Golden Rule Options

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Roleplaying games all contain rules designed to cover that ultimate of conflicts, the combat between mortal enemies.  Of course, as games, they are often pale attempts to represent what is actually an incredibly chaotic, bloody event.  The strength of White Wolf's Storyteller system is that the combat system is fairly streamlined and doesn't get bogged down in overly complicated details (unless you decide to use the Big Book of Beating Ass, the Combat supplement created for those who just love to fight the rules every time their character fights).  However, the Health Levels used to represent damage to a combatant are frustratingly difficult to smash away sometimes.  It can be a real challenge to actually hurt, or even a miracle to actually kill an opponent, even with a gun at point blank range. 

Andrew Bates, the Trinity developer, told me during playtesting for Aeon Trinity, that at the White Wolf games normal people do not get soak rolls at all.  This certainly makes them easier to hurt, but only at the expense of causing their to be no difference between a stamina rating of one or five.  Somehow this seems unfair. How can there be no difference in the ability to take damage between a sickly weakling and the pinnacle of human fitness and health? 

We have experimented with another simple solution.  The rules state that damage and soak rolls cannot be botched, and we decided to stick to that.  But we went further, and decided that all damage rolls specialize in, well. . . causing damage.  Thus we reroll all tens on damage rolls possibly adding further successes as per the rules for rolling specializations.  This can potentially cause any damage roll to be very nasty.  If, for example, you rolled seven dice for damage and got an 8, 4, 3, 2, 1, 10, and 10, you would reroll the two tens. Now suppose you rolled a 3 and a 10 on the reroll. You would reroll that ten, and so on. If you rolled a 6 this time, you would have successes numbering 2 (original roll) + 1 (first reroll) + 1 (last reroll) for a total of 4 levels of damage. 

Now your opponent would roll to soak.  However, we do not reroll tens on stamina rolls meant to soak that damage.  This results in the possibility for any blow to be particularly nasty without throwing the entire combat system into the meat grinder.  Different levels of stamina still have different effects, and the balance of power between different weapons is maintained. There is simply the chance that any blow will cause significant harm or even death. 

That's it, just that simple rule, but believe me it works.  It is worth perhaps discussing some other aspects of damage in the Storyteller World of Darkness line of games.  There are already many things built into the rules that make combat more deadly than many realize.  Vampires are specifically stated to be unable to soak any form of aggravated damage without Fortitude, and even if they have Fortitude, it is only those dice that they get to roll.  That means that a kindred struck with fire, sunlight, or a garou's claws is in trouble.  Garou do get to soak aggravated damage, but they get no soak whatsoever versus silver. 

Mages, according to White Wolf's online FAQ, cannot soak aggravated damage and yet the Mage rules say that they can soak fire which is listed in every single White Wolf game as being aggravated.  As fire is only unsoakable by vampires, and as Vampire is the only game in which there are actually rules completely denying soaks to a species, I would recommend allowing other races the soak.  The Mage FAQ mentions this as a possible "house rule".  Perhaps the unliving nature of the vampire, their dependence upon blood, and their complete stasis of form cause them to be more easily harmed by certain forces of the universe.