Complete Combat and Conflict Rules

This chapter gathers the system’s most detailed rules for fighting, resisting harm, enduring mental pressure, and resolving social clashes. Use it when a scene needs more clarity than the short summary chapters provide.

1. The flow of a fight

A fight is a series of rounds. Each round, every participant takes one major action, one quick action before or after it, and any amount of free action speech or small interaction. A round usually represents a few tense seconds.

Establish before the first roll:

• What each side wants
• What the environment offers
• Who is exposed, who is concealed, and who is cut off
• What the immediate stakes are

Keep asking three questions each turn: What do you want? What stands in the way? What will it cost?

2. Initiative and spotlight

Roll Dexterity + Wits at the start of the fight. Highest total acts first. Keep that order for the round. On a tie, the character with the higher Dexterity acts first; if still tied, resolve it by fiction or roll again.

The initiative order is also a spotlight order. After a character acts, the next character in the order becomes the focus. If a character chooses to hold their action, they may act later in the same round or act first in the next round.

3. Actions

Major action

Choose one of the following:

• Attack
• Grapple or break free from a grapple
• Aim
• Dodge defensively
• Use a Discipline or other supernatural power
• Interact with an object or environment in a meaningful way
• Feeding or drinking blood
• Command, persuade, intimidate, or demoralize
• Move a significant distance and take cover

Quick action

Before or after the major action, a character may do something small and immediate:

• Draw or switch a weapon
• Shout a one-sentence command
• Open or close a door
• Take hold of an object within reach
• Take one step of movement

Free action

Free actions include short speech, small gestures, and obvious environmental interaction that takes no time at all.

4. Movement

A character can move a short distance for free. A significant movement—a sprint across a room, climbing a wall, or repositioning behind cover—costs a major action. Use the following guidance:

• Short movement is included in a free action
• Standard repositioning is a quick action
• Athletic movement is a major action and usually requires Dexterity + Athletics

5. Attacks

Attack pools

Choose the pool from the fiction:

• Close combat: Strength + Brawl or Strength + Melee
• Ranged combat: Dexterity + Firearms
• Ambush: Dexterity + Stealth
• Disarm: Dexterity + Melee or Strength + Brawl
• Grapple: Strength + Brawl
• Creative attack: Storyteller-assigned Attribute + Skill

Difficulty

Set difficulty from 1 to 5 based on the target’s awareness, cover, range, visibility, pressure, and armor.

• 1 – easy but still dangerous
• 2 – standard challenge
• 3 – difficult
• 4 – severe
• 5 – extraordinary

Attack margin

A successful attack does weapon damage + extra successes above the difficulty. Extra successes can improve damage, create a tactical advantage, or inflict a condition.

6. Defense

Defense is an action, not a fixed number.

Active defense

When the defender wants to avoid, resist, or fight back, choose the appropriate pool:

• Evasion: Dexterity + Athletics
• Fighting back: Strength + Brawl or Strength + Melee
• Soaking: Stamina + Athletics or a supernatural power
• Resisting social pressure: Composure + Resolve, or another appropriate pool

Passive defense

If the defender is not actively resisting, the attacker rolls at the normal difficulty and applies damage if successful.

Dodging

If a character spends their major action to dodge, they gain +2 dice to resist or avoid the next attack made against them before their next turn. They cannot take another major action that round.

7. Damage and harm

Damage types

• Superficial (S): bruising, minor cuts, fatigue, and harm a vampire can recover with time
• Aggravated (A): severe trauma, fire, sunlight, claws, fangs, and other harm that resists normal recovery

The Health track

Each character has a Health track with 3 + Stamina boxes. Mark from left to right.

• When the track is full, the character is impaired and cannot act normally.
• Further damage converts an existing superficial mark to aggravated before adding new aggravated marks.
• A completely aggravated track leaves the character incapacitated.

Weapons and damage

Record each weapon’s base damage. A normal melee weapon might deal 1 or 2 damage. A heavy weapon might deal 3. Improvised weapons usually deal 1. Bites and claws may deal damage plus a special effect. Firearms range from 1 to 4 depending on type and ammunition.

Armor

Armor does not add Health boxes. Instead, it reduces danger in one of these ways, chosen by the Storyteller based on the fiction:

• Reduce incoming damage by its rating
• Raise the attack difficulty against the character
• Soak a fixed amount of damage after the roll

Light armor may reduce 1 damage, medium 2, heavy 3. Supernatural protection may use another benefit.

8. Grappling

A grapple begins with an opposed Strength + Brawl roll. The winner becomes the controller; the loser is held.

• A held character can move only with the controller’s permission.
• On subsequent rounds, the controller may maintain the grapple as a quick action and take another major action, or use the major action to throw, restrain, pin, slam, or bite.
• A held character may break free with a successful Strength + Brawl or Dexterity + Athletics roll.
• A pinned character suffers –2 dice on all rolls and is vulnerable to decisive actions.

9. Called shots and called effects

When a character wants to cause a specific outcome, use a called effect instead of a generic damage roll.

• Disarm: Dexterity + Melee vs. Strength + Melee; success removes the weapon
• Incapacitate a limb: –1 difficulty but the weapon may deal only superficial damage
• Hammerblow: +1 damage but the attacker suffers +1 difficulty or loses defense
• Precise strike: –1 damage but inflicts a condition such as Stunned or Pinned

10. Cover and terrain

The environment should be as important as any dice pool.

