Closing in on a finished Combat and Action Chapter:
Weaponry and Hazards
Holy crap, that looks dangerous.
Ranged Weapons
Most ranged weapons do an amount of damage that is fixed regardless of how strong the user is. The strength listing on the ranged weaponry table indicates the strength required to use the weapon without penalty in two hands. If the character's actual Strength exceeds that, they may use it without difficulty in one hand, unless it is Large in which case their strength must exceed that by 2 in order to use it successfully in one hand.
| Ranged Weaponry Table
|
| Weapon | Damage | Range | Strength | size
|
| Pistol, Lt. | 2 | (N)S | 1 | S
|
| Pistol, Hvy. | 3 | (N)W | 2 | S
|
| Rifle | 4 | (W)E | 3 | L
|
| Machine Pistol | 2˟ | (N)S | 2 | S
|
| Assault Rifle | 3˟ | (S)E | 3 | L
|
| Submachine Gun | 2˟ | (S)W | 2 | M
|
| Shotgun | 4 | (N)S | 3 | M
|
| Crossbow | 2 | (S)W | 2 | L
|
| Auto-Shotgun | 4˟ | (N)S | 4 | L
|
| Machinegun | 6˟ | (W)R | 5 | L
|
| Sniper Rifle | 6 | (E)R | 5 | L
|
| Flame Thrower | 3F˟ | Wˠ | 5 | L
|
| Flare Gun | 1F | (N)W | 2 | S
|
| Cannon | 7 | (W)R | 8 | H
|
- ˟: Weapon fires in automatic mode.
F: Weapon does fire damage.
N: Weapon does Normal Damage.
ˠ: Weapon ignores cover.
Size: Small weapons can be concealed in a pocket; Medium weapons can be concealed under a coat; Large weapons can be concealed in a car; Huge weapons do not really fit into cars.
Automatic Weapons: A weapon firing on automatic throws out many bullets in a short period of time. This allows it to be used for suppressive fire, to be fired at multiple enemies who are close together, and makes it more likely to hit something. A weapon fired on automatic gains 3 dice on the attack roll, but the spread of bullets makes fine aiming more difficult – the increase in threshold for firing at enemies with cover is doubled (basic cover increases threshold by 2, heavy cover increases threshold by
4). Also the character can't take the Aim action with an automatic weapon, but they can take the Spray-n-Pray action.
Bullets: The amount of bullets fired off in genuine firefights is extremely varied and often frighteningly large. During a 12 second combat round, an assault rifle could easily fire 100 rounds or more (if it even had that many bullets in its magazine or belt-feed). Actually resolving where all of those bullets end up would be far too time consuming to consider doing in most battles. As such, the game doesn't really distinguish between characters squeezing off large numbers of bullets and characters taking hard seconds to line up their targets and fire devastating double-taps into a target's vitals. As such, the game also doesn't bother writing up exactly how many bullets weapons contain. During survival horror segments, ammunition conservation can (and should) be a major concern, but in regular street combat it shouldn't really come up.
It is also important to note that while the game only models those bullets that have a significant chance of hitting their target, every bullet fired
eventually hits
something. Stray bullets do not individually hit people we care about often enough to have such events generated by any combination of numbers on the dice, relegating that very real possibility to the realm of plot devices. However, in cases where the target is very close to other targets that these other targets are very likely to catch a bullet one way or another. If the target is getting cover from a creature and the target is missed by just the difference caused by the cover, then you can assume that the living cover is hit. Similarly, if the target is in or in front of a dense crowd of people,
someone is getting hit. Deciding
who is left as a narrative exercise. In such situations, Extras catch stray bullets much more than Luminaries.
Special Ammunition: Characters in the World of Darkness will often want to fire bullets that are specifically made of iron, wood, or silver. While these bullets have different characteristics than ones made of copper or lead, that's a level of detail that combat in aWoD does not actually go to. Special ammunition exists that is generally more effective. Whether it's made out of depleted uranium or is special explosive ammunition or whatever, such special equipment increases the damage of the gun by 1, costs quite a bit, and puts a real strain on the character's claim to not be a military-grade super villain.
