World of darkness:noob questions

[mr.pink]

My gaming group usually plays dnd but we are going to play a world of darkness campaign but im a little confused so here are my noob questions about world of darkness

1. Can we use different books such as hunter, vampire and promethian in one campaign?
2. Can I have a character who is both a promethian and a hunter?
3. Would you suggest using multiple books in one character?
4. What happens when i get a big sucsess(5 or more i forget the real term) on a attack?

[ValhallaGH]

Originally Posted by mr.pink

My gaming group usually plays dnd but we are going to play a world of darkness campaign but im a little confused so here are my noob questions about world of darkness

1. Can we use different books such as hunter, vampire and promethian in one campaign?
2. Can I have a character who is both a promethian and a hunter?
3. Would you suggest using multiple books in one character?

1. Yes, sort of. There are some serious balance issues between the sub-systems, though each is pretty good internally.
2. No. First there are mechancial notes that say "whatever you had is gone when you become one of these." Second, each type is unique and the flavor text describing the origin and source prevent most combinations.
3. No. The only books that should be combined are the "ordinary mortals" books (Core, Armory, a couple of others) and a single "Supernatural" book (Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, etc.). Most of the resources available to mortals are appropriate when available to supernatural critters.

[Crothian]

Agreed

The rukles for using the characters side by side make it possible but you'd really want a Storyteller very familiar with both games to make it work.

[mr.pink]

Oh, ok then. I wanted to play a hunter/promethian but i can't. which one of those two is more balanced to a mage?

[Crothian]

Doing what? It really depends on the campaign. A Promethian is stronger and tougher physically so if you are talking pure combat then this is what you'd want. But it is not balanced with a Mage in combat, it outclasses a Mage in combat. Hunters are probalby the weakest of the three but they have less baggage with negatives. I wouldn't worry as much about balance since White Wolf's games don't. Play what you think would be fun.

[ValhallaGH]

Big tip. The Storyteller system is designed to punish you for rolling dice. If your RP is so "weak" that you must roll dice then there will be a mighty chance of failure built into the system (and there is).

If you can manage it, never roll your dice during a session. Talk about your actions and dialogue in such a way that it's obvious your character will get exactly what he wants. This way, hopefully, the Storyteller won't ask you to roll, being pulling in by the RP. That's how you do really well in Storyteller games.

Good luck.

[Dyson Logos]

for your first WOD game, I really recommend that all the players stick to one setting - that way you can play the game as it was meant, which generally is about limited resource politics and adventure.

While you live in a world with billions of people, there are only a few of comparable power and interests to yourself in your region. Therefore you find yourself in a "game" of one-upsmanship with each other. This applies to *most* of the core games except Hunter. The power environment for each type of supernatural is effectively close to a zero-sum game. For one character to gain power in said environment, another is losing power. By using a mixed group, you have less interaction with any one of those environments, and only one of the group of characters is drawing power from any one of the zero-sum games, so there is typically less impact on that environment and thus less conflict generated with the other players of that zero-sum game.

This is a particularly strong theme in Vampire, but is also quite noticeable in the other games in question.

[Thondor]

If none of you have ever played nWoD don't mix settings. In fact unless a number of you are very experienced with the books your thinking of including . . . don't do it.
You certainly can play in a mixed setting, but its significantly harder flavour wise and rules wise. I would actually suggest playing a few games as mortals (just the core book). This will let you get a good feel of the rules and can be some really cool stories.
If you like your characters and you feel you want to move on to one of the 'monster' typse, you can keep the old characters and have them change. Into hunters, werewolf, mages, vampires. I'd still pick one to have you all change into.

I've played nWoD quiet a bit (mortals, Vampire and a bit of Mage) and I still havn't felt the urge to mix. There is just so many good stories as is.

[neuronphaser]

Originally Posted by mr.pink

My gaming group usually plays dnd but we are going to play a world of darkness campaign but im a little confused so here are my noob questions about world of darkness

1. Can we use different books such as hunter, vampire and promethian in one campaign?
2. Can I have a character who is both a promethian and a hunter?
3. Would you suggest using multiple books in one character?
4. What happens when i get a big sucsess(5 or more i forget the real term) on a attack?

