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Okay, this should be interesting. A lot, but interesting.
Role playing games have an interesting problem in contrast to many of its other gaming peers on the virtue that so much of it is unbounded-there's no strict enforcing of any particular part, piece, or whole. In card games and board games, while you can use the pieces in ways counter to their design, the general specificity of those pieces means playing the game in accordance to the rules, and those rules are often strict enough, often with clear enough consequences for breaking them that deterrence is just built in. In video games, anything the developer's don't want you doing just isn't included in the game and therefore isn't possible by the language of it's own action, the closest example of actual deviance being nothing about player agency, but instead in mishaps in the language of the game engine (glitches and the like).
By contrast, the freedom to deviate is such an assumed factor of tabletop roleplaying games that it's one of the bigger debates in the field, the question of just how much is actually given to the game to manage versus the players to manage and figure out, and even design and create. This leads to a wide variety of games where on one end, the rules are meant to become the bones and implied substance of the game world, and on the other end have game that might give you the setting or even just a premise, and then leaves it to players to arbitrate and answer anything that comes up. Even if the majority of the games exists somewhere in the middle, it can still get really fiddly as different games approach how players are supposed approach the game, or even different parts of the game, without being directly clear about it, relying on players to play towards the theme and tone of the rest of the game and to otherwise intuit the intentionality behind any of its parts.
The consequences of this, on a deep enough involvement with the hobby, is that every player is, in some way or another, equipped with tools for understanding game design, but that can be anything from the equivalent of having a few tools thrown at them and presenting them with shambled lean-tos to having a really in-depth, "I've played this system so much I could make a game with it and not have it suck" level of knowledge for one particular tabletop gaming engine...that will completely fall apart of them when they try to make something that would work better with another root system. Of course, some people will go on even further than that and build and practice enough that you can expect them to be functionally competent if they need to imagine a fix or answer in any game they pick up, but those people can be rare, and it often takes time, money, and exploration a lot of people can't do-most people will only have the one game or at most a handful of games that may or may not even be using a similar base game engine. Some newbies reading this might even be taken aback at thinking of TTRPGs having game engines.
Of no small part contributing to that problem is that a lot of the keys that make up understanding any given tabletop game are often in the narrative of the game rather than its mechanics. Sure, a system for designing a class might not actually have anything saying that you can't auto-cast Meteor Swarm for free with re-rolls of the five lowest scoring damage, but if game is mostly about low-magic, bag of small tricks late 1940s wizard detectives who only get to throttle the heavens in climaxes where they return to the fantasy overworld that is the ongoing metaphysical consequences of World War 2, then maybe this isn't an ability they're supposed to start with. Understanding the way theme, genre, mood, design intent affect a game's play is one of those things that you might not even think about, but goes a long way in making a game enjoyable within its constraints.
Which, of course and at long last, brings us around to talking about Combat in Chronicles of Darkness.
I've seen a lot of confusion on Chronicles combat over the years. I've seen complaints that it's both too lethal and not lethal enough, I've seen confusion on how to have "boss battles", I've seen the action economy argued to hell and back, I've seen it be something people have grappled with across multiple gamelines. Because this tackles a lot of different complaints, I can't offer a universal answer for the conflict I've seen people have with the combat in Chronicles, beyond what I've addressed up to now-that essentially, people are just having a disconnect between what Chronicles is primarily built for versus things they want to do with it, mostly as a result of their expectations based on their own desires, understanding of the pieces, or prior experiences with other games. I also can't hope to answer all of those particular ones, because that's a lot of work and I feel like some people not like being called out (even if that's not the point.) So, then, my goal is more to make a hopefully comprehensive look at the way combat is thought about and works in Chronicles, laying out the principles that leads into it's action, the general story structure that's built into damage, some of the ways the individual gamelines play around with and tweak those expectations, and how certain popular combat archetypes work with that.
If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. So let's get into it.
Part 1: The Principles of Chronicles Combat and What Goes Into Them
Not every combat or the scenarios that lead into them are the same, of course. Just as people are myriad and iteratively different from each other, the particulars that make up any fight are just that-particular. And yet, just like there can be enough similarities between people that it can be easy to understand their archetype or stereotype, economic class or cultural upbringing, fights can gain similar points of similarity. And we're not even talking about fiction and genre conceits yet.
But with that, I bring it up because these principles do not need to be understood as universal to nevertheless be something you should know. Chronicles is a horror game that relies on horror logic, and in that way it can take on a very tactical element-not in the sense of like a wargame or something like Dungeons and Dragons, but more like what you'd get in tactical shooters. A lot of conflicts are played out more in terms of recon and manipulation, learning more about what opposition can do and otherwise trying to delay getting into a fight until an overwhelming victory can be assured, and that victory might not even be the result of a fight. Not every combat will play out that way, of course, not everyone will adhere to-but it's important to note those as exceptions, and to know why they are exceptional, whether that be exceptionally tough or exceptionally foolhardy (and thus may be morally challenging).