Smooth bore weaponry such as shotguns can be loaded with grains of pretty much anything. Of special interest to characters in the World of Darkness is that they can fill the shells with salt, sand, or live grain in order to suppress Astral, Infernal, or Orphic sorcery respectively. This is quite effective, and the character's Agility + Combat test can suppress magic out to the range of the weapon.
Silencer: Weaponry enthusiasts will get mad at you for calling them “silencers” because they don't actually reduce the noise of firing a weapon to nothing or even the point of inaudibility. Nevertheless, the “sound suppressor” is called a “silencer” in ordinary conversation, so it is reasonable that characters in the game will refer to it (incorrectly) like that as well. Silencers reduce the sound of using the weapon substantially, to the point that its use will probably not be noticed on the other side of a wall, but this comes at a price. The weapon loses a lot of power, which reduces the Damage by 1 and reduces the accurate range by one category (for example: if you silence a light pistol it has a base damage of 1 and loses accuracy if fired at ranges beyond Adjacent). A silencer also falls apart with use. After more than five shots, a silencer is basically garbage.
Melee Weapons
Melee weaponry differs from ranged weaponry primarily in that it simply goes as far as it will reach and therefore doesn't have a “range” value on the table. Many melee weapons inherently do Normal rather than Lethal damage, and their damage values are followed by an “N.” Unlike Ranged Weaponry, which is mostly designed for the purpose, a majority of things that people beat on each other with in hand to hand conflicts are actually improvised weapons – tools and household items that happen to be at hand when a fight breaks out. The rules for using melee weapons in one hand are the same as for ranged weapons: the character needs to have more Strength than the listed to use it in one hand, and must exceed it by 2 if the weapon is Large.
| Melee Weaponry Table
|
| Weapon | Damage | Strength | size
|
| Fist | 0N | 0 | X
|
| Bottle | 1N | 1 | S
|
| Chair | 1N | 3 | L
|
| Baseball Bat | 2N | 2 | M
|
| Knife | 1 | 1 | S
|
| Crowbar | 2 | 2 | M
|
| Sword | 3 | 2 | M
|
| Chainsaw | 3 | 4 | L
|
| Axe | 3 | 3 | L
|
| Hammer | 2 | 1 | S
|
| Great Weapon | 4 | 4 | L
|
| Sign Post | 4N | 5 | L
|
| Fire Hydrant | 4 | 6 | L
|
| Car | 6N | 10 | H
|
| Lamp Post | 6N | 9 | H
|
Explosions
Can we make an explosion explode?
Sometimes things blow up, and in the movies things blow up even more. Even when we step outside the action genre, it is a recognized fact that objects in general in any media – including cooperative horror storytelling – are substantially more
explosive than they are in real life. Explosions physically expand in roughly spherical paths (barring the use of shaped charges), and thus in a general sort of way an explosion can be expected to become weaker as per the square of the distance from the point of origin. Except of course it's actually much more complicated than that, because there's gravity and air resistance, and shrapnel pieces that fly a lot more like bullets, and so on. More massive shrapnel flies farther as it loses less power to air resistance, and compression waves pass through denser media better than air. And so on. Game mechanically this is abstracted out into an explosion's
Damage (which is how much damage targets in the first area have to soak), and the same explosion's
Radius (which is how far that area extends). An explosion does damage to targets that are outside its Radius, but substantially less. A target that is farther away from the explosion than the Radius takes 2 less damage if they are within the Radius
of the Radius. And this continues until the Damage reaches zero. In effect, the explosion is modeled in the game as an onion where each band has a thickness of the Radius and does 2 less damage than the band before it. In a nod to the truly epic destruction caused by explosives that are actually adjacent to the target, an explosion will inflict 2
extra damage if the explosive is actually touching the target when it goes off.
An Explosion isn't normally affected by net hits on an attack roll, and inflict precisely the same damage if they are thrown perfectly as if they are detonated when simply dropped and forgotten. An exception to that is if an explosion is specifically placed to cause maximum damage. A character's Logic + Sabotage check can increase the damage bonus for a point blank explosion. Explosions are affected strongly by cover, and their damage ratings are reduced by the coverage and its toughness. Explosions do not necessarily inflict fire damage, even though they do act by burning. Unless otherwise noted, the primary damage is flying shrapnel and concussive force. Explosives can be wrapped in silver, wood chips, or steel in order to make that shrapnel into something that is especially effective against certain supernatural creatures.
| Explosives Table
|
| Weapon | Damage | Radius | size
|
| Hand Grenade | 6 | 6m | S
|
| Concussion Grenade | 6N | 2m | S
|
| Plastic Explosive Charge | 8 | 50 cm | S
|
| Car Gas Tank | 6F | 2m | L
|
| Land Mine | 3 | 1m | M
|
| Molotov Cocktail | 2F | 1m | M
|
| Flashbang | 1 | 1m | S
|
Other Hazards
Don't touch that. Or that either.
Falling: Characters will fall from time to time. And falling substantial distances actually can take quite an amount of time. However, in a 12 second combat round a character could fall over 600 meters – so for practical purposes it's usually best to simply have characters hit the ground after having just one Simple Action to try to do something about their situation. It is also true that “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” That's not just a trite saying that He Man gives before tripping giant robots, it's physical reality. Larger creatures have more mass proportional to their surface area and accelerate at the same speed, truly mice and ants can survive being dropped from any height and elephants can't even jump without breaking their bones on the way down. Game mechanically this truth is handled by preventing characters from using Strength or Armor to soak falling damage, and by having larger creatures take additional damage from falls. Characters can soak damage from falls by performing Agility + Athletics stunts with a threshold of 1 (net hits soak damage, but the first hit does not). Magical benefits for soaking damage do apply (as they make the character tougher relative to their mass rather than adding additional mass), so a character gains the benefits of Fortitude.
If the character falls onto a hard or sharp surface, increase damage by 1 or more. If the falling creature is large, increase the damage by 1 or more. If the falling creature is small, reduce the damage by 1 or more.
| Distance | Damage
|
| Petty (0-2m) | 1N
|
| Ordinary (3-4m | 2N
|
| Serious (5-6m) | 3
|
| Incapacitating (7-10m) | 4
|
| Terminal (11+ m) | 5 |
Electrocution: Electricity damage is something of a paradox. Electricity flows through the path of least resistance, and it inflicts damage based on the resistance of the path it flows through. Thus, you can defend yourself from electricity by covering yourself in high resistance insulation (because it will redirect electricity away from your body to another path)
or by covering yourself with low resistance conductive mesh (because it will
create a preferred path through the mesh and away from your organs). From the standpoint of the game, a character who is protected by especially conductive or non-conductive material is
immune to electrical shocks. Electricity is inherently unpredictable, whenever someone is electrocuted, roll a die – if it comes up a hit, increase the Damage by 1. Net hits on attacks with electrical outputs are not added to the damage of an electric shock.
| Shock | Damage
|
| Ordinary (Wall Socket) | 2N
|
| Serious (Electric Fence) | 3N
|
| Incapacitating (High Powered Taser) | 4N
|
| Terminal (Lightning Strike) | 5 |
Poison: Poison has a progressive effect that affects the target more as time goes on. Functionally this means that poison is
much slower than bullets or chainsaws. The way this is handled is that a character soaks the poison as if it were a normal damaging attack, and then rather than suffering the damage, they merely become
destined to take that amount of damage. The actual damage is portioned out over time, divided evenly among an amount of time equal to the poison's Speed. Characters with Patience of the Mountains or Tongue of the Serpent is immune to poisons. When a victim is exposed to additional doses before the first has run its course, the character's initial soak value is used and the damage is increased by 1. If a character is given anti-venom or some similar treatment, the character gains additional soak dice that affect the original roll. When the total value changes in this manner, the damage over time changes to accommodate the new total damage that will be received.
