Death Quaker's World of Darkness House Rules

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WoD House Rules

These are the rules I go by when I run a WoD game. Someare in standard use by my fellow players, some aren't, some clearup discrepancies or differences in playing style. Some of these are actual Storyteller rules from revised editions or different campaign settings, but since there's several different versions of the systemnow, I want to be clear on which one I was using. There are some Mage-specific rules here since that was the last Storyteller game I ran.

Character Creation ++ Systems ++ Combat

Character creation:
All PCs and major NPCs, regardless of type, created as major playercharacters: 7/5/3 attribute distribution (or 6/5/4 if that worksbetter for you), 13/9/5 ability distribution, 15 freebies, etc.

Mages get 5 WP points, 7 background points, a point of Arete,and as many Quintessence as you have points in Avatar. The firstpoint in Avatar is free (my old gaming group felt the backgroundseemed pretty important for a mage, so no point in making youbuy it).

During character creation, no ability can go above 3 without GM approval.

Arete and Spheres will not go above 3 for a starting level character, no exceptions.

Abilities and attributes above 4 automatically can have a specialty assigned to them; specialties can also be bought with freebie points (one freebie per specialty).

Merits and Flaws can go above/below 7 with GM approval.

The 4 point kinain/faerie blood merit means you have just a trace of Glamour in your system; not enough that you can concentrate to use it in cantrips (i.e. you cannot have a Glamour pool), but enough that it makes you recognizable by fae and easier for them to Enchant you. Provided you're not a grump or just disillusioned,you probably have a lower banality than most, max 6. (I'm doing this to make it more parallel to the 4 pt. Kinfolk merit.) With extra freebies, you can have one 1-3 point fae gift as describedin The Enchanted. For 4 additional extra freebies, you can add one dot of fae blood and one dot in Glamour; 2 additional points for each point of Glamour/fae blood, and can buy fae gifts per point of value. MAGES CANNOT HAVE GLAMOUR OR CANTRIPS (A Glamour pool indicates that your Avatar is partly bound to the Dreaming, and being part of the Fae Paradigm, you cannot Awaken any further in the Mage sense). Since this is all ultimately over 7 merit points, you will need GM approval to do this. But really, if you really want all this crap, why aren't you just creating a primary kinain character out of The Enchanted rather than try to tie all this extra crap on to another supernatural creature?

Note if you give me a well written/described background, I usually hand out a couple of XP and/or dots in things I thinkappropriate to your character.

Please don't give me weird crap like runway cyborg werewolvesand the like.

System stuff:
I am trying to adapt the Æon/Exalted system to World of Darkness since that is much cleaner. So, with the exception of Magic, all rolls are a standard difficulty of 7.

Magic works as base difficulty 4, add 1 for each dot in a sphere you are using. Difficulty does not usually go above 9, although extra successes may be required for certain feats. The difficulty of a rote (spell combining sphere effects) is based on the highest sphere level used.

As according to Æon: 1s do not cancel successes. You botch only when you roll a 1 and no successes to begin with.

Re-roll 0s to see if you can get an extra success. If you roll another 0, keep re-rolling.

I follow the Third Edition XP cost rules, where the cost is multiplied by the NEW rating you want, not the old one. (I'llhave the list of costs with me.)

Combat:
I use bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage. Bashing soak equals stamina + armor; all characters can soak lethal at half their stamina + armor, but cannot soak agg. damage at all, with the obvious exceptions indicated in the rules (werewolves, etc.).

Steps of Combat

Players roll initiative by adding the sum of their dexterity plus wits to a roll of 1d10. Example: Selena's dexterity is 4 and her wits is 2. When she rolls a d10 for her initiative and gets a 5, her initiative for the round is 11.
Players act in the order of their inititative, highest number going first. Technically, people are supposed to announce their actions first in reverse order of initiative (so the fastest person knows what everyone else is doing), but I usually eliminate this step to save time.
The player rolls to hit (usually Dexterity plus the appropriate skill). Difficulty is 7; tricky situations or difficult-to-use weapons require more successes to hit. If their target has the opportunity to dodge, she may do so. Successes on the dodge roll cancel successes to hit.
The player may opt to split his to hit dice pool to do more than one action per turn. He or she must announce he or she is doing this at the beginning of his or her turn. The dice pool may be split to do multiple attacks, an attack and a dodge, multiple dodges, an attack and a move, etc. The way dice pool splitting works is this: Subtract the number of actions you are taking from your first action roll. Every subsequent roll loses an additional die. Note if you abort a later action, you still will have lost the dice. Finally, you only take your first action on your initiative. You take the rest of your actions at the end of the combat round. If anyone else took multiple actions, you go again in order of initiative. Example: Selena wishes to split her die pool into three actions: two attacks with her knife, and a dodge, in that order. Her melee die pool is 7. Since she is taking three actions this round, she can roll 4 dice for her first attack, and 3 dice for her second. She ends up not needing to use the dodge, but since she was still reserving the action, the loss of dice on her rolls stands. (She could try and do something else, however.
If you hit your target, roll damage. Here's how this works: take your damage pool, usually strength plus the bonus for a weapon or move if necessary, and add to it any superfluous successes from your hit roll. Then SUBTRACT your target's soak rating from your damage pool, always retaining at least one die. Roll the remaining dice, difficulty 7. Example: Selena rolls 3 successes on her knife attack to Kyla. Since she only needed 1 success to hit Kyla, she reserves the other two sucesses to her damage pool. Her damage pool is her strength (3) plus 1 for the bonus from the knife plus 2 for extra hit successes, for a total of 6. Kyla's lethal soak is 3, so Selena subtracts that from her damage pool, leaving her 3 dice to roll. She rolls 2 successes, so Kyla takes 2 lethal health levels of damage.

Of course, you don't have to attack someone during combat, but nothing's different about a normal action during combat, except of course you perform it in the order of initiative as usual.