Game Mechanics and Combat

This should help speed things up greatly; It will serve as a guide for those that are unfamiliar with combat, and should help make rulings on a few peculiar combat situations.

In order to know how to run combat, you must first know some basics, like how to run a challenge. A lot of this basic information is applicable to non-combat situations, thus, the game mechanics portion.

The Basic Rules

1. Combat, unlike the rest of the game, is divided into rounds.
   
2. Under normal circumstances, each character gets one action per round.
   
3. Actions that are difficult, and actions that other forces are working to prevent require a challenge.
4. If a character chooses to attack as his action, and successfully completes the necessary challenge, he inflicts one wound level.
5. The character's current physical state (e.g. wounds, missing eye, jimmy leg) may impair or prevent him from attempting certain actions.
6. Certain Items, disciplines, or abilities change these rules.
   

The Challenge

There are a few different types of challenges. The most common type is when two characters are acting against each other. The nature of the challenge can be physical, mental, or social. This means they must each bid a physical, mental, or social trait against the other. Each participant states what they want to happen as a result of the challenge. e.g. Arnold says: "I want to punch him in the face, because I'm so damn vigorous," Brett says "I want to soak the damage, because I'm Robust as all get-out."

Optional (and often overlooked): Either party may try and use one of the other character's negative traits against him -- e.g. Brett says: "You may be vigorous, but I'm going to take advantage of the fact that you are really hideously flabby." Arnold must bid an additional trait, or if he has no more traits to bid, Brett is up one more trait in the case of a tie or overbid.

If Brett guesses wrong, then he must bid an additional trait of his own.

They then play paper-scissors-rock. If there is a winner, that person wins the challenge. If there is a tie, the person who has the largest number of traits in the specified category wins the challenge. Note that if you have lost traits from previous challenges, this does not count against your total, i.e. use the number of traits that you had when you woke up, not the number of traits that you have left to use. If both characters have the same number of traits, then they must test again. The player who loses the challenge loses all traits that he bid; if Arnold failed the test, then he no longer has the "vigorous" trait.

After the test is finished, the outcome is as the winner declared before the paper-scissors-rock. If Arnold won the test, then Brett has been punched in the face, and has lost a level of health. if Brett wins the test, then he has been punched in the face, but is so robust that it did him no damage.

The other, less common types are static challenges and simple challenges. A simple challenge involves no traits, and a static challenge is when one character bids a trait against a number that represents the difficulty of the task; no other characters are attempting to stop the acting character from doing what he is trying to do.

Another optional thing is overbidding. When one character believes he has more than double his opponents number of traits, then he can overbid. Overbidding gives the character a retest when he loses the paper-scissors-rock part of the test. The character states that he desires to overbid, and then tells how many traits he has, or a number that is less than the number of traits he has. If this number is more than double what the opponent has, then another test is made, and another trait is bid; the one that the overbidder bid for the original challenge is already lost.

Retests

After the initial Paper-scissors-rock, a winner is decided. The loser loses his trait. Assume Arnold wins, and hits Brett. Brett loses a trait, but he has a point in dodge. Brett says "Retest dodge; I may not be robust enough, but damned if I'll let you get your filthy hands on me to find out!" (this sort of melodrama is actually frowned upon.) They once again play paper-scissors-rock, no more traits are bid, but Brett's point in dodge is bid. Ties are decided the same as before, using max traits. If Arnold wins, Brett is successfully hit, and may not use his dodge again for the rest of the night. If Brett wins, Arnold may retest with an appropriate ability. Note: loss of traits is decided after the first Paper-scissors-rock; If you have two points in the same ability (e.g. dodge x 2) you can only use that ability once per action. Also note that you cannot use brawl, and then dodge. It is only one ability per challenge.

Kindred and Damage

Healthy, Bruised, Wounded, Incapacitated, and Torpor. You start out healthy, and after you get hit once, you are bruised, and so on (Not - you get hit once, and then you are healthy, then again and you are bruised).