Different books are fine. You may find some oddities in interactions of powers, but nothing too bad. Hunters can often be more focused and less overall "powerful" so watch that as well. "Balancing" encounters may be tough, but is what it is in WoD games.

Hunters should NOT be any supernatural. Risking Willpower, Tactics, etc. are really what makes a Hunter a Hunter and thus more or less a "major template." This is not a hard rule, as far as I know, but a "strong suggestion" at least. Balance would be even harder if you have a Promethean who can Risk Willpower. Tactics make sense for Werewolf packs to me, but you need to redesign the specifics because many Hunter tactics just don't make sense for Werewolves to use.

Multiple books one character...depends. Hunter characters MIGHT jive well with the psionics in Second Sight, but that's about it. I'd definitely say that you should stick to "one game line" per character. In short, if you're playing a Vampire, you can only get stuff from WoD Core + Vampire books. If you're a Hunter, WoD Core + Hunter (and MAYBE Second Sight...maybe).

Exceptional Success on an attack is just more damage. Usually, that's more than enough! The Combat Hacks in WoD Armory Reloaded might have other ideas, but I don't recall. You could say that dealing 5 damage in one attack is a blow that cripples a limb or something, but really, the damage is its own effect.

[Achan hiArusa]

The original system punished you with dice by making "1s" take away successes. The new system does not. All rolls are a straight 8 or better on a die is a success and a 10 allows a reroll of the dice. The only way to critically fail is to roll a "1" on the luck die and you basically have to have enough negative modifiers to have a die pool of 0 or less left in order for that to happen.

As for mixed games, the nWoD makes it far easier to mix games, but the default settings for each game do not make that assumption. To mix games your Storyteller would have to do some work making them work together before you began to play. It fits the nWoD idea of a gaming toolbox much like AD&D rather than a game intimately tied with the setting like oWoD.

[Andrew D. Gable]

Hunter, I think, is more balanced if you use the alternate vampires and werewolves and such in the sourcebooks (Witch Hunters, etc.) rather than those from their lines. The other supernaturals are set up so that it's easy to shoehorn in the crunchy story and background bits from the other games - but like I said, make sure you use Hunter vampires rather than Vampire vampires.

Being mortal and not supernatural, one could argue that Hunter actually should have been folded into the core rather than a seperate gameline.

Mixing systems is kinda like it was in oWOD... possible, sure, but it just doesn't jive too well in practice.

[Thanee]

While you are at it...

What "generic" books are there, that are universaly useful (speaking of nWoD)?

- Core (of course)
- Armory (or is that one superseded by the Armory 2 Reloaded book?)
- Armory 2 Reloaded

Anything else?

Bye
Thanee

[Achan hiArusa]

The ones I have are:

The 13th Precinct. Actually gives you advice on the police in WoD, something missing from most games.

Dogs of War. Guide to playing military campaigns. Gives trigger rules for preventing morality loss

Second Sight. Rules for psychics and hedge magicians. Useful for background or when just playing normal humans.

Chicago. Gives a multi-genre city to play in.

Most of the generic WoD books are probably good for a general campaign. When i ran Bughunters I mainly used the Corebook, Armory, and Second Sight along with the Bughunters book.

[Committed Hero]

I think the designers did a much better job at trying to integrate the various game lines. That said, making werewolf vampires or promethean magi would imbalance things in the sense that such characters get two supernatural stats and attendant powers rather than one (or zero in the case of mortals).

My favorite basic supplement is Second Sight. The two Armory books are independent, in other words Reloaded is not a new edition. There are a number of line books that would be useful across the board - Predators (for Werewolf) has some neat ideas for bad guys and Mythologies (for Vampire) has some interesting options for vampires. Hunter has some neat group tactics that make mortals a little tougher, plus a humanocentric look at all the bad guys.

