Combat

When words fail — or when the other side stops listening — the scene turns to violence. Combat in the World of Darkness runs on the same d10 pool system as everything else: your Attribute + Skill dice, 6–9 counting as one success each, 10s counting as two, 1–5 counting nothing. What changes is the stakes: every roll decides who takes damage, who gets hurt, and who walks away.

The Turn

At the start of a fight, everyone rolls initiative: Dexterity + Awareness (no difficulty). The character with the highest result acts first, then the next, and so on down the line. When scores tie, act in whatever order the table agrees on — the trigger-happy usually go first. A bad initiative check simply means you're reacting to events instead of shaping them.

You get one action per turn. That action can be an attack, an evade, a grapple, a draw, a dash for the door, a shouted surrender, or a power. If you want to squeeze in more — strike twice, fire and reload, attack while kicking someone over a table — each extra action in the same turn takes a cumulative −2 dice penalty. Two actions: −2 on both. Three: −4 on all three. You can also move around the scene as part of your action; you're assumed to be closing, circling, and ducking behind cover while you fight.

The Round, In Four Steps

Every turn of combat follows the same shape:

1. Roll initiative — everyone rolls Dexterity + Awareness and the order is set.
2. Act in order — each character takes their one action: attack, evade, grapple, flee, cast, surrender, or stall.
3. Resolve the exchange — contested rolls are compared, damage pools are rolled, results are applied immediately.
4. Check the scene — who's down, who's fled, who's bleeding? If anyone is still standing and still fighting, go back to step 2 and continue in the same order.

If a new combatant arrives mid-scene, they roll initiative and slot in where their result falls.

Attacking and Defending

An attack is your-pool-versus-their-pool:

• Attack pool = your relevant Attribute + Skill — Strength or Dexterity with Brawl, Melee, or Firearms, depending on how you fight.
• Defense pool = the target's best of Dexterity + Athletics or Wits + Awareness.
• If your successes beat their Defense successes, your margin is how cleanly you hit.

If you win, roll the damage pool: your margin + your weapon's modifier. Every success on that roll is 1 point of Health damage.

If you lose the contest, you simply fail to connect. If you tie, nothing lands and the exchange ends in a standoff — seized wrists, locked blades, a beat of hard breathing before someone commits.

Evading, Surprise, and Armor

You don't have to attack. A defender who spends their turn evading adds +2 dice to their Defense pool instead of acting — that's the whole turn, no attack, no power, just survival. It's the right call when you're outnumbered, wounded, or waiting for someone else to make the first mistake.

Surprise changes everything. A target who didn't see the attack coming — jumped from an alley, shot from a rooftop, hit mid-sentence — rolls no Defense pool at all. Their Dexterity + Athletics or Wits + Awareness counts for nothing if they never saw the knife. Resolve the attack against an agonizingly low bar, and the margin is usually vicious.

Armor adds half its rating (rounded down) to your Defense pool. Leather that protects +2 gives you +1 die; a +5 armored coat means +2. It stacks with evasion, and it does nothing against the margin of a hit you never saw coming.

Grapples

Sometimes you don't want to put a hole in someone — you want to put them on the ground. A grapple is a Brawl attack contested against their Defense pool as usual. Win, and you have them: the victim is held until they break free, which takes another contested roll — their escape attempt against your grip. While held, their options are limited to struggling, shouting, or waiting for someone else to intervene. A grapple is also the classic way to drag someone out of a scene that's going badly.

Flight and Surrender

You are never trapped in a fight. Flight is always an option — break for the door, vault the fence, dive into the crowd. The Storyteller may call for Athletics to outrun pursuit, but the rules never forbid running. Surrender is always an option too, and it's the smarter play more often than pride admits: drop the weapon, put your hands up, say the words. Whether the other side accepts is their choice — but a surrendered opponent is a problem, and problems get complicated, and complicated is where you survive. A fight you walk away from is a fight you won.

Damage and the Downed

Not all damage is equal. Bashing (bruises, chair legs, falls) knocks a character out at 0 Health and heals with hours of rest. Lethal (knives, bullets, broken glass) needs treatment and heals slowly. Aggravated — claws, fangs, fire — heals over months, if at all, and is the damage that kills.

Your Health equals Stamina + 3. At 0 Health you are incapacitated: on your feet or not, you cannot act, and the fight is over for you — until someone decides it isn't.

Killing blows are deliberate. A downed opponent at 0 Health doesn't take more damage from a normal hit the way you'd expect — they're already out. To end someone for good, you make a deliberate killing blow: a knife driven into the throat, a fire lit, claws sunk deep on purpose. This is an aggravated attack on a helpless target — they roll no Defense, your margin is a formality, and every success on the damage pool drives them further toward death. Aggravated damage on a downed mortal can kill — and that is a choice your character makes with both eyes open. The tool is simple. The price is not mechanical.

When It Goes Wrong

You've cornered the informant in the warehouse and it could not be going better. Your first punch lands — your dice are hot, he's bleeding, the backup is still two blocks out. You decide to finish it fast: extra action, attack again. That's −2 dice. His evade? He spends his turn diving sideways, +2 dice to his Defense. Your second swing comes up short, he's on his feet, and the −2 penalty is still stinging. You go for a grapple to hold him down — third action, −4 dice now. He doesn't grapple back. He just pulls the gun from the crate you were standing next to and fires while you're mid-lunge. No penalty on his shot. Your Defense pool is a whisper because you're committed to the grab.

One margin later and the knife is out of your hand and the informant is walking out with a whole story to sell. The night isn't over — but the plan is.

Combat is a transaction. If you trade your action economy early, someone else dictates the ending. Spend your Willpower when a roll matters, keep one action for the unexpected, and remember: the exit is always open.