• Concealment: +1 to +2 difficulty
• Partial cover: –1 die or +1 difficulty to hit
• Heavy cover: attacks cannot land unless the attacker repositions
• Difficult terrain: costs extra movement or adds 1–2 dice to relevant Athletics checks
• Low light: +1 difficulty
• Pitch dark: +2 difficulty, or attacks beyond close range are impossible without supernatural senses

11. Aim and rapid fire

Aim

Spend your major action to aim. Add +1 die to your next attack this round. If you aim for two consecutive rounds before attacking, add +2 dice.

Rapid fire

You may fire multiple times in one round at +1 difficulty per additional shot after the first. Each shot is resolved separately.

12. Feeding in combat

Feeding during a fight is possible but reckless. Make a Brawl or Stealth attack at +1 difficulty, then narrate the feeding. Afterward:

• Make a Rouse check
• Reduce Hunger according to the Storyteller
• Deal with the victim’s condition
• A messy critical or bestial failure creates a major complication such as frenzy, witnesses, or a ruined Masquerade

13. Frenzy and loss of control

When terror, rage, or hunger overwhelms self-control, call for a Resolve + Composure roll at difficulty 2–5.

• Success: the character holds on but takes a condition such as Shaken, Fixated, or Withdrawn
• Failure: the Beast chooses the immediate action—fight, flee, feed, or protect the trigger
• Bestial failure: the loss of control is public, violent, or costly, and it creates a lasting consequence

Frenzy is not a punishment for rolling badly. It is a story event that exposes what the Beast wants.

14. Combat conditions

Record ongoing conditions in the character’s Conditions section. Common examples include:

• Blinded – +2 difficulty to ranged attacks, –1 to melee
• Stunned – cannot use a major action next turn
• Pinned – cannot move, –2 to resist
• Disarmed – must retrieve the weapon or fight unarmed
• Grappling – locked in close combat; use Strength + Brawl to control
• Bleeding – lose 1 Health each round unless you take a quick action to staunch it
• Panicked – must move away from the source; –2 to all actions until you act to regain composure
• Fixated – must pursue the object of fixation if a safe opportunity appears
• Humbled – –2 to Social rolls until you take a meaningful step to restore face
• Exposed – next Masquerade mistake has amplified consequences

A condition should always answer three questions: what it prevents, what it modifies, and what ends it.

15. Social conflict

Social conflict is a fight for leverage, status, fear, love, or trust. Define what each side wants, what each side risks, and whether both sides can resist.

Common social pools

• Persuasion: Charisma + Persuasion
• Deception: Manipulation + Subterfuge
• Intimidation: Manipulation + Intimidation
• Leadership: Charisma + Leadership
• Insight: Wits + Empathy or Intelligence + Investigation
• Resisting social pressure: Composure + Resolve

The margin of success

• 1 extra success creates a small concession
• 2 or more forces a meaningful concession or condition
• A critical creates a decisive shift with a complication

A winner does not usually get automatic obedience. Instead, they gain a concession: the other side agrees, backs off, loses face, reveals information, grants a favor, or accepts a debt.

16. Mental and emotional conflict

Mental conflict is a clash of will, memory, identity, and fear. Use it when a character must resist compulsion, dominate, terror, obsession, grief, or supernatural madness.

Common mental pools

• Resisting fear or panic: Resolve + Composure
• Resisting a command or supernatural compulsion: Resolve + Occult, Intelligence + Investigation, or another appropriate Attribute + Skill
• Resisting despair or emotional collapse: Resolve + Empathy or Resolve + Composure
• Projecting supernatural pressure: Discipline dots + Charisma, Manipulation, or Intelligence

Resisting influence

A target can often spend 1 Willpower to resist, reduce, or escape supernatural influence. If the influence succeeds, it creates a condition, a compulsion, or a temporary alteration in behavior rather than a total rewrite of identity.

17. Supernatural influence

When Dominate, Presence, fear, or another supernatural force is used:

• State the delivery method and the target’s opportunity to resist.
• Name the immediate effect clearly.
• Give the target a visible path to resist, escape, or recover.
• Do not erase the player’s ability to make meaningful choices.

A supernatural effect should create pressure, altered priority, emotional compulsion, or missing memory. It should not become invisible puppetry.

18. Breaking points and long-term conditions

When a conflict leaves a lasting mark, record it as a condition or a story consequence. A long-term condition should change the character’s future choices, not just penalize a single roll.

Examples:

• Exposed – you must repair your reputation or identity
• Obsessed – you must pursue a person, clue, or desire
• Addicted – you must feed the craving or suffer escalating penalties
• Haunted – a memory, ghost, or supernatural pressure follows you
• Broken – you cannot use a social pool until you undertake meaningful recovery

19. Retreat, surrender, and aftermath

When a fight ends, ask what was gained and what was lost. A character may:

• Flee with something important
• Surrender and accept a debt
• Be captured
• Lose a Background, Status, or piece of equipment
• Suffer a lasting injury or condition
• Be forced into a feeding frenzy or Masquerade violation

The aftermath should be as meaningful as the fight itself.

20. Running fights quickly

Keep fights tight by using the following rhythm:

1. Ask the character’s goal.
2. Name the obstacle.
3. Ask if they are willing to pay the cost.
4. Roll, apply the margin, and narrate the result.
5. Update Health, Hunger, Willpower, or conditions.
6. Pass the spotlight.

Combat should never be a series of empty attacks. It should be a series of choices.