entirely dependent upon your action. If you are swinging a sword at someone, they'll take a point of lethal damage for each net hit you get. If you are using mental powers on them, you getting net hits means that they become your slave (really).

So people who are really good at "combat" are hosers. It's almost impossible to conceive of someone who is such a badass that they can drop someone in a single attack (they'd need a dice pool of 21+ dice), and yet disposable thugs already inflict damage every round against just about anybody - meaning that no matter how much of a badass you supposedly are, there is a small integer of disposable thugs with meat cleavers who could do your job better.

Meanwhile, there is little incentive to improve yourself once you know any Save or Die at all - because noone ever makes any saves.

-Username17

[Neeek]

Sorry, haven't even glanced at the new WoD system, so this may be a stupid question.

Did they make everything a set difficulty or something? Is the to-hit difficulty no longer Dex+Dodge of the target(or something similar)?

I really didn't think they could make that system worse. I was wrong, clearly.

[Username17]

nWoD has a set difficulty. That's a good thing for the resolution of non-opposed tasks. It means that people can have a pretty good idea of how one goes about picking a lock and also have a decent understanding of how likely one is to succeed at driving a car or throwing a baseball.

And specialists pretty much succeed at their specialized tasks. Mechanic nuts don't periodically trip all over themselves when attempting to overhaul an engine. So that's pretty cool too.

But the flip side is that combat, or any opposed task, is handled the same way. The specialist pretty much just succeeds. nWoD action resolution is now at least fast, but it's really just a long-hand way of saying "attacker wins". So if you have a dumb attack (like shooting people with a rifle or throwing a hand grenade), your attack succeeds and your opponent takes some damage (which means that they still get to act). If you have a good attack (like issuing mental commands or transforming people into toads), your attack succeeds and your opponent drops right out of combat.

WoD combat used to be an incomprehensible morass that took hours to adjudicate and ended up with one side or the other winning in a huge way for completely arbitrary reasons (shifting a TN +/- 1 because of higher ground or bad lighting was huge in the variable TN system). nWoD combat is streamlined, straight forward, and basically a glorified "Initiative Check for the Win".

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I've played a bit of Vampire with the new system.

Run by some chumps who don't know nothing, but still.

Some other guys seemed to be making their characters down the other interesting paths (the I'm invisible guy, the I control your mind guy, etc...) so I made the I Kill You with Knives guy.

So with minimal starting character resources. Starting character, no bonus experience, no clans (what kind of chump runs Vampire and never lets anyone have clans?)

You could make a two katana wielding celerity based melee machine.

You took the finese thing so as to be able to run your attacks and your defense off the same maxed out attribute. Which also was a big part of determining intiative as well.

You took an ambidexterity thing so you could make two full attacks for free.

You took Celerity to be extra nasty in combat and always go first and improve your defenses.

You maxed out your weapon skill and specialized in your chozen weapon.

Now I don't know about 21 dice for the auto kill if you get the drop but if I recall, and if it was properly interpretted and arbitrated by the chief chump...

It ended up being near gauranteed acting first and two attacks rolling somewhere between 11 and 15 dice.

Of course the chief chump still tried to screw us over in the grand spirit of world of darkness.

The first time we played by throwing us face to face with a supernatural critter with maxed out EVERYTHING, who still had to pull a deus ex machina "freaky mystical ability" and run away after copping the first round of damage.

The second time we played he just dropped us naked and weaponless (and did I mention with no experience points and clanless?) into a church, tied to stuff, surrounded by high level vampire hunters with shotguns who tried (and basically succeed) to kill us.

Man that chief chump was an asshole.

[Username17]

I don't even know how you make Vampire characters without clans. Anyway, your character was illegal, and proves my point.

1. The character had a dice pool over 20 dice on attacks.
but...
2. The character had no defense at all.

You see, even if you have more than one weapon you still only get one attack unless you have a merit that allows you to make more than one attack (Fighting Style: Two Weapons does at 3 dots, for example). All of the techniques for getting multiple attacks also cost you your defense for that turn - at which point your Celerity does nothing.

---

Of course, you can get much the same effect by splitting your dice pool - for which you want to be armed with an axe and a rifle (many characters can use a rifle one handed in nWoD). That way you are "splitting" a dice pool that has two entirely separate colors of dice.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Entirely possible that you give up your defense. I had about five minutes with the book and the guy running the game was dumb enough to not even know how most of it worked (and indeed DID make some major mistakes involving defense and damage)

But Even if you give up your defense action that IS two full attacks for buckets full of dice with a very high initiative and an option to reroll for an even higher initiative.

and...

