WoD House Rules

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Official Errata

Language Merit (•)

Effect: Your character knows an additional language besides his own, one that he can read, write and speak with fluency. If he wishes to convince others that he is a native speaker, however, the Storyteller might call for an Intelligence + Expression roll, contested with a reflexive Intelligence + Academics roll by anyone who is suspicious.

You must specify which language your character is familiar with when purchasing this Merit. You may take this Merit multiple times, with a different language for each.

Damage From Vehicles

World of Darkness rulebook, p. 144: If your fool ass gets run over, it's lethal damage, not bashing.

"…Each success on the resulting roll inflicts a point of lethal damage to the target."

Drugs, Diseases & Poisons

World of Darkness rulebook, p. 176: The system for diseases is incorrect.

Resisting disease is not a contested action. Typically, only a single success is required on the Stamina + Resolve roll, and this roll is modified by the severity of the disease in question. In some cases, resisting disease might be an extended action, such as recovery from cancer. In cases like these, the Storyteller still sets the benchmark for how many successes are necessary, and the subject's pool might still be penalized by the disease's severity.

World of Darkness rulebook, pp. 176-177: The system for drugs is incorrect.

Like resisting disease, resisting the effects of drugs is not a contested action. Typically, only a single success is required on the Stamina + Resolve roll, and this roll is modified by the potency of the drug in question. In some cases, resisting the effects of a drug might be an extended action, such as a prolonged exposure to low levels of arsenic. In cases like these, the Storyteller still sets the benchmark for how many successes are necessary, and the subject's pool might still be penalized by the drug's potency.

World of Darkness rulebook, pp. 180-181: The system for poisons and toxins is incorrect.

Like resisting disease, resisting the effects of poisons and toxins is not a contested action. Typically, only a single success is required on the Stamina + Resolve roll, and this roll is modified by the toxicity of the poison in question. In some cases, resisting the effects of a drug might be an extended action, such as drug or alcohol abuse. In cases like these, the Storyteller still sets the benchmark for how many successes are necessary, and the subject's pool might still be penalized by the poison's toxicity.

Ghosts are not Spirits

World of Darkness rulebook, pp. 208-216: We've made some organizational changes to ghosts and "spirits." These don't affect how ghosts function right now, but they'll come to mean more going forward into Werewolf and Mage.

A ghost is no longer a "spirit" in the context of the rules. A ghost is an entity that is made of spiritual stuff, but it is distinct from a "spirit." A spirit is a creature made of Essence, with an origin specifically in the Shadow Realm. The collective description for spiritual creatures (both spirits and ghosts) is "ephemera," though the two branches of ephemera (spirits and ghosts) are separate types of entities. You can't bind a ghost into a fetish, for example, and werewolf powers don't typically affect or relate to ghosts.

Alternate Chance Die Mechanic

Calculate your effective dice pool. Then roll a number of dice equal to the absolute value of your pool, plus one. So if your effective dice pool, for example, was -3, then you would roll 4 dice. If all of these dice in the roll come up a success, then you may make a normal roll to determine the outcome of the action, with a dice pool of one. All normal rules apply to this last roll.

More Common Dramatic Failures

If all dice in any dice pool come up all 1's, then that roll is considered to be a dramatic failure. This includes the first roll of a chance die, but not subsequent rolls.

Alternate Weakness Dice Pools

Sometimes dice pools--as in some vampire clan weaknesses--are said to have 1's subtract from successes (with a negative tally not resulting in a dramatic failure) and the 10 Again rule not apply. For these dice pools a negative tally will result in a dramatic failure and the 10 Again rule does apply.

Turns and Rounds in Combat

Turns in combat--as they affect mechanics such as the lowered Defense from multiple attacks--start at your last action rather than from the beginning of the round. This means, for example, that's a character's Defense lowers by 1 each time she uses it, counting from her last action rather than the beginning of the round. If a character has not yet received a turn in combat, then count from the beginning of combat rather than her last turn.

Defense Dice Pool

A character's Defense is now rolled as it's own dice pool, contesting the attacker's dice pool. This replaces the normal mechanic of subtracting Defense from the attacker's dice pool. Additionally, spending a Willpower grants a +3 bonus to this dice pool, just like any other (this replaces the ability to spend a Willpower to gain +2 to a resistance trait, in the case of Defense).

Damage Does Not Add to Attack

A weapon's damage bonus now does not add to an attacker's dice pool to hit. Instead the attack's dice pool is rolled without the damage bonus, then--if the attack was good enough to hit--the damage bonus is rolled and added to the dice pool to determine damage. In the case of weapons that give the 9 Again rule to attacks, this applies to both the attack roll and the damage bonus roll, as such weapons--mostly shotguns--are designed to make hitting easier.

Armor Clarification & Dice Pool

There to be some discrepancy in the way that a character's armor score is assumed to work between the World of Darkness rulebook and later books such as Werewolf or Mage. The World of Darkness rulebook seems to imply that armor is subtracted from an attack's dice pool as is Defense, while Werewolf and Mage seem to imply that armor is subtracted from an attack's successes. Being that I do not find armor to be particularly thematic for a modern horror game, I am ruling in favor of the less-strong interpretation of the armor mechanics.

Armor now works as a dice pool similarly to the way Defense does now. Defense acts as a contested dice pool to the attack. Armor is not rolled at this point. If the attack was good enough to hit, then the attacker rolls her damage bonus and adds to the result of the attack, while the defender rolls his armor and adds to the result of the defense. The final scores are compared to determine damage. if the armor pushed the defense the few successes it needed to be equal to or greater than the attack, then the attack was good enough to hit, but "pinged" off the armor.

Expanded Resources Mechanics

In order to have a workable, but playably-abstracted money system, use the following rules: At the beginning of each month in-game, the character receives an amount of money (measured in dollars) as petty cash that she is able to spend over the course of the month. This amount is determined by the character's Resource rating as specified in the World of Darkness rulebook. Any such petty cash left over from the last month is halved to represent the slow drain of impulse purchases and other oft-forgotten-in-role-playing purchases that tend to drain a person's wallet. In a pinch, a character can scrape up an extra amount of money equal to the monthly value times her Resource rating, but doing this will afterwards cause her Resources to lower by one, as she is draining her long-term assets.

No Morality Trade for XP

It's listed as an optional rule, anyway, but to make it explicit: The lowering of starting Morality in order gain experience points is not allowed, as it is all-too-easily abused.

No Merit Trade for Power

Many games allow starting characters to trade their starting Merit points in for extra starting dots in their template's power attribute (Blood Potency for Vampires, Gnosis for Mages, etc.) This is no longer allowed, as it results in characters with unrealistically sparse background merits and no good explanation for why they somehow acquired a high power attribute in their first few nights among the supernatural.

No Merit Point Character Creation

Face it, the linear cost of merits at character creation versus the exponential cost of merits after character creation is kind of odd. And the loss of freebie points in the new World of Darkness is kind of a blow to character customization. So here's the house fix. Characters do not get merit points to distribute at character creation. Instead they get a number of experience points, which can be used to buy merits at the same usual rate they'd be purchased at after character creation or on other traits at the usual experience costs, which allows for customization similar to freebie points. Characters start with 30 experience points to spend in this manner.