Revision as of 09:25, 20 August 2014

World of Darkness System Specific Guide

This section is about the World of Darkness (cWoD) system developed by White Wolf. It also includes information for the New World of Darkness (nWoD) system.

Dice Rolling

Dice Pool

A 'dice pool' in this system is built out of d10 (10 sides) dice based on the following formula.
Attribute + Skill + Equipment Modifiers +/- Story-teller-determined Modifiers
By adding up (or subtracting) these variables, a total number of dice to roll is determined. This is your 'dice pool' for the roll. In general 'bonuses' that add dice to the pool are given before 'penalties' that remove dice from the pool are applied.

Success Rolls

One of the most common rolls in WoD is rolling a pool of d10's and counting anything meeting the difficulty, normally 6, or better as a 'success'. nWoD uses a slighty different set of rules with a static difficulty of 8. Rolling a 1 subtracts a success. Each 10 rolled allows the success to be counted and the dice to be rolled again, with new successes counted toward the total number of successes. If this roll is a 10, then the die is rolled again until there are no more 10's rolled, this is known as "10 Again" in the system. To accumulate successes in Roll 20, an exploding 10 feature is used to add dice to the pool automatically.
This type of roll is represented in Roll20 as:
/roll {Xd10!}>8f1
Where 'X' is the number of dice in the pool.

cWoD sometimes uses exploding dice depending on what edition you use. For Revised and earlier editions, a 10 on a die counts as an exploding die if you had a specialty that was related to the roll. In the newer 20th Anniversary editions, this was changed so that 10 counts as just 2 successes for specialty related rolls. Non-specialty rolls do not count as either of the previous two and are rolled as normal dice.

nWoD is a little bit different where 1s do not subtract success except under very specific circumstances, often related to supernatural stuff. Certain subtypes of supernatural creatures may also be blessed or cursed in certain areas, which can give 9 again or even 8 again to rolls, or remove 10 again.
Normal nWoD Success roll
/roll Xd10>8!
With 9 again: /roll Xd10>8!>9
Without 10 again: /roll Xd10>8

Chance Rolls

In nWoD, if you have no skill or modifiers in a particular area, you can roll a single d10 and hope for the best. Only 10s count as successes, but they still explode. WARNING: If you roll a 1 on the first die roll, your character suffers a 'dramatic failure', these are definitely not good for your character.
/roll {1d10!}=10f1

Combat

For combat in nWoD, a single success (or chance) roll above is rolled by the attacker, with any number of defensive modifiers removed from the dice pool prior to rolling. Each success from the roll counts as a unit of damage for the defender and reduces the Health points the defender has.

For cWoD, an attacker rolls to hit the target, normally Deterity + Melee or Brawl or Firearms, versus a difficulty that depends on the action. The defender my opt to dodge or parry the attack at the cost of their action. An abort roll must be used unless the dodge or parry is prepared, Willpower difficulty 9. If they are successful the defender may spend their turn or if they've gone already, their next turn, dodging or parrying the blow. To dodge the defender rolls Dexterity + Dodge for Revised and earlier editions, and Dexterity + Athletics for 20th Anniversary editions. Parrying is done using Dexterity + Melee. Blocking is possible but normally only with fist fights, unless the user has something like Fortitude, which allows them to block Melee attacks with their fists. Blocking is done with Dexterity + Brawl. Each success on an attack roll removes a success from the attacker's successes. If the attacker has no successes left, then the attack is said to miss. If the attacker has at least one success remaining then the attack hits. Damage is done based on the weapon's damage score. For Melee, this is normally Strength + x, for fists it is just Strength, for Firearms this is some value X. The attacker then adds his extra successes to hit to his damage dice pool. The total dice pool can be summarized as Weapon Damage + Net Succeses - 1, or Weapon Damage + Extra Successes, a 1 does not remove a success on this roll. In older editions of cWoD extra successes were not added to the Damage dice pool. The defender may attempt to soak the damage to reduce damage taken so long as they can soak the appropriate damage type. The dice pool for this is normally Stamina + Armor + Extra modifiers, if the user can't soak the damage type then just Armor + Extra modifiers is used. A 1 does not remove a success from this roll, and each success removes a point of damage taken.

Katana attack macro for nWoD ('attribute' is used, because it can be either Str or Dex)
/r (?{attribute + weaponry}+?{situational modifiers}+3)d10>8!s katana damage

Light revolver attack macro for nWoD:
/r (?{dexterity + firearms}+?{situational modifiers}+2)d10>8!s light revolver attack

Damage

There are 3 types of Damage in this system.

• Bashing - caused by blunt weapons (fists, clubs, etc.), these wounds heal fairly quickly.
• Lethal - caused by sharp weapons (knives, bullets, etc.), these wounds heal more slowly. What counts as lethal varies between supernaturals, i.e. Vampires in cWoD count more bullets as Bashing instead of Lethal, unlike Werewolves and Humans.
• Aggravated - caused by devastating supernatural attacks, these wounds take a very long time to heal.

When the defender's health is reduced to zero, they are either unconscious or dead depending on the type of damage inflicted.

Character Sheet Attributes and Abilities

This article is a stub. You can help the Roll20 Community Wiki by expanding it.

(coming soon)