- at which point your Celerity does nothing.

I don't know what rules trump what in the giving up defense thing, but I'm fairly certain the defensive quality of Celerity forced attackers to give up dice from their pool separate to any defense mechanic.

But maybe that fell under the umbrella of what you give up to make a double attack which appeared somewhere in the books that I didn't get to see. (ie anything outside of a lightning peruse of the character creation sections.)

As for how you make clanless characters, well, yeah, my point exactly. Well that and the addition of the question of WHY?

[Username17]

Yes, Celerity gives you armor and is subtracted from the dice pools of people attacking you. So if you have Celerity 3, you on average negate one incoming wound from each attack (at the cost of one blood per combat turn).

The loss of defense doesn't apply to that, though I'm not sure how you afforded the "attack twice" merit and the weapon finesse merit as a starting character. Starting characters in nWoD are teh suck, and the character creation rules are extremely inflexible. For all its talk about fluid character creation and such, a starting nWoD character is more cookie cutter than a 1st level D&D character.

The key here is figuring out a way to get two attacks, since a "combat" character needs about 3 times as many dice to get anything accomplished as compared to a Sorcerer. Picking up your dice and rolling them a second time is a good start.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, i was really surprised at how crappy the nWoD combat system is. How the damage system works you need to be a hardcore combat monster to kill a defenseless child in one attack. Even if you've got a 12 dice pool, you're still only looking at an average of 4 damage.

The nWoD system is pretty much a joke. The old system was way better, and that isn't saying much. Though I think you could probably port the nWoD stuff into SR4 rules with a little effort and make a somewhat decent game.

But as written, WoD combat sucks ass.

[virgil]

Doesn't Shadowrun have a similar paradigm in its combat resolution as well? Heck, Turn to Goo has its own uses as being an awesome SoD.

[Prak]

1139523030[/unixtime]]WoD combat used to be an incomprehensible morass that took hours to adjudicate and ended up with one side or the other winning in a huge way for completely arbitrary reasons (shifting a TN +/- 1 because of higher ground or bad lighting was huge in the variable TN system). nWoD combat is streamlined, straight forward, and basically a glorified "Initiative Check for the Win".

-Username17

I'll admit you've probably played WoD alot more than me, but, save for a couple of months, I played a werewolf game everyfriday for the last four years, and I've never seen an arbitrarily won combat. I've seen combats last an hour or two, I've seen combats where most of the pack gets dropped and is saved by an incredibly lucky and suspensful victory as the last person is getting low on health. but I've never seen a combat that was a glorified initiative check, even when we got the drop on a few vampires hauling ass out of a club full of light talens, and were able to close line the lot on a surprise round, the battle wasn't won with initiative.

[Koumei]

When I was deluded into playing WoD (old), it was a glorified Initiative check.

Step 1. Everyone declares actions. One of the dumbest mechanics ever.

Step 2. Highest Initiative person figures out how to act in a way to invalidate the actions of their foes, forcing them to spend Willpower or waste their turn. Or just hits their foe, forcing them to spend a Willpower and waste their turn defending (and still take some damage), or sit there and take all of it.

Step 3. If they just attacked, then the person who got slapped now has huge penalties to everything, and falls along a downward spiral where they get crappier and crappier and loss is definite without outside factors.

[JonSetanta]

Explosives help.
Grenades, remote-trigger bombs, detonating cars, etc.

It bypasses all that crap about needing silver or aggravating wounds.

....Which is sad since WoD is about vampires and werewolves, not John Carpenter or Michael Bay movies.

[Username17]

A lot of people don't understand that they can send people away or drop them out of the fight or throw them out a window with a single success on an uncontested die roll with many many abilities. And so like suckers they wade around hitting things with actual attacks, which is boring (because it's basically just a comparison to see whether your team's pile is bigger than their team's pile), and unsatisfying in the extreme.

-Username17

[Bill_Bisco_Isometric_Imp]

Frank, Perhaps you could elaborate on specific powers and situations in which only one success is needed.

I am more familiar with the LARP WoD which has slightly modified rules.

I know there is Majesty 5 which prevents vampires from attacking you. I know that with 5 successes in LARP you can stake a vampire and knock them out of the battle.