So, with that said, the four Principles of Combat and THe Odd One Out.
Principle 0: Know What's Worth Losing For Winning, and Vice Versa
This one is not strictly combat so much as it is understanding Chronicles in general, because everything that happens in Chronicles starts from this principle. In short, everyone is generally doing whatever they're doing for a reason, and that doing things has costs-in terms of time, funds, tools, resources, and, of course, lives. These reasons can be flippant, ill-thought out, and small, which for our purposes can maybe lead to small fights of no consequences, but the more frequent fact is that these goals are often more important than that, and in fact often serves as the point of a story. Knowing what's worth grasping at, what reaching costs, and when to pull back forms the basis of all conflict in Chronicles, and the sooner this is embraced, the more you can understand when combat actually happens.
Principle 1: No One Wants to Get in a Fight, Even if You Want To
Let's not mistake this for pacifism-the world of Chronicles is quite happy to embrace to violence all around as a variety of tools to resolve problems. But that's not the same thing as a fight. Fights are inconvenient to everyone, from the freshly turned neonate to the best prepared guildmaster of the Maa-Kep. Why? Well, from the pragmatic level, it's because fights are just generally inefficient implementation of resources. If something's a fight, it means you haven't securely gotten or set up whatever you're going for, and it means that you're wasting time, martial and mystical resources, and the health, wholeness, and even lives of the actors you have dealing with that-all resources that could probably be better used more efficiently and fully in some other capacity. On the more personal level, getting into a fight is a scary, uncertain prospect, with every swing of a fist, slash of a knife, and trigger-pull of a gun being a series of coin tosses of saving or killing you. There's a lot of variables that happen in fights, and even those really skilled at them having removed a lot of their own personal variables generally finds it still too much to ever be comfortable with.
That's inconvenient, of course, because as players we really enjoy the catharsis that comes with the transgression of getting into a fight, and it's just a good and solid tool for tension and drama. But don't worry-fight's do still happen, it's just people in Chronicles try to control for them as much as possible. The grand irony is that, by embracing the fact no one wnats to get into a fight, the fights that happen are just that much more substantial, dramatic, and memorable. But we'll get there. In the meantime, how do most conflicts play out?
Principle 2: Seize with Overwhelming Advantage, Retreat with Anything Less
In horror, the protagonists often don't make a stand against the monster unless they have a good plan and a LOT of resources to make that plan work, even if they're cobbled together. Most of the rest of the time, they do the sensible thing and run, with those who try to make a stand with a weapon or what not finding out the small advantage is not enough in lethal ways. If you've been around the military at all in your life, you might find that reflecting their sensibilities-units tend to not act on something unless they can ensure they can sweep in, complete their objectives, and either leave or control the location without any(Well, more like many) casualties or debilitating injuries-sometimes, even amongst their opposition. Otherwise, if something comes in, it's basic protocol to pull as smart a controlled retreat as possible, recon as much as possible, and retaliate when you know you can control the scenario. The general principle is that by performing these strikes of overwhelming advantage, you've controlled for the efficiency of getting what you want out of the scenario by risking the least out of your major resources and spending the least of your minor resources.
Whether you're leaning into it for the genre conceit or just handling things logically, the big thing to understand is that a lot of conflict tends to be chases more than combats. If your players get the drop on the opposition, it's gonna be better for them to basically stop what they're doing, get the fuck out, regroup and arm up, and then go at them again to just get into a fight. If you're investigating the old mansion and round the corner to the dominating howl of a werewolf, it doesn't matter how many silver bullets you have, you're better running away, getting your friends, finding a defensible position, and then pounding silver into than trying to gun it down in the moment. Sure, you might take some shots to help you get out, but actively engaging with the werewolf is not a winning recipe.
In this way, it's good to understand most conflict in Chronicles as being extended games of cat and mouse with people chasing one another out and away, following up on people while building up and chasing them out, trying to get what's needed or needed doing, and tactically retreating. Fighting an unknown quantity is lesser than backing the hell out, learning how big the guys were, becoming three times as big, and then going in to clap them back. As a bonus, this approach can help players to feel smart in certain defeats and like absolute badasses in victory.