As each level of health is taken away, the character becomes more decrepit. Each level of damage takes them one step closer to Torpor, until the victim is incapacitated. Once the victim has reached the level "incapacitated," each wound level removes a point of blood. When the victim has no more blood, the next wound done to him will drive him into Torpor.

To go the other way, and heal wounds, the wounded kindred must spend one blood point.

With each wound that a character takes, it becomes more difficult to succeed in his endeavors. This is worked into the game with "wound penalties." Each level of damage has a new and more horrid amount of decrepitude enforced upon you. Note that you can ignore wound penalties for one round by spending a willpower point. It goes thusly -

Healthy

You're not wounded yet, so there is no wound penalty.

Bruised

You must bid two traits to initiate a challenge. Thusly, you will be losing traits much more quickly.

Wounded

You must bid two traits to initiate or defend challenges, plus you lose Paper-scissors-rock ties, regardless of how many traits you have.

Incapacitated

You cannot do anything. You are at the mercy of those around you. You lose challenges. You are somewhat aware of your surroundings, and can whisper. You can, however, spend blood to heal yourself.

Beat the blood out of them

Before a vampire reaches torpor, he will remain incapacitated until he has no blood left. Each blood point acts as a health level. Kindred in frenzy, and those with fortitude do not suffer wound penalties until they reach this stage -- They behave normally until now, where they immediately suffer wound penalties as if they were incapacitated.

Torpor

You are even more out of the picture than you were before. You're not going anywhere, or doing anything, unless somebody else does it for you. You are entirely unconscious and unaware of your surroundings.

As you probably noticed, dead is not present in this list. Kindred are immortal, pretty much -- as stated directly above, when they run out of health, they are driven into torpor. This is a deep deep sleep, which is basically equivalent to human death, with one major exception: It isn't necessarily permanent. Kindred in Torpor do not grow old, or rot, or anything else, they just lie there, unaware of their surroundings. No amount of normal damage will make them any worse off than they already are.

The Kindred may be revived by being fed a point of blood from any kindred of a lower generation.

The typical way to disable a kindred who needs to be stopped from what he is doing is to stake him. This means pounding a sharp piece of wood into the kindred's heart. While this sounds pretty disgusting, it is much more civilized than trying to send the enemy to torpor or final death. Most Kindred realize that immortality is a big deal, their opponent may have their next 400 years planned out, and it would be a pity to throw all that away over something petty. With a stake to the chest, the cainite is on ice, completely harmless, until the stake is removed. If you are the one who ends up staked, it is useful to know that you are in fact aware of your surroundings, you just can't do anything about it.

As you would assume, staking is a physical challenge. It also causes a wound level of damage. Note that the heart does not have a convenient x for aiming purposes, nor does it have a pilot hole to guide your stake into place. Therefore, in addition to the initial physical challenge versus the object of staking, the staker must win two simple challenges to see if the stake is seated correctly. Assuming that the intended victim is not restrained, The staker loses all ties on the two simple tests. If the intended staking victim is being held still, the staker wins ties, and if the victim is incapacitated or in torpor, then it is only one simple test, staker wins ties. For any of these simple tests, there are no possible retests except luck.

As durable as vampires are, it is still possible for a Kindred to be killed and never come back. This is called "Final Death," or Destruction. There are two ways to do this:

1. The victim has no health, and no blood, and then takes an additional aggravated wound.
2. The victim is decapitated.

At this point, you'll want to know what an aggravated wound is. Well, it's otherwise like a normal wound level, bringing the victim one point closer to torpor, but it is much more difficult to heal, much more serious. Instead of only one blood point, the wounded kindred must spend 3 blood points, and a willpower point. Only one aggravated wound may be healed per night.

What constitutes an aggravated wound?