[kitsune9]

Originally Posted by ValhallaGH

Big tip. The Storyteller system is designed to punish you for rolling dice. If your RP is so "weak" that you must roll dice then there will be a mighty chance of failure built into the system (and there is).

If you can manage it, never roll your dice during a session. Talk about your actions and dialogue in such a way that it's obvious your character will get exactly what he wants. This way, hopefully, the Storyteller won't ask you to roll, being pulling in by the RP. That's how you do really well in Storyteller games.

Good luck.

How does a game system punish a player for having to roll dice? Provide an example. Thanks!

[Dyson Logos]

At least in oWoD, you don't have to roll dice if you would have a number of dice equal to the difficulty of the roll. So for a difficulty 8 roll, if you have 8 dice, you never roll, you just succeed.

If you do roll, you have a chance to fail. If you don't roll, you have no chance of failure.

[Achan hiArusa]

Uh, no. I've had players completely fail diceless challenges in a WoD game by doing something stupid, by just not planning out carefully what they wanted to do, or by underestimating the size of the threat that they were facing. Its easy to do.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Dyson Logos

At least in oWoD, you don't have to roll dice if you would have a number of dice equal to the difficulty of the roll. So for a difficulty 8 roll, if you have 8 dice, you never roll, you just succeed.

If you do roll, you have a chance to fail. If you don't roll, you have no chance of failure.

Well, I take from this that I just want to maximize the number of dice at my disposal.

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by Dyson Logos

If you do roll, you have a chance to fail. If you don't roll, you have no chance of failure.

And more - if you roll, you have a chance to botch, which is worse than just failing. There were some quirks in the statistics, such that for high target numbers, as the number of dice you had to roll increased, the chances to botch would increase. This got worse if your group used double or triple botches.

nWoD, I believe, has eliminated that rules-quirk.

[ValhallaGH]

Originally Posted by kitsune9

How does a game system punish a player for having to roll dice? Provide an example. Thanks!

By using a dice resolution mechanic that doesn't reward skill or ability or training.

I'm only going to be talking about nWoD, since that's what the OP was asking about.

Your basic dice pool is based upon skill, ability score, and equipment (and other miscellaneous sources). This is then reduced by the difficulty of the task, to a minimum of 0 dice; any task that can be accomplished by elements of luck devolves to a Chance Die which has a 10% chance of success (or greater) and a 10% chance of monumental failure (Dramatic Failure, or sometimes called a Botch due to it's name in oWoD).
As long as your dice pool has 1 or more dice remaining, you roll the remaining dice. Each result of 8 or higher on the d10 is a success (roll 10's, and sometimes lower numbers, again for a chance at even more successes). Each result of 7 or less is a failure. According to the book (though a lot of Storytellers I've met don't always follow this) a single success is enough to get some positive result. Four or more successes is considered to be an "Exceptional Success" and comes with extra benefits for doing the task so very well.

Example 1: Jumping between rooftops to escape pursuit.
This is an Athletics check, generally modified by Strength. Nancy is a librarian that does a lot of running to keep in shape; she's only got a 1 Strength but she's got a 3 Athletics; she's also size 5 (typical human size). Our character is on a cluttered roof-top, providing only 5 feet of clear running room before she must jump, and it rained an hour ago so the roof is wet. So her starting dice pool is 1 (Strength) + 3 (Athletics) + 1 (great shoes), for a total of 5 dice. She's only got 5 feet of starting distance (-3 dice) and the wet roof is slick (-1) for a total dice pool of 1 (good thing she had her running shoes handy!).
Nancy takes her one die, decides she really needs to cross the gap between buildings, and spends a point of Willpower to get 3 more dice, now for a total of 4 dice. She rolls her dice, getting a fairly average roll of 1, 5, 10, & 6 for 1 success. Nancy did get a 10, so she gets to roll that die again (the "10 Again" rule) and gets herself another 6. Total, 1 success.
Using the jumping rules she clears 5 feet (her size) + 4 feet per success for a total horizontal clearance of 9 feet. Too bad for Nancy, the nearby building was 12 feet away, so she plunges to the pavement 48 feet below. Using the falling rules, she'll take 5 bashing damage as she hits the ground (unless she lands on broken glass or a fence or something that makes it lethal damage) where she's likely to lie in pain until her pursuers catch her and do whatever they were planning to do to her.
Note that a kind Storyteller could allow a Dexterity + Athletics roll to scrape at the side of the target building to reduce the falling damage; however, he doesn't have to.