Principle 3: Compromise is Good Survival Tactics and Even Better Foreplay
It may seem like talking with the opposition has no place in the subject of combat, and you'd be right-but it has a lot to do with everything around it. See, a minor extension of no one wanting to get into a fight is that no one really wants to kill anyone either, most of the time. That may sound contradictory, but again borrowing from military tactics for pragmatism, it's often more expensive for an enemy to have to nurse a comrade back to health than it is to replace them. A dead ally of an enemy can demoralize them, but a wounded one can slow them down and make the easy to track to their hidey holes of resources. ANd, of course, if you actually kill anyone, they're that much more incentivized to kill you, which means they're that much more of a problem of getting in the way of what you want, which means, you guessed it, more wasted resources. You don't want to lose for winning, you don't want to buy more enmity than you can pay for. (Also, we'll talk more about this in the damage types)
Let's bring this around to the defensive take, though-as a general, fight to the last breath sounds all good and fun, but as a rule, any conflict you can walk away from is a good one. So, if you end up in a situation where you can't retreat from overwhelming force, survive and compromise. Find out what the other side wants. Give it to them. Do them the favor. Offer up a hostage. Lie, scheme, and gamble about and on all of that. It need not always be a direct compromise with the enemy-maybe you never thought you'd enact the wisdom of outrunning a bear, but you got claws where your cultist's got a track gold star and it really is a matter of them or you. But as a general rule, a lot of the worst TPK's end up as the result of people standing and fighting when they could be taking a step back with a compromise, and even finding a better way forward from there. Make hard decisions, embrace the drama, and take the alternative to death and make it work for you.
Even better, though, is using compromise as your forward. Got all the power and know it, meet them and compromise. DOn't know what they got? Compromise. In the case of the former, a well placed compromise can save you even more resources, and hell might get you an ally, or at least a better idea of their larger picture. In the latter case, while you do want to have a control for escape and defense before giving it a go, arranging for a compromise might mitigate any conflict at all, allows your crew more time to shape up who they are, gives you a chance to learn and know more about what's going on, and creates time for you to create an advantage you might not have had.
The big thing, though, is that talking, learning, negotiating, compromising-all of these are preferable to an actual fight, even if you have the advantage, because controlling the outcome and getting the most out of conflict is preferable to simply winning a skirmish.
Principle 4: You Can Stop Seeking the Advantage When You're About To Lose It All
As a general rule, the previous principles are about the import of doing what you're there to do and controlling as many variable as you can, which a fight does not let you do. But, you know, all of that control and seeking of advantage, it is to the end of a goal, a desire. Power hoarded for power's sake, for the purpose of this conversation, doesn't do you a lick of good if you're going to ultimately lose the chance to get what you want(even if is, technically, "more meaningful power"-large scale ambition for advantage should not be confused with small scale advantages). The parameters of "get what you want", of course, is not a fixed form, and very little is a one way street-part of the reason why it's good to compromise is that it's better to acknowledge there are many roads to an end and putting it all on one option is a poor gamble-but eventually, there is "Get it or don't", and when that comes, it kind of doesn't matter where the balance is-it's better to act than not. Of course, you need to have good instincts for that, and that's going to come with practice of the prior principles (unless, of course, it's the end goal of, like, stop this group from ending the world, but hopefully your climaxes have more dramatic stakes than that)
More importantly, though, is when to cut the line between gaining the advantage and losing a whole lot more. Sure, you may be able to outpower or manipulate a situation into another edge, but if the gamble is a major hit to your cult/gang/squad/whatever, it's better to get into the fight than to push the other way. Sometimes, it just isn't worth winning for losing, and the prices needed to pay for winning with control aren't worth it, not when the far lower cost of the gamble is on the table.
At the end of the day, you want to win, and while the majority of that is knowing more, having more, and stacking the entire deck to the best, there's occasions where it's better to flip the table and get into it. You don't want to rely on that, but never deny yourself options on the way to the bottom of the barrel.
Part 2: The Escalating Narrative Inherent in Damage and Why You Should Use It
One of the more recurring problems I see come up with descriptions of combat in gameplay is that people tend to rush towards the more lethal forms of Lethal and Aggravated damage, and then wonder why the game is missing something or other. It's an instinct I DO understand all too well-the need for threat and drama is most heavily loaded at one end of the discussion, and the atavistic part of us that gets a thrill from this part of the game goes " USE! USE! USE!" But that would be missing the fact there is a general narrative baked into Chronicle's damage system that is intended to pair towards escalating conflict as parties get more and more in each others way for what they want, and the general dance of manipulation and misdirection and "professional courtesy" gives way towards more and more vitriol, hatred, and monstrosity. So, let's explore that.