Aggravated	Non-Aggravated
Fire, Protean "Wolf Claws", Werewolf claws, Sunlight, Extremely Potent Individuals, Flare Gun, Bonecraft Wounds, Vampire Fangs, supernatural stuff.	Fists, pocket knives, big cuts, Wooden Stakes, bludgeoning weapons, ordinary gunfire, papercuts, "neat" stab wounds, cauldron of blood, silver bullets, most stuff.

Decapitation

Decapitation, in kindred terms, means that the brain is no longer connected to the heart. The head may be cut off, or utterly destroyed. If you are particularly ambitious, I guess you could attempt to remove the heart. I guess if you have potence 4 and a big, really sharp tempered steel cookie cutter, or a post-hole-digger, then I guess you could do that in a hurry.

Dismemberment and Mutilation

Since I brought up the removal of the head, you may be wondering what happens in the event of the removal of other body parts. Well, you can't use the removed part for a while, but otherwise, you're fine without them. You don't lose blood through large open wounds, because you're heart isn't beating, so blood isn't getting pushed out. Congratulations.

Body parts that are removed regenerate slowly, not automatically. An arm takes 6 months to return, a hand 4 weeks. Other body parts are decided accordingly.

Armor

Armor in MLS falls into 3 different categories; light, medium, and heavy. These categories reflect a combination of concelability and defense for the armor. You can have kevlar armor that is under the quality of light if say it is old, used, and has some hole in it. Each type of armor has a defense rating. The defense rating is how many times you can fail before the armor is considered useless. Each time it fails, it also drops a category in defense, i.e. Heavy would become medium, which would become light. The benefit of armor is that it simulates the 2nd level of fortitude. You get an armor test against taking damage. The different types are explained below.

Light: armor is concealable beneath a heavy sweater or light jacket. It has 1 point of defense and you must win the armor test for it to work. After 1 fail this category of armor is useless.

Medium: armor is concealable beneath items like winter coats, possible even trench coats. It has 2 points of defense. If you tie on an armor test, keep testing until one person wins the challenge.

Heavy: armor is not concealable. Think of this type of armor as NY police full riot gear, or maybe reinforced plate mail. Heavy armor has a defense rating of 3, and wins on a win or tie for armor tests.

There are some situations where armor doesn't protect you, or at least doesn't protect you totally. Against Aggravated damage you still get an armor test, except that it only reduces it to normal damage. You do not get another test to reduce that to nothing. Armor won't protect you against called shots unless the armor you have covers that portion of your body as well. Against magic, armor may or may not work at the ST's discrection.

**NOTE** It takes time, money, effort and influences to get armor. It is easier to get light armor as oppossed to medium armor. Be prepared to have a very plausible story and reason as to why you should have armor and how you came to possess it.

Weapons

Weapons hurt people, and are bad. Now that the lesson is out of the way, I can get off the soapbox and start talking about game mechanics again. Most weapons do one point of damage a round, just like your fists. The advantage that a weapon gives you is in traits, thusly making you more likely to succeed in your attack.

For instance - a gun gives you two bonus traits. These two traits are added to your own traits in the event of a tie. They can also be calculated towards an overbid. (e.g. Arnold has 4 physical traits, and Brett has 7. Brett is shooting Arnold with his gun, and the gun gives him 2 bonus traits. Suppose that Brett loses the challenge to Arnold (Arnold uses paper, Brett uses rock) - Brett, who has 9 traits with the gun, can overbid for a retest.)

Weapons can also have negative traits. Most guns are loud, Stakes are clumsy. This adds a little realism, because if you've been attacked with a stake before, you may know that it is a clumsy weapon, and use that against your attacker. Negative Traits for weapons can be used againt the attacker just as if the attacker possessed that negative trait.

The second big advantage of weapons can be added range. You can shoot people from far away. If you are too far away, you must make a mental challenge to aim your gun. This range is increased as you have more points in the firearms ability.

Combat Abilities

Brawl

This allows you to retest challenges in hand to hand combat - e.g. wrestling, boxing, martial arts,wet willies, wedgies, grappling. You can retest with brawl offensively or defensively in a hand to hand, unarmed situation. Brawl can be used to defend against an attacker with a weapon.

