Note: Quick reference combat / Equipment
1 - ATTACK
2 - DEFENCE
3 - STATUS
4 - DAMAGE
5 - SPENDING RAGE
6 - ARMOR
7 - WEAPON
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1 - ATTACK core p.288
• For attacks using guns, roll Dexterity + Firearms.
• For attacks with thrown weapons, use Dexterity + Athletics.
• For attacks using hand-held weapons, employ Dexterity + Melee.
• For most hand-to-hand attacks that use fangs, claws, body weight and so forth, roll Dexterity + Brawl. (A handful of attacks employ dexterity + Athletics instead, but we’ll get to that later.)
2 - DEFENCE core p.288-290
• Dodging gets the character out of harm’s way…hopefully. That action requires a successful Dexterity + Athletics roll. The difficulty depends on the distance that dodging character needs to move, and the nature of the attack he’s trying to avoid. Dodging a hand-to-hand strike is easy (difficulty 5), while dodging firearms at close range is far more challenging (difficulty 9 or 10). Each success on this roll subtracts one success from the attacker’s roll; thus, the dodging character needs to roll at least as many successes to avoid that blow as the attacker rolled to inflict it in the first place.
• Blocking uses a body part to deflect an incoming blow. The roll is Dexterity + Brawl, and although it can be used against any hand-to-hand assault, it cannot be deployed to stop firearms. (Anyone who tries to fist-block an Uzi blast deserves to get shot.) Whether or not a character can block an arrow shot is a Storyteller decision; you can try, but unless he’s Tony Jaa, it might not work. Again, the difficulty depends on the attack, but often ranges between 5 (for a fist) and 8 (a katana). As with dodging, each success scored by the defender removes one success from the attacker’s attempt.
• Parrying is essentially a block using a weapon instead of one’s body. The roll involved is Dexterity + Melee, but all other details are the same as dodging and blocking.
3 - STATUS core p.292
• Blinding: A character who’s been blinded by injury or darkness cannot dodge, parry or block incoming attacks. All other actions add two to their difficulty. Given the keen senses of most werewolves, a Garou player could take an action to sense her character’s surroundings in order to reduce that penalty, or else use a Gift to compensate for blindness. As usual, the Storyteller is the final judge.
• Knockdown: A character who’s been knocked off her feet must take an action to scramble back up; if she cannot do so, she may be considered to be partially immobilized.
• Immobilization: If a character has been held down, paralyzed, or otherwise rendered unable to move, any character who attacks him reduces her difficulty by two if the target is still able to move a little bit, and may hit him automatically if he cannot move at all.
• Stunning: If — after the soak roll — a character suffers health-level damage that equals or exceeds her Stamina rating, she’s stunned until the end of the following turn. The stunned character can’t do anything except perhaps stumble around in a daze, and attack rolls against her during that time reduce their difficulty by two.
4 - DAMAGE core p.290
• Bashing
Damage comes from blunt-force trauma: fists, clubs, table legs, etc. Even normal humans heal this type of damage fairly quickly, and it rarely does anything but piss off a Garou. On a character sheet, bashing damage gets marked with a single slash (“/”) rather than an “X.”
• Lethal
Damage comes courtesy of sharp-edged weapons, firearms, spiked clubs, barbed-wire garrotes, chainsaws, and so on. Most living things have a hard time healing lethal damage, but werewolves regenerate such injuries almost no time. Indicate this form of damage on your character sheet with an “X.”
• Aggravated
Damage reflects severe injury. Even werewolves suffer badly from such harm, which usually comes from supernatural attacks: Garou claws and teeth, vampire fangs, toxic waste, and some forms of fire. Silver inflicts aggravated damage against werewolves, too — a fact whose notoriety poses a constant threat to Garou. Aggravated damage takes a long time to heal, and although it can be soaked (except in Homid and the breed form; see below), it cannot be regenerated — only healed by certain Gifts like Mother’s Touch. Indicate aggravated damage with an “*” on your character sheet.
Soaking Damage
Living beings tend to be fairly resilient, and so characters who take damage can try to “soak” it before subtracting health levels from those injuries. To soak damage, roll your character’s Stamina against a difficulty determined by the damage:
• Bashing damage
can be soaked by any character at difficulty 6.