As a disclaimer, while we will be talking about the damages, we're mostly actually interested in the way Wound Penalties are important for the story, and more specifically what comes along with the full damage track of each cash. Since Wound Penalties are consistent across the board, we'll knock that out here. While full blown, ready to kill each other combat is most readily concerned with stacking as many negative modifiers onto opponents as possible to make is that much easier to rack up a full row of damage, it should be noted that the Wound penalties on their own can be hefty enough for a lot of rolls, particularly at the full end where they'll also be coping with the full row risk. That alone is form of powerful persuasion and compromise, a notice that can be leveraged as the reason to end a fight there and then, either by having the good sense, or having either side putting up compromise as an alternative statement-characters in that position should probably have been thinking about an escape clause a turn ago, to be honest.
Okay, with that laid out, let's talk damages.
Bashing Damage-It's How We Say Hello
The province of bar fights, people slapping at you for stabbing them in the dark unexpectedly, and much more, the big thing to understand about Bashing damage is that in a theoretical world, this is all you need-bang a dude in the head until he's ready to go unconcious, and then wait until they do. The tragedy and horror of Chronicles is that so many of the monsters have a way of mitigating that , either never facing the risk of unconsciousness or basically just having a real hard time keeping or taking bashing damage to begin with, coupled with how many tools don't aid with dealing bashing damage (though electricity remains your friend). Nevertheless, this is main way a lot of people would rather deal with someone who is in the way and can't be manipulated out of it-killing someone risks some kind of follow-up and retribution, where as some identity obscuring elements and otherwise carrying some post-fight materials to make the opponent seem an unreliable witness tends to do a lot of of the work for covering up. Because of this expedience, a lot of people are quite willing to deal with initial conflicts on this level-usually, they'll have at least someone, if not a couple someones, who can very handily beat someone up and toss them in a dumpster. It solves the problems and still leaves people ready to see their aunt for Thanksgiving, give or take a few teeth.
Lethal Damage-It's a Classic "Your Friend or Me" Situation Until It Turns Out To Be a Weird Way To Ask Someone Out
The province of sword fights, knife fights, and other sharp pointy object fights, it might be mildly disarming for you to hear that the actual goal of Lethal is to not kill someone, but here we are. Filling up someone's health bar with Lethal doesn't kill them, it renders them bleeding out over the course of minutes (and probably unconcious). Now, if someone wants to kill them, they can double-tap that mother fucker, but assuming we're still in a realm of professional fighting, the more advantageous position with long term benefits is to leave them bleeding out and force the opposition to make a choice to either chase after them or to otherwise do something about their friend/comrade/ally/whatever. A Particularly devious or even compassionate enemy might even, sufficiently away, leave behind a quick heal toy of some sort behind to further make the point to anyone who thinks going after them is really the better idea for bingo night. THe main reason this is effective is that any sane and defensively minded team is going to want one person doing the recovery and one person guarding both the healer and healee, and anyone taking a versimilitudinous cue from emergency medics would want to two people working on the healee, and one to two people defending. Depending on which you go with and the size of your play group (and reasonably the size of groups doing the same sort of shit your player groups), that's anywhere from your entire party to at best half of it. Of course, it could just be one person doing the healing, but if yer devious or want to otherwise actually kill them, some creative looping makes that a two for one deal easy. If you'd like to keep the hostilities down, sure, some people will be mad at you for nearly killing them, but it's not like you actually did, and you definitely could have if you wanted to (even if you're lying through your teeth as you say that), and and considering the alternatives, this is a good way of saying you don't quite want someone dead, but they're starting to get on your nerves, or that you wouldn't mind leaving their life to chance rather than your own hands at this point. But wait, sharp pointy objects? what about
Lethal Damage But With Guns This Time-There Were No Smiles
The province of gun fights, gun duels, and gun accidents, you may be wondering why this is it's own category. Answer: of the four primary damage skills, Firearms is the only one that automatically ignores Defense, and since Defense is the primary stat most everything survives attacks with, combat that takes to removing it is a clear demarcation of intent. At this point, it's safe to say whoever is conflicting with each other wants someone dead. If you're following the narrative of escalation to this point, that's likely because you've been getting in each other's ways enough that the costs of letting each other live is cutting into the business of getting what you want. THere could be other factors that influence this level of "Don't fuck around", but whatever it is, it's Serious Business, the stakes are starting to really matter. Maybe if it's not rooted in the escalating violence between two continual opponents, after resolving those stakes, future conflicts can afford to drop down a peg or two, but for the most part, this is where things start to get concerning, that they might really really mean to kill you this time.. One thing that makes this the beginning of really, seriously trying to kill each other is that it becomes that much easier to do it-sure, you can get them bleeding out in a few actions, but by similiar token it's not as much additional work to get them to full aggravated. Worth noting that almost every gameline includes a power, Merit, or some other quirk that allows for Defense here, and that's a big deal, but it's also much rarer.