What else is there?

[CalibronXXX]

You know with a good combat starting Vamp you can fairly consistently Stake two opponents per turn and still have decent non-combat skills; assuming you have access to Armory as well as the vampire core book. I think you can manage this without Vigor, or whatever the strength discipline is, but I don't remember. This is assuming that since the rules don't specifically disallow multi-specializing in one skill that you can, in fact, do so.

[JonSetanta]

"Pull a Buffy": stake and kill in 1 blow. Wipe dust off jacket.

[Username17]

I don't know how you're managing that sort of thing. Staking requires a -4 dicepool penalty, and then you need to inflict 3 lethal.

Vampires are god damned idiots if they aren't wearing at least 2 points of armor and an average defense pool is 1 or 2. So your total penalty dice are about -7 and you need 3 hits. You can get yourself a better than 50% chance of success (barely) if you're rolling 9 or more dice after penalties. Now, you can have Fluid Attack, which allows you to strike at two opponents in a round. The second opponent is at an additional -1 penalty though, and you don't get defense that turn.

So huh. We're looking at needing a base dice pool of about 17 in order to get this going. And even then you only average dropping one opponent each turn (since one or the other enemy will quite likely take only 1 or 2 boxes of lethal damage). That's a Strength of 5, and a Melee of 5, and a 1 point weapon and... what? A specialization on your Melee? That's only 2 dice. A bonus from more fighting styles? The +1 from "thrusting"? This just isn't getting particularly close to 17 no matter how I slice it.

This is assuming that since the rules don't specifically disallow multi-specializing in one skill that you can, in fact, do so.

You can get multiple specializations for a skill, but it doesn't help in this instance because multiple specializations don't stack. You get a +2 to your roll if you have an appropriate specialization, you don't get +2 to your dicepool for each appropriate specialization you have.

---

That being said, you actually can kill people in this fashion, it just requires social disciplines. As a starting character you can have 1 dot in a Bloodline discipline from a bloodline that you aren't even part of (and you should, because you can't purchase your way into these disciplines after character creation). So you can start with Courtoise, which in turn allows you to make a 3-piles success test where every hit negates a penalty die while performing the actions you said you were going to take (in this case "I'm going to stab all your fuckers in the heart and walk out of here with a whistle on my lips!"). So without being a Spina or doing any of that crap, you just wake up in the evening able to take an action at the start of combat (or before if there's a talking cut scene before init is rolled) to Roll Presence + Intimidation + Courtoise and every hit essentially gives you an extra die for staking enemies on every test you make for the rest of that scene. It's just like someone gave you about 3-4 extra dice for all your staking attempts.

Frank, Perhaps you could elaborate on specific powers and situations in which only one success is needed.

OK. Let's start with Dominate 2, where you roll:
Dominate + Intelligence + Expression (3 piles that you invested in, about 10 dice)

And they roll:
Resolve + Blood Potency (2 piles that they may or may not have invested in or even have - about 3 dice).

If you get even one net hit, they have to do what you say. They won;'t kill themselves, but who gives a fuck? They aren't fighting you anymore, that's for damn sure.

Now let's go on to Majesty 3, which you could also start with, and it is again contested. You roll:
Majesty + Manipulation + Empathy (about 11 dice)

They roll:
Composure + Blood Potency (about 3 dice)

If you get 1 net hit, they start working for you for the next hour. If you rolled five successes and got even one net hit, they join your team for "at least a week" and "maybe a month or more".

--

And hell, there's Nightmare Kiting, but that would require being a Nosferatu and fuck that noise. The higher levels of Dominate are even more ridiculous, and you can drop people with higher levels of Animalism as well - if hypothetically you gave a damn.

And that's just the basic book. When you factor in the available rituals and bloodline crap in supplements, I don't have a firm grasp on the number of ways to kick people to the curb with a single hit. It's a lot.

-Username17

[CalibronXXX]

Huh, I just checked my WoD PDF and it seems skill specialties only give a +1, not a +3 as I thought before. Strange. Well, never mind then; my mistake.

My earlier assumption was that you could put three specialties in Weaponry: Knives, Two Weapon Fighting, and Staking, and that they would stack when you were trying to stake someone with a knife while fighting with two weapons. Between high melee dots, high strength or dex(with Weapon Finesse), triple specializing, 2 or 3 dots in Spetsnaz Knife Fighting(reducing your dice penalty by 1 and 3 depending on the situation), +2 equipment bonus from your knife, and possibly +2 circumstance bonus from attacking an unaware opponent and using that one knife in Armory(which you'd be likely to get if you started with Obfusticate 3, which would fit the whole dagger assassin theme).