• Lethal damage
can be soaked by Garou and many other supernatural creatures at difficulty 6. Humans cannot normally soak lethal damage, although exceptionally tough ones may be able to try and soak it (Storyteller’s option) at difficulty 8.
• Aggravated damage
Other than that inflicted by silver, can be soaked by Garou at difficulty 6 in any form except their breed form. Silver damage cannot be soaked in any form except the breed form, and metis Garou can’t soak it at all. To homid and lupus Garou, silver stings exposed skin when those werewolves are in their breed forms, but inflicts damage only if it’s been fashioned into weapons… in which case blades or bullets are lethal and blunt-force weapons deal out bashing damage. Non- Garou, of course, can’t soak aggravated damage at all unless they have some form of supernatural resistance to such injuries.
5 - SPENDING RAGE
The sacred fury within all Garou allows a player to spend Rage points in order to perform the following feats:
• Take Extra Actions:
For each point of Rage spent, the character can take one extra action that turn. The player must declare that she’s spending Rage for extra actions at the beginning of that turn. Once she decides to spend those Rage points, they’re officially spent, and cannot be used for anything else that turn. Other limits apply, too – see below.
• Change Forms:
At any point in the turn, a player can decide to spend a point of Rage, immediately shifting his werewolf into any one of the five Garou forms.
• Ignore Stunning:
Under normal circumstances, a character who takes a lot of damage is stunned, and cannot act for the remainder of that turn. (See Stunning, below.) A werewolf, however, can spend a Rage point that turn and keep moving normally.
• Ignore Pain:
In similar fashion, a werewolf player can spend a point of Rage to let her character ignore the dice penalty for one health level worth of damage. This option does not heal the damage, it lasts for only one turn, and it alleviates only one heath level’s penalty for each point of Rage spent this way. After that turn, the pain-penalties kick in again.
Extra Action Limitations
• Rage Score:
Within a single turn, a player can spend up to half his character’s permanent Rage score in Rage points (rounded up) when getting extra actions. A Garou with Rage 5, for example, can spend three Rage for three extra actions that turn. The player could spend more Rage in order to ignore stunning or pain, but cannot get more than three extra actions that turn.
• Timing:
Rage spent for extra actions must be declared at the beginning of the turn. Other Rage expenditures can be declared at any point within that turn.
• Speed:
In a single turn, a character can take only as many “normal” extra actions as she has dots in either her Dexterity or Wits, whichever is lower. A Dexterity 4/Wits 3 Garou, for instance, could take only three extra actions without incurring a penalty. If her player chooses to exceed that limit, she suffers a +3 penalty to all difficulties that turn. Essentially, the werewolf is trying to go too fast for her body (Dexterity) or mind (Wits) to process. If she happens to be in frenzy, however, her Rage actions are limited only by her Dexterity, as she’s pretty much “beyond her wits” to start with.
6 - ARMOR core p.292
The chart below features some common forms of armor, with their related soak dice and Dexterity penalties. For most non-Garou characters, armor dice (and only the armor dice) can soak lethal damage, and possibly (Storyteller’s discretion) aggravated damage, too. Armor may help a Garou soak certain kinds of silver damage, too. It makes sense, after all, that a flak jacket could blunt the trauma from a werewolf’s claws or a silver bullet; it could not, however, stop fire or radiation.
Armor Type Rating Dexterity Penalty
Tough Hide 1–3 0
Reinforced Clothing 1 0
Biker Jacket 1 1
Leather Duster 2 2
Bearskin Coat 3 3
Steel Breastplate 3 2
Kevlar Vest 3 1
Flak Vest 4 2
Riot Suit 5 3
Trashcan Lid 2 (none, but requires diff. 6 Dexterity + Melee roll to employ)
7 - WEAPON core p.302-303
Melee Weapons
Weapon Difficulty Damage/Type Conceal
Sap 4 Strength/B P
Whip 6* Strength +1/L J
Spiked Gauntlet 6 Strength +1/L J
Broken Bottle 6 Strength +1/L** P
Chair 7 Strength +2/B N
Table*** 8 Strength +3/B N
Chain 5* Strength/B J
Staff 6 Strength +1/B N
Mace 6 Strength +2/L N
Baseball Bat 5 Strength+2/B T
Spiked Club 6 Strength +2/L T
Huge Spiked Club*** 7 Strength +4/L N
Knife 4 Strength +1/L P
Sword 6 Strength +2/L T
Klaive**** 6 Strength +2/A J
Grand Klaive**** 7 Strength +3/A T
Great Sword*** 5 Strength +6/L N
Axe 7 Strength +3/L T
Great Axe*** Strength +6/L N
Polearm 7 Strength +3/L N
Chainsaw 8 Strength +7/L***** N
Difficulty: The normal difficulty at which the weapons is used.
Damage: The number of damage dice rolled when employing this weapon.
Type: B = Bashing L = Lethal A = Aggravated
Conceal: P = Pocket J = Jacket T= Trenchcoat N= N/A
*May be used to entangle an enemy’s limb at +1 difficulty.
**Breaks after three uses.
***Two-handed weapons; very heavy – requires minimum of Strength 3 to employ.
****Silver weapons — damage cannot be soaked by werewolves except in breed form.
*****On a botch, user inflicts damage upon self.
Thrown Weapons
Weapon Difficulty Damage/Type Conceal
Knife 6 Strength/L P
Shuriken 7 3/L P
Spear 6 Strength +1/L N
Stone 5 Strength/B varies
Stone, head-sized Strength +3/B N
Tomahawk 6 Strength +1/L J
Ranged Weapons
Type Damage Range Rate Clip Conceal
Revolver, Lt. 4 12 3 6 P
SW M640 (.38 Special)
Revolver, Hvy. 6 35 2 6 J
Colt Anaconda (.44 Magnum)
Semi-Automatic Pistol, Lt. 4 20 4 17+1 P
Glock 17 (9mm)
Semi-Automatic Pistol, Hvy. 5 30 3 7+1 J
IMI Desert Eagle (.50 AE)
Rifle 8 200 1 5+1 N
Remington M-700 (30.06)
SMG, Small* 4 25 3 30+1 J
Ingram Mac-10 (9mm)
SMG, Large 4 50 3 30+1 T
HK MP-5 (9mm)
Assault Rifle* 7 150 3 42+1 N
AK-47 (7.62x39mm)
Shotgun, Sawed-Off 8 10 2 2 J
Winchester Model 24 double-barrel (12 Gauge)
Shotgun 8 20 1 5+1 T
Ithaca M-37 (12 Gauge)
Shotgun, Semi-Automatic 8 25 3 6+1 T
Benelli M4 (12 Gauge)
Shotgun, Assault* 8 50 * 32+1 N
MPS AA-12 (12 Gauge)
Bows**
Short Bow 4 60 1 1 N
Hunting Bow 5 100 1 1 N
Long Bow 5 120 1 1 N
Crossbow, Commando 3 20 1 1 J***
Crossbow 5 90 1 1 T
Crossbow, Hvy. 6 100 1 1 N
Taser**** 5 5 1 1 P
Tear Gas**** 3 3 1 5 P
Bear Mace**** 4 3 1 3 P
Damage: All damage from firearms and bows is lethal.
Range: Within listed range (in yards), difficulty is 6; at twice listed Range, difficulty is 8; within two yards, difficulty is 4.
Rate: Maximum number of bullets or three-round bursts the gun can fire in a single turn.
Clip: Maximum number of bullets the gun can hold. Some guns, listed as “+1,” can hold a full clip with a round ready in the chamber.
Conceal: See the Melee Weapons chart.
*The gun may fire full-auto, three-round bursts, and sprays.
**Long and short bows take an automatic action to nock and draw; crossbows require two automatic actions to reload.
***Collapsible; requires one turn to unfold from storage configuration, plus one action to load once it has been unfolded.
**** Bashing damage, not lethal; adds no extra damage from successes scored. Tear gas and bear mace also reduce target’s dice pools by two dice for one turn per success.