Aggravated Damage-It's Like They're Personally, Finally, Trying to Tell You They Hate You
The province of chainsaws, mystical horseshit, and fire (Even If It's Not That), aggravated Damage is both really available and really not available-in terms of mundane stuff, the most readily available source is the unwieldy and unfriendly chainsaw, and other mundane means are the province of wood chippers, junk crushers, cruise missiles, and nearly revealing that the all the Templars are part marshmallow. More usually, it's the province of magical bullshit, from banes to spells to whatever the form. Because the occult means to inflict aggravated usually have some symbolic importance to your character, and the mundane methods probably involve a lot of close proximity and up-close wrestling and struggling, there's no way of employing aggravated damage without things getting personal, and as the tier where completion means death, no, really, actually death this time, this means that the relationship between you and your opponent is that you're ready to personally, finally, kill each other. This is the realm of grievance, this is the realm of ending a curse that entered your life, this is "We are never, ever, ever getting back together" territory between people whose regular interactions are violence. If for any reason a fight does not end here, you can bet your ass that the next time they run into you, they will be trying to bring the same level of pain. This is Climax Of The Story shit.
Tilts and Conditions-Summoning the End
Tilts primarily, but on occasion Conditions, are primarily here to make it easier to reach the end of the row of whatever damage you are trying to escort your problem children to, but there is another aspect that must be given attention. That aspect is that by inflicting a Tilt, you actually rush the otherwise conventional end of the row up ahead of schedule. Simply put, having a -2 or -3 on all or most of you relevant actions can be as demoralizing and debilitating as getting a full rack of damage, so by inflicting a Tilt, you actually have a lot of leverage to try and convince a person to stand down and back off while you go win the stepping stone. Breaking someone's arm is not a small thing, and even if you can magically heal it, it's enough of a thing you may not want to distract from the combat to handle it. Breaking everyone's arms is an even better way of going about it. Remember, most of the time you're not out to kill someone, you're fighting someone because they're in the way of what you want. Tilts are a good way of hastening the end of a distraction and uncontrolled moment to the end and providing amiable lose conditions that beat the pants off of all the work that otherwise goes into killing someone in a fight.
So with that, you can see how a narrative might emerge amongst a lot of the regulars of your setting, and of course you can easily imagine how playing with that basic expectation can go a long way in creating tension or surprise, how it can relate to someone being a threat, or possibly being more human than you expected. Point is, you now see the rough escalating narrative.
Role playing games have an interesting problem in contrast to many of its other gaming peers on the virtue that so much of it is unbounded-there's no strict enforcing of any particular part, piece, or whole. In card games and board games, while you can use the pieces in ways counter to their design, the general specificity of those pieces means playing the game in accordance to the rules, and those rules are often strict enough, often with clear enough consequences for breaking them that deterrence is just built in. In video games, anything the developer's don't want you doing just isn't included in the game and therefore isn't possible by the language of it's own action, the closest example of actual deviance being nothing about player agency, but instead in mishaps in the language of the game engine (glitches and the like).
By contrast, the freedom to deviate is such an assumed factor of tabletop roleplaying games that it's one of the bigger debates in the field, the question of just how much is actually given to the game to manage versus the players to manage and figure out, and even design and create. This leads to a wide variety of games where on one end, the rules are meant to become the bones and implied substance of the game world, and on the other end have game that might give you the setting or even just a premise, and then leaves it to players to arbitrate and answer anything that comes up. Even if the majority of the games exists somewhere in the middle, it can still get really fiddly as different games approach how players are supposed approach the game, or even different parts of the game, without being directly clear about it, relying on players to play towards the theme and tone of the rest of the game and to otherwise intuit the intentionality behind any of its parts.
The consequences of this, on a deep enough involvement with the hobby, is that every player is, in some way or another, equipped with tools for understanding game design, but that can be anything from the equivalent of having a few tools thrown at them and presenting them with shambled lean-tos to having a really in-depth, "I've played this system so much I could make a game with it and not have it suck" level of knowledge for one particular tabletop gaming engine...that will completely fall apart of them when they try to make something that would work better with another root system. Of course, some people will go on even further than that and build and practice enough that you can expect them to be functionally competent if they need to imagine a fix or answer in any game they pick up, but those people can be rare, and it often takes time, money, and exploration a lot of people can't do-most people will only have the one game or at most a handful of games that may or may not even be using a similar base game engine. Some newbies reading this might even be taken aback at thinking of TTRPGs having game engines.
