Narrative Combat for Vampire
Article by Matt Machell (February 2002)
One of my bugbears with Vampire is the rules for combat are incredibly slow and involved. In any situation where more than two combatents or powerful elders are involved, combat can drag, slowing the pace of the story and bogging things down in pointless dice rolling.
The following are a few rules I've been kicking around, with a view to streamlining WW combat into something quicker and with a more story orientated resolution. I'd be interested in constructive criticism on these ideas, and any improvements you can think of. People who have read the rules of Covenant will probably note some similiarities.
Each protagonist in a combat first creates a narrative combat pool by adding a physical stat and a combat ability. Which stat/ability used dictates your approach to the combat rather than your attempt at an individual action. The roll is for conflict resolution, not task resolution.
Dice are rolled at the start of combat. A 4 or more is a success, a 1 is a mishap and a 10 is an opportunity. As dice are used up they are discarded. Successes can also be discarded to increase the characters wits (and thus order of resolution) at any time.
Each round, in order of wits players can describe one combat event in their favour for each success or opportunity in their pool. Each of these does 2 damage to an enemy. After you have described your event, roll another dice and add it to your pool if necessary. If your event caused actual damage, you get to roll another extra dice too.
An opportunity can be used to narrate an unusual outcome effect (staking, knocking somebody from a building, disarming somebody etc) in addition to causing the normal damage.
Mishaps can be used in two ways. If you have rolled a mishap then the relevant characters player or the Storyteller can cancel the effect of your combat event, and describe how it fails. Alteratively a player can use it to add two to his damage in an event against you. When a player nominates to use one of your mishaps, it is used up.
Once per combat, for each discipline level they possess, and for each level of stat or skill they used in their pool, a character can alter a combat event in an appropriate way either increasing or reducing damage by one, and describing how that discipline/stat/ability lets him do this.
Example: If a character had 2 levels of presence, he has awe and dreadgaze powers. If a combat event is used against him, he can nominate to reduce the damage from the event by causing the opposing character to flee. When he caused the character to flee is dictated by how much damage he receives.
Example: If a character had used dexterity and melee for his combat pool then for each level of those he can reduce or increase damage by decribing how they come into play. So a point of dex could be used to describe how a character rolled sideways to avoid a blow. A point of melee could be used to describe a last minute parry, or clever strike.
Blood can be spent at any time to grant extra dice to roll for your pool, or to reduce damage. Normal limits for generation count on blood spent per round. Willpower can be spent to grant an automatic opportunity, or cancel a mishap. Blood or willpower is not spent for disciplines in this system, but as all actions are resolved by naration anyway this shouldn't be a problem. Ie rather than spend your blood for horrid forms strnegth bonuses, you spend points of visisitude to describe how your horrid form affects the combat
Frenzy and Rotshrek are dealt with normally, based on how events are being described, but after each combat event is fully resolved. When in frenzy, successes can only be spent on appropriate actions.
These rules will be updated following some more rigourous playtesting.
Matt