Melee

This retests challenges for attacking with weapons like knives, swords, broken bottles, clubs, etc.

Dodge

This allows you to retest when someone is attacking you. Mind the fact that if you are dodging, you cannot remain latched onto somebody. If you are grappled to someone, you must let go to dodge.

Firearms

Firearms refers to any weapon that is hurled through the air, whether it be javelins, arrows, or bullets. You can retest challenges when you are attacking with these weapons. Firearms also allows you to use your mental traits when attacking with a gun, instead of physical, and allows you to shoot from longer range.

Occult

Occult can be used to retest certain Thaumaturgy attacks.

Feeding as an attack

1. You must make a physical challenge to grapple your opponent. This takes one normal combat action (i.e. one round, without celerity), and does no damage to the opponent. If your opponent has not yet made an action this round, then he can make a challenge to escape before you can begin feeding. If your opponent went before you this round, then he will also go before you next round.
2. At the second round, you can feed at will. Your bite does a point of aggravated damage (If you desire, you can heal wounds made with your own fangs by licking them.) You can never use blood beyond your capacity. It simply spills off or something.

   Note: Even with celerity, you can only consume 1 blood point per round. You have become superhumanly fast and coordinated, you have not become a wet/dry vac.

3. You can continue to feed, one blood point per round, as long as your opponent fails to disengage himself from you. If you only want the blood (not to do damage) then you do not have to inflict another wound with each round. If you do want to continue to inflict aggravated wounds on your victim, you must make a physical challenge against him each time. (The rationale is that it takes more squirming around to do more damage to him.)

Crazy stuff

Called Shots

You don't just want to hit them, you want to hit them in a specific spot. This requires extra simple tests (retest on ties; no traits involved). For a small target, like the hand, 2 tests. For a large target, like the chest, 1 test. For spots that could cause instant death, we reserve the right to make it more difficult. Like decapitation, this means winning two simple tests, and you lose ties.

Firing two guns at once

If you are using two guns at once, you will be not as good with either of them. Instead of using your own traits for the challenge, use half of your traits, + the bonus for the gun. ( (traits/2) + gun , not (traits+gun)/2 for the mathematically inclined.) Round down on odd numbers.

Unconsciousness

Kindred don't go unconscious unless beaten to incapacitation (which is really only semi-consciousness) or torpor. Humans however, can be knocked unconscious by a significant blow to the head (physical challenge). This requires an additional simple test, retest on ties.

The Triple Lindy

3 Physical challenges versus 10 traits, retest with performance: diving

How to run combat

I'm diving head first into this little how-to manual; I'm not sure where I'm going with it, but hopefully it will clear things up. The main focus of this is to help you make combat go faster. As an unbiased arbitrator in a combat situation, your primary goal is to make the fight happen as quickly as possible. Time stops really screw up RP very badly, so you want to be done as quick as possible.

First, make a note of where everyone is; Everyone anywhere near. Announce that there is a time stop for everyone involved.

We start out with round one.

Respectfully ask everyone involved to be quiet and listen to you. Ask everyone to tell you if they are using celerity, they should respond with the number of the celerity that they are using. Whoever has the biggest number goes first. For those of you that like to see all the possibilities, here is the worst case scenario for combat with celerity - each part can take as long as an ordinary round.

C6 C5 C6 C5 C4 C3 C1&2 - Normal Speed Actions - C6 C5 C4 C3 C6 C4

I always seem to end up with celerity 1 through 4 all there at once. This is a lot of actions, but look on the bright side - If everybody has different celerity, you definitely know who goes when, and the guys without celerity may be beaten out of the combat before they can do a lot of stuff.

Well, that's how you decide which group of people gets to go. When you know who is going simultaneously, Just treat them all like they are going during a Normal Turn.