Of no small part contributing to that problem is that a lot of the keys that make up understanding any given tabletop game are often in the narrative of the game rather than its mechanics. Sure, a system for designing a class might not actually have anything saying that you can't auto-cast Meteor Swarm for free with re-rolls of the five lowest scoring damage, but if game is mostly about low-magic, bag of small tricks late 1940s wizard detectives who only get to throttle the heavens in climaxes where they return to the fantasy overworld that is the ongoing metaphysical consequences of World War 2, then maybe this isn't an ability they're supposed to start with. Understanding the way theme, genre, mood, design intent affect a game's play is one of those things that you might not even think about, but goes a long way in making a game enjoyable within its constraints.
Which, of course and at long last, brings us around to talking about Combat in Chronicles of Darkness.
I've seen a lot of confusion on Chronicles combat over the years. I've seen complaints that it's both too lethal and not lethal enough, I've seen confusion on how to have "boss battles", I've seen the action economy argued to hell and back, I've seen it be something people have grappled with across multiple gamelines. Because this tackles a lot of different complaints, I can't offer a universal answer for the conflict I've seen people have with the combat in Chronicles, beyond what I've addressed up to now-that essentially, people are just having a disconnect between what Chronicles is primarily built for versus things they want to do with it, mostly as a result of their expectations based on their own desires, understanding of the pieces, or prior experiences with other games. I also can't hope to answer all of those particular ones, because that's a lot of work and I feel like some people not like being called out (even if that's not the point.) So, then, my goal is more to make a hopefully comprehensive look at the way combat is thought about and works in Chronicles, laying out the principles that leads into it's action, the general story structure that's built into damage, some of the ways the individual gamelines play around with and tweak those expectations, and how certain popular combat archetypes work with that.
If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. So let's get into it.
Part 1: The Principles of Chronicles Combat and What Goes Into Them
Not every combat or the scenarios that lead into them are the same, of course. Just as people are myriad and iteratively different from each other, the particulars that make up any fight are just that-particular. And yet, just like there can be enough similarities between people that it can be easy to understand their archetype or stereotype, economic class or cultural upbringing, fights can gain similar points of similarity. And we're not even talking about fiction and genre conceits yet.
But with that, I bring it up because these principles do not need to be understood as universal to nevertheless be something you should know. Chronicles is a horror game that relies on horror logic, and in that way it can take on a very tactical element-not in the sense of like a wargame or something like Dungeons and Dragons, but more like what you'd get in tactical shooters. A lot of conflicts are played out more in terms of recon and manipulation, learning more about what opposition can do and otherwise trying to delay getting into a fight until an overwhelming victory can be assured, and that victory might not even be the result of a fight. Not every combat will play out that way, of course, not everyone will adhere to-but it's important to note those as exceptions, and to know why they are exceptional, whether that be exceptionally tough or exceptionally foolhardy (and thus may be morally challenging).
So, with that said, the four Principles of Combat and THe Odd One Out.
Principle 0: Know What's Worth Losing For Winning, and Vice Versa
This one is not strictly combat so much as it is understanding Chronicles in general, because everything that happens in Chronicles starts from this principle. In short, everyone is generally doing whatever they're doing for a reason, and that doing things has costs-in terms of time, funds, tools, resources, and, of course, lives. These reasons can be flippant, ill-thought out, and small, which for our purposes can maybe lead to small fights of no consequences, but the more frequent fact is that these goals are often more important than that, and in fact often serves as the point of a story. Knowing what's worth grasping at, what reaching costs, and when to pull back forms the basis of all conflict in Chronicles, and the sooner this is embraced, the more you can understand when combat actually happens.
Principle 1: No One Wants to Get in a Fight, Even if You Want To
Let's not mistake this for pacifism-the world of Chronicles is quite happy to embrace to violence all around as a variety of tools to resolve problems. But that's not the same thing as a fight. Fights are inconvenient to everyone, from the freshly turned neonate to the best prepared guildmaster of the Maa-Kep. Why? Well, from the pragmatic level, it's because fights are just generally inefficient implementation of resources. If something's a fight, it means you haven't securely gotten or set up whatever you're going for, and it means that you're wasting time, martial and mystical resources, and the health, wholeness, and even lives of the actors you have dealing with that-all resources that could probably be better used more efficiently and fully in some other capacity. On the more personal level, getting into a fight is a scary, uncertain prospect, with every swing of a fist, slash of a knife, and trigger-pull of a gun being a series of coin tosses of saving or killing you. There's a lot of variables that happen in fights, and even those really skilled at them having removed a lot of their own personal variables generally finds it still too much to ever be comfortable with.
That's inconvenient, of course, because as players we really enjoy the catharsis that comes with the transgression of getting into a fight, and it's just a good and solid tool for tension and drama. But don't worry-fight's do still happen, it's just people in Chronicles try to control for them as much as possible. The grand irony is that, by embracing the fact no one wnats to get into a fight, the fights that happen are just that much more substantial, dramatic, and memorable. But we'll get there. In the meantime, how do most conflicts play out?