Example 2: Stabbing a dirty cop that's trying to kill you.
Brock is a rough and tumble private investigator, with a lot of experience in close fights, so a Strength of 3 and a Weaponry of 3. He's investigating a corrupt city official when he is accosted by an uniformed officer working for the official. Brock decides that he needs to keep it close or the cop is going to shoot him dead, so Brock goes for his knife and tries to stab the cop.
Brock's good, and he's got a knife, so his die pool is 3 (Strength) + 3 (Weaponry skill) + 1 (knife) and it will do lethal damage. Unfortunately, WoD street cops are bad hombres, with a Defense of 3 and thin Kevlar vests (armor 1/2). Brock is taking a -4 to his attacks, reducing his seven dice to 3 dice.
Brock rolls the bones and gets a fairly average 3, 6, & 7, for 0 successes.
The crooked cop is not cool with this, so he backs up to the opening of the room and grabs up the shotgun he hid behind the door, using his whole action.
Brock knows he's in trouble now, but the Cop is between him and the only practical exit, so he tries to rush the cop and get the jump on him. He even spends a point of willpower, to roll 6 dice. He gets a 3, 8, 5, 6, 4, 7 for a total of 1 success. He lunges with desperation and cuts the cop lightly on the arm as the officer is bringing his street howitzer to bear.
The cop has dice pool of 3 ( Dexterity) + 3 (Firearms) + 4 (Shotgun) - 2 (Brock's Defense) - 2 (Brock's also wearing a thin Kevlar vest) = 6 dice. This cop is peeved, however, and decides to spend a point of Willpower to gain another 3 dice for a total of 9 dice of lethal damage. He rolls well and gets a 2, 9, 5, 8, 1, 10, 4, 6, 3 for three successes (and shotguns are 9 again). The cop re-rolls his 9 and 10 and gets a 2 and an 8 for a fourth success (apparently this officer has got a lucky shotgun). Poor Brock takes 4 lethal damage as load of buckshot stitches into his side and penetrates his formerly protective vest. Among other things, this shifts him to the -1 tier of wounds, so Brock takes a further -1 penalty to all actions until he can heal up.
Brock's in trouble, and now he's only got 2 dice of stabbing to work with. Brock might be better off trying to surrender, but the cop may decide that Brock "continued to resist and all attempts to calm the suspect failed. To protect myself I had to apply lethal force."

Note in both examples, the dice rolls were average, and the situations were typical of those one can expect in the festering World of Darkness. The only thing that was atypical was the level of skill and training of the characters involved; the PCs generally don't have 3 dots in the skills that are needed to save their bacon.

On the other hand, if both players had gone with a more descriptive and narrative account then there is a good chance that they'd have come through basically okay.
Nancy: "I've got my good running shoes on as a bust through the roof access door. Looking around I scamper to the ridgeline of the roof and sprint down in towards the edge. Using every bit of my momentum, running skill, and willpower I push off at the last second and sail into the night. I cross the twelve foot gap between apartment buildings and slam into the roof with a painful thump. Desperate to evade my pursuit, I scramble up the slick roof and head for the fire escape."
Brock: "As I realize that officer Chamber is working for the councilor, and that he's not planning to let me leave here alive, I pull my knife and place it right next to his groin. With a menacing growl I say 'Now, you and me, officer, are going to take a calm walk outside. You're going to stop at the coat room and go inside while I leave, or you're going to learn to sing soprano.' Then I give him just a slight cut in the leg, letting him know just how sharp my ghetto razor is."

I hope that clarifies what I meant.