The Turn

Ask them to tell you what they want to do, in as few words as possible. I always try to simplify their action to some nondescript function, such as "hurt," "push," or "run." Just think of what will be different when they are done; There really aren't very many variables - They or the victim could be hurt, they could be in a different place, they could be holding something, or disabled.

Next find out who or what is stopping them from doing what they want to do. This is how you decide what challenges get done. Usually, this is easy to figure out. Here are a few things that can screw stuff up, and my recommended solutions.

Somebody wants to use one person as a weapon against another

Have the attacker test versus the weapon/victim #1. If he loses, that's that. If he wins, then the weapon/victim #1 can be used as a weapon, and hurt or whatever it is that the attacker wanted to do. For the second victim, the attacker must win a challenge versus the cumulative number of traits of both victims. Sound hard? It is! You should try it in a bar some time! (I just thought of that, that's so much more simple than what we used to do, ingenious)

Somebody wants to do two things at once

Well, you can't. (usually) If one of the things is really easy, like falling off a log (seriously) then let them do the other action, but put them few bids down. Two is a popular number for that. If neither of the actions is really easy, then you just can't do both of them. He has to pick one.

Order of Events in Combat

It's easy to get hung up on who goes first during a turn. Well, don't get hung up on it. It's not very often that if matters. Just pick one of them to go first, and don't impose any wound penalties on the second guy until the next round. They might as well have gone at the same time. For the special cases where it is important to know who goes first, consider these rules of thumb:

1. Logic wins in initiative. This is a catch all; i.e. More complex actions take longer to do. Consider what makes sense before anything else.
2. If you want to see what someone else is doing before you decide what you are doing, then your character doesn't get to do his action until after that other person.
3. If it's really a big deal, and you can't decide, do a static physical challenge. Trait totals are used for deciding ties, but no traits are lost on this challenge.
4. Mental and Social Actions: Each of these are a little different, and should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Usually, I do it like this: Mental (Speed of thought), Social (Usually involves talking, so speed of sound), and physical (speed of your hulking physique).

Surprise: If somebody initiates a physical challenge, and the opponent doesn't respond at all (within three seconds), or for some other logical reason, your opponent ought to be surprised, then he can't try to hit you back until next round. This is usually impossible after the first round of combat. In addition, the victim can not use abilities to retest the attack. Luck, and Fortitude retests are still available though.

How to participate in combat

• Establish your goals - Do you want to kill someone, protect someone, escape . . .? It is important that you keep your focus. It will make your decisions easier and the combat will be over much faster.
• Think in terms of game mechanics. What will really be different at the end of your action? If you want him hurt, just hurt him. It's a physical challenge, and he'll be hurt if you win it.
• Please decide what you want to do before the ST asks you. Describe it as simply and quickly as possible (But don't forget important details. If you want to knock someone to the ground, Don't just say you hit him and expect the storyteller to say he's on the ground. This may sound kind of obscure, but it happens all the time. Alex kept doing that at the practice combat.)
• Don't forget to mark off every trait, every blood point, and every ability that you lose. If the fight comes to fruition, you will need every single one of them, and if you use more than you have, everyone will be very dissappointed in you.
• Keep your character sheet in your left hand, keep a pen in your right hand. Move the pen to your left hand when you are playing paper-scissors-rock. You'll know instantly if you still have another Brawl left. You will know instantly if you have to bid extra traits as a wound penalty.
• Don't mime your character's actions unless specifically asked to. (Talking with your hands is permissible.)
• Plan ahead - Right Now, do you know what your options are in a fight? Don't forget presence. You can be sure to survive a fight if it never starts.
• Do the paper scissors rock quickly. I don't know why everyone feels the need to count to three in actual seconds, or even at all. With three retests, a simple action can take way too long.
• The ST doesn't have to be watching while you play paper scissors rock. If you don't know what you can do with your abilities, he'd be happy to give you a few pointers, but don't make him babysit you.
• Don't forget: No Touching!!