Principle 2: Seize with Overwhelming Advantage, Retreat with Anything Less
In horror, the protagonists often don't make a stand against the monster unless they have a good plan and a LOT of resources to make that plan work, even if they're cobbled together. Most of the rest of the time, they do the sensible thing and run, with those who try to make a stand with a weapon or what not finding out the small advantage is not enough in lethal ways. If you've been around the military at all in your life, you might find that reflecting their sensibilities-units tend to not act on something unless they can ensure they can sweep in, complete their objectives, and either leave or control the location without any(Well, more like many) casualties or debilitating injuries-sometimes, even amongst their opposition. Otherwise, if something comes in, it's basic protocol to pull as smart a controlled retreat as possible, recon as much as possible, and retaliate when you know you can control the scenario. The general principle is that by performing these strikes of overwhelming advantage, you've controlled for the efficiency of getting what you want out of the scenario by risking the least out of your major resources and spending the least of your minor resources.
Whether you're leaning into it for the genre conceit or just handling things logically, the big thing to understand is that a lot of conflict tends to be chases more than combats. If your players get the drop on the opposition, it's gonna be better for them to basically stop what they're doing, get the fuck out, regroup and arm up, and then go at them again to just get into a fight. If you're investigating the old mansion and round the corner to the dominating howl of a werewolf, it doesn't matter how many silver bullets you have, you're better running away, getting your friends, finding a defensible position, and then pounding silver into than trying to gun it down in the moment. Sure, you might take some shots to help you get out, but actively engaging with the werewolf is not a winning recipe.
In this way, it's good to understand most conflict in Chronicles as being extended games of cat and mouse with people chasing one another out and away, following up on people while building up and chasing them out, trying to get what's needed or needed doing, and tactically retreating. Fighting an unknown quantity is lesser than backing the hell out, learning how big the guys were, becoming three times as big, and then going in to clap them back. As a bonus, this approach can help players to feel smart in certain defeats and like absolute badasses in victory.
Principle 3: Compromise is Good Survival Tactics and Even Better Foreplay
It may seem like talking with the opposition has no place in the subject of combat, and you'd be right-but it has a lot to do with everything around it. See, a minor extension of no one wanting to get into a fight is that no one really wants to kill anyone either, most of the time. That may sound contradictory, but again borrowing from military tactics for pragmatism, it's often more expensive for an enemy to have to nurse a comrade back to health than it is to replace them. A dead ally of an enemy can demoralize them, but a wounded one can slow them down and make the easy to track to their hidey holes of resources. ANd, of course, if you actually kill anyone, they're that much more incentivized to kill you, which means they're that much more of a problem of getting in the way of what you want, which means, you guessed it, more wasted resources. You don't want to lose for winning, you don't want to buy more enmity than you can pay for. (Also, we'll talk more about this in the damage types)
Let's bring this around to the defensive take, though-as a general, fight to the last breath sounds all good and fun, but as a rule, any conflict you can walk away from is a good one. So, if you end up in a situation where you can't retreat from overwhelming force, survive and compromise. Find out what the other side wants. Give it to them. Do them the favor. Offer up a hostage. Lie, scheme, and gamble about and on all of that. It need not always be a direct compromise with the enemy-maybe you never thought you'd enact the wisdom of outrunning a bear, but you got claws where your cultist's got a track gold star and it really is a matter of them or you. But as a general rule, a lot of the worst TPK's end up as the result of people standing and fighting when they could be taking a step back with a compromise, and even finding a better way forward from there. Make hard decisions, embrace the drama, and take the alternative to death and make it work for you.
Even better, though, is using compromise as your forward. Got all the power and know it, meet them and compromise. DOn't know what they got? Compromise. In the case of the former, a well placed compromise can save you even more resources, and hell might get you an ally, or at least a better idea of their larger picture. In the latter case, while you do want to have a control for escape and defense before giving it a go, arranging for a compromise might mitigate any conflict at all, allows your crew more time to shape up who they are, gives you a chance to learn and know more about what's going on, and creates time for you to create an advantage you might not have had.
The big thing, though, is that talking, learning, negotiating, compromising-all of these are preferable to an actual fight, even if you have the advantage, because controlling the outcome and getting the most out of conflict is preferable to simply winning a skirmish.
