Combat in the World of Darkness can be exciting and interesting, but also very dangerous. For your reference, we have gone ahead and provided a quick reference guide below. If you need help understanding inits, turns, dice rolling or just need a refresher on combat in general, then you should find this information very useful.

1. Initiative: Wits + Dexterity and add 1d10

2. Lowest score declares action first and continues until the highest initiative score declares.

3. The combat action pools are as follows:

• Hand to Hand: Roll Dexterity + Brawl
• Melee: Roll Dexterity + Melee
• Firearms: Roll Dexterity + Firearms

4. Regardless of what was declared a character can do an abort action if they have not acted. To abort character must spend a WP or make a WP roll at dif 8. Abort actions are Dodge, Block and Parry

• Block: Roll Dexterity + Brawl
• Dodge: Roll Dexterity + Dodge
• Parry: Roll Dexterity + Melee

5. Celerity actions go last after the everyone has cycled through their normal initiative actions.

6. You may split actions only for the normal initiative actions. This mean actions provided by celerity cannot be split.

7. You may perform different or multiple actions if you split and this is the new formula.

• Add the total number of actions together, this is subtracted off the top of each pool.
• For every additional action you subtract another die from that action pool.

8. Disciplines may never be part of a multiple action.

• Those powers that are "always on" like Celerity, Fortitude and Potence can be used.

9. A character can declare that they will only defend this turn and the way this works is like this: You can declare to dodge and get your full dice pool for the first dodge and then lose 1 die for each dodge afterward.

10. All successes on an attack roll past the first success add a die for the damage roll. Now the good news any successes on a defensive action removes successes from the attack. As always if you score equal or more defense successes the attack failed.

11. Dice penalties apply to all actions EXCEPT Soaking.

12. If you parry an attack with a weapon and score more successes you roll the weapon base + extra success over.

• The attack must be a "bare handed attack", you are basically putting your weapon in the way causing them to hurt themselves.

13. You cannot block Lethal or Aggravated Damage unless you have fortitude, armor of some sort or a weapon.

14. The three types of damage is Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated

14a. Bashing is caused by blunt trauma like punches

• You roll Stamina + Fortitude + Armor to soak.
• Vampires only take half of whatever Bash damage they did not soak.
• Fractions are dropped, minimum 1 level.

14b. Lethal damage is caused by guns, blades, car wrecks, long falls etc.

• Lethal Damage is soaked with Stamina + Fortitude + Armor.
• Mortals cannot soak Lethal unless they have vampire blood in their system. i.e. ghouls or revenants.
• Mortals can soak Lethal with armor points.

14c. Aggravated Damage is cause by either fire, sunlight, the natural weaponry of supernatural creatures, (i.e. claws and fangs) magic and special effects of Vampiric disciplines.

• Mortals cannot soak Aggravated damage without armor and only gets the armor rating.
• Ghouls and Vampires soak Aggravated with Fortitude + Armor only and for some things armor is useless like sunlight.

15. There are some powers that can allow characters to soak damage they otherwise could not.

16. If the characters declared action is impossible he may be able to change actions. To change a character must spend a Willpower or make a Willpower roll at dif 8.

Soaking:
Characters can resist a certain degree of physical punishment; this is called soaking damage. Your character's soak dice pool is equal to his/her Stamina. A normal human can soak only against bashing damage (this reflects the body's natural resilience to such attacks). A vampire (or other supernatural being) is tougher, and can thus use soak dice against lethal damage. Aggravate damage may be soaked only with the discipline of Fortitude. Against bashing or lethal damage, Fortitude adds to the defender's soak rating (so a character with Stamina 3 and Fortitude 2 has five soak dice against bashing and lethal damage, two soak dice against Aggravate damage).

Healing:
Vampires heal Bashing and Lethal by the expenditure of Blood points on a one for one basis.

Now on to Aggravated damage, one level of Aggravated damage may be healed, with a full day's rest and the expenditure of five Blood points. Now, extra levels can be healed at the cost of five Blood points and one Willpower per level healed.

In combat healing:
Vampires (and ghouls) have a chance to heal a level of lethal or bashing damage. The roll is Survival + Stamina at difficulty 8. Success means a blood point is spent and a level of damage is healed. Failure means no damage was healed but the blood point is still spent and a botch means that an additional level of damage is taken.

The Ways of War:
People don't walk around carrying two shotguns, a broadsword, three hand guns, an automatic pistol, a motley array of ammunition and ten grenades on them. Keep in mind, the idea is to conceal your weapons, otherwise you will arouse suspicion. Vampires are lethal enough when unarmed, let alone when they have a Glock in their possession.

Bizarre or outrageous weapons (Ruger Cassulls, Desert Eagles, some martial arts weapons etc.) might be questioned. If you plan to use something bizarre, please include that in your character sheet.

Dragonsbreath, White Phosphorus and the like are NOT allowed, period.

Those characters with low resources (or no resources) should not have lots and lots of weapons. A richer member of a gang can provide for the others (theft is also an option), but this only goes so far. This rule can also be extended to possessions. I hate to even have to list this rule, and hope it never needs to be enforced.