Hmm, okay, were my previous assumption correct, which it isn't, with 3 dots of strength and 4 dots in melee you could have an adjusted dice pool of 17/16 on a surprise attack and ignore 1 point of armor, and 15/14 on a non-surprise attack and ignore 1 point of defense and 1 point of armor. Seeing as specialties only confer a +1 bonus the dice pools would only be 11/10 on a surprise attack and 9/8 on a regular attack unless you were willing to pump your strength or weaponry higher.

So it is actually viable, just not as fool-proof as I thought it was before I checked the book.

Oh well.

Oh and yes, obviously Courtoise would make this better if you wanted to spend a Discipline dot on it. Most storytellers won't let you do that even though the rules technically allow it. I'd personally allow it if someone managed to convince me to run a vampire game.

[Modesitt]

As a starting character you can have 1 dot in a Bloodline discipline from a bloodline that you aren't even part of

A bloodline has four favored Disciplines. Of them, three almost always remain the same as the parent clan’s. The fourth is either unique to the bloodline — unable to be learned by Kindred who are not of the bloodline — or is one of the "common" Disciplines practiced by vampires across clan lines.

[Falgund]

That is, you may choose to spend two dots on clan Discipline and a single dot on an out-of-clan or bloodline Discipline

[Modesitt]

And? It does not say "And this overrides the standards rules where you cannot learn a bloodline discipline unless you are a part of a bloodline". You can start in a bloodline at char gen, so if you happen to be in one, you can spend one of your dots on a bloodline discipline.

[Catharz]

1190492354[/unixtime]]And? It does not say "And this overrides the standards rules where you cannot learn a bloodline discipline unless you are a part of a bloodline". You can start in a bloodline at char gen, so if you happen to be in one, you can spend one of your dots on a bloodline discipline.

I think you're parsing it differently:

1) on an (out-of-clan) or (bloodline) Discipline

2) on an out-of-(clan or bloodline) Discipline

[CalibronXXX]

When you are in a bloodline your bloodline discipline counts a clan discipline, so there would be no need to reiterate it at the end of the like it does. If that were not the case you'd have a chance at being correct since it would be rule vs. rule with no clear delineation of precedence, but with that extra bit at the end of that rule about character gen the rules state fairly clearly that you can indeed take one dot in a bloodline discipline you are not a part of and may never have had the ability to join in the first place.

[Falgund]

You can also see it like this: The key word is learned. You don't learn it, you start with it.

[Modesitt]

At Blood Potency 2, a character may "activate" his sire’s bloodline, becoming a part of it. Doing so allows him access to that bloodline’s Discipline (which thereafter counts as a fourth "clan Discipline")

Why would they say 'allows him access' if he could already have it? Note the quote marks around clan discipline. It's almost as if they are viewed as...something else. Do they do this again? Why yes they do!

Being part of a bloodline allows a character access to that lineage's Discipline (which thereafter counts as a fourth "clan Discipline"). It also adds that bloodline’s weakness, which complements a character’s existing clan weakness.

But let's move onto the extremely explicit statements.

A bloodline has four favored Disciplines. Of them, three almost always remain the same as the parent clan’s. The fourth is either unique to the bloodline — unable to be learned by Kindred who are not of the bloodline — or is one of the "common" Disciplines practiced by vampires across clan lines.

We have EXTREMELY Explicit Statement #1 that you cannot, ever, learn another bloodline's discipline. There are no asterixes, no 'exceptions', you simply can't.

Unique Disciplines are impossible for anyone to learn unless they belong to the bloodlines that created them.

We have EXTREMELY Explicit statement #2 that you cannot ever learn another bloodline's discipline without joining it. It's almost as if they want to make absolutely certain you wont miss this very important point, so they say it again: You cannot get another bloodline's discipline without joining up.

What have we learned?

1. White Wolf always describes bloodline disciplines as bloodline disciplines. When they talk about them as clan disciplines, "clan disciplines" is in quote marks, because they're not clan disciplines. They're bloodline disciplines.

2. You cannot take a bloodline's discipline without taking the bloodline. Or do you think the authors said this several times because they didn't really mean it?