| Poison | Damage | Speed | Notes
|
| Tear Gas | 1N | 5 rounds | Provides a “dose” for each round of exposure.
|
| Pepper Spray | 3N | 2 rounds |
|
| Tranq Dart | 4N | 3 rounds | Fatigue
|
| Rat Poison | 5 | 1 hour | Ingested.
|
| Uranium | 1 | 3 months | Provides a “dose” for each five minutes of exposure.
|
| “Euphoric” | 2º | 1 round | Amnesia and Overstimulation
|
| “Hallucinogenic” | 2º | 1 round | Amnesia and Delusion
|
| “Paralytic” | 2º | 1 round | Paralysis
|
| “Soporific” | 2º | 1 round | Sleep
|
| “Toxic” | 5 | 2 rounds | Agony
|
- Poisons in Quotes are the magical poisons available with Tongue of the Serpent. The damage level may at the character's option be increased by the character's Potency.
When a Poison has a secondary effect, that effect generally lasts for 10 minutes to an hour.
º: This Poison doesn't actually do any damage, the damage level is just there so that secondary effects occur. At the Storyteller's option, overdoses may still be fatal if the damage level rises to Terminal.
Temporary Conditions
Just as water has no constant shape, so there are no constant conditions.
The following is a sample set of conditions that might transiently affect a character in aWoD games. These conditions are generic cases, it is entirely possible for a character to be “more Delusional” or whatever, in which case the raw numerics of the effect should be increased.
Agony: The victim is in incredible wracking pain. Their Wound penalties are calculated s if they had two more boxes filled in than they do with basic Nonlethal mark, up to a maximum of all boxes filled.
Amnesia: Drinking to the point of blacking out will cause a man to lose an evening, and in game terms when a character is no going to remember things they are operating under Amnesia. In the real world there are many ways to get to this state, most of which involve chemicals. When a character is operating under Amnesia they suffer a -2 dicepool penalty to actions and the threshold to resist acting impulsively (including succumbing to Frenzy) is increased by 1. Also remember that the character
won't remember anything, so it can sometimes be a good narrative tool to skip ahead in the story and then go back and roleplay those events later as a flashback.
Delusion: When a character is afflicted by Delusion they respond to things in an irrational fashion. Sometimes this can be well articulated as in the case where a character hallucinates tiny shapes moving in their peripheral vision they'll jump at shadows and, as they acclimatize themselves to their situation,
ignore actual moving objects. And that just looks disconcerting to other people. Sometimes a character's delusions will be harder to articulate, but they will be no less disconcerting to those around them. A character suffering from Delusions is opposed on all Social tests by 3 dice. And yes, they can end up with negative hits.
Fatigue: A character who is fatigued has a great deal of difficulty exerting themselves. They cannot perform an Exhausting Run or Draining Sprint. Also their Strength is reduced by 1. And yes, that means that their Soak is reduced. When the body's reserves are exhausted, they are more vulnerable.
Overstimulation: When a character's sensory input is greater than their ability to handle that sensory input, it can be disorienting and paralyzing. Usually this comes from being exposed to really bright lights or loud noises, such as those produced by a flashbang grenade. But it can also come from within by having a character's senses sensitized (such as from atropine, ecstasy, or the bit of a Ventrue). In any case, when a character is Overstimulated their Initiative is reduced by 2 and their physical actions suffer a -2 dicepool penalty. The character also needs to make an Intuition + Perception test with a threshold of 2 to even target specific things in the overstimulated sense.
Paralysis: A fully paralyzed character cannot move. They may or may not be able to move their eyes or blink, depending upon which is more horrible, but they cannot move their arms or even turn their head. The victim's Agility is zero. Paralysis often goes away gradually, with a victim regaining their Agility one point at a time.
-Username17