Principle 4: You Can Stop Seeking the Advantage When You're About To Lose It All
As a general rule, the previous principles are about the import of doing what you're there to do and controlling as many variable as you can, which a fight does not let you do. But, you know, all of that control and seeking of advantage, it is to the end of a goal, a desire. Power hoarded for power's sake, for the purpose of this conversation, doesn't do you a lick of good if you're going to ultimately lose the chance to get what you want(even if is, technically, "more meaningful power"-large scale ambition for advantage should not be confused with small scale advantages). The parameters of "get what you want", of course, is not a fixed form, and very little is a one way street-part of the reason why it's good to compromise is that it's better to acknowledge there are many roads to an end and putting it all on one option is a poor gamble-but eventually, there is "Get it or don't", and when that comes, it kind of doesn't matter where the balance is-it's better to act than not. Of course, you need to have good instincts for that, and that's going to come with practice of the prior principles (unless, of course, it's the end goal of, like, stop this group from ending the world, but hopefully your climaxes have more dramatic stakes than that)
More importantly, though, is when to cut the line between gaining the advantage and losing a whole lot more. Sure, you may be able to outpower or manipulate a situation into another edge, but if the gamble is a major hit to your cult/gang/squad/whatever, it's better to get into the fight than to push the other way. Sometimes, it just isn't worth winning for losing, and the prices needed to pay for winning with control aren't worth it, not when the far lower cost of the gamble is on the table.
At the end of the day, you want to win, and while the majority of that is knowing more, having more, and stacking the entire deck to the best, there's occasions where it's better to flip the table and get into it. You don't want to rely on that, but never deny yourself options on the way to the bottom of the barrel.
Part 2: The Escalating Narrative Inherent in Damage and Why You Should Use It
One of the more recurring problems I see come up with descriptions of combat in gameplay is that people tend to rush towards the more lethal forms of Lethal and Aggravated damage, and then wonder why the game is missing something or other. It's an instinct I DO understand all too well-the need for threat and drama is most heavily loaded at one end of the discussion, and the atavistic part of us that gets a thrill from this part of the game goes " USE! USE! USE!" But that would be missing the fact there is a general narrative baked into Chronicle's damage system that is intended to pair towards escalating conflict as parties get more and more in each others way for what they want, and the general dance of manipulation and misdirection and "professional courtesy" gives way towards more and more vitriol, hatred, and monstrosity. So, let's explore that.
As a disclaimer, while we will be talking about the damages, we're mostly actually interested in the way Wound Penalties are important for the story, and more specifically what comes along with the full damage track of each cash. Since Wound Penalties are consistent across the board, we'll knock that out here. While full blown, ready to kill each other combat is most readily concerned with stacking as many negative modifiers onto opponents as possible to make is that much easier to rack up a full row of damage, it should be noted that the Wound penalties on their own can be hefty enough for a lot of rolls, particularly at the full end where they'll also be coping with the full row risk. That alone is form of powerful persuasion and compromise, a notice that can be leveraged as the reason to end a fight there and then, either by having the good sense, or having either side putting up compromise as an alternative statement-characters in that position should probably have been thinking about an escape clause a turn ago, to be honest.
Okay, with that laid out, let's talk damages.
Bashing Damage-It's How We Say Hello
The province of bar fights, people slapping at you for stabbing them in the dark unexpectedly, and much more, the big thing to understand about Bashing damage is that in a theoretical world, this is all you need-bang a dude in the head until he's ready to go unconcious, and then wait until they do. The tragedy and horror of Chronicles is that so many of the monsters have a way of mitigating that , either never facing the risk of unconsciousness or basically just having a real hard time keeping or taking bashing damage to begin with, coupled with how many tools don't aid with dealing bashing damage (though electricity remains your friend). Nevertheless, this is main way a lot of people would rather deal with someone who is in the way and can't be manipulated out of it-killing someone risks some kind of follow-up and retribution, where as some identity obscuring elements and otherwise carrying some post-fight materials to make the opponent seem an unreliable witness tends to do a lot of of the work for covering up. Because of this expedience, a lot of people are quite willing to deal with initial conflicts on this level-usually, they'll have at least someone, if not a couple someones, who can very handily beat someone up and toss them in a dumpster. It solves the problems and still leaves people ready to see their aunt for Thanksgiving, give or take a few teeth.
Lethal Damage-It's a Classic "Your Friend or Me" Situation Until It Turns Out To Be a Weird Way To Ask Someone Out
The province of sword fights, knife fights, and other sharp pointy object fights, it might be mildly disarming for you to hear that the actual goal of Lethal is to not kill someone, but here we are. Filling up someone's health bar with Lethal doesn't kill them, it renders them bleeding out over the course of minutes (and probably unconcious). Now, if someone wants to kill them, they can double-tap that mother fucker, but assuming we're still in a realm of professional fighting, the more advantageous position with long term benefits is to leave them bleeding out and force the opposition to make a choice to either chase after them or to otherwise do something about their friend/comrade/ally/whatever. A Particularly devious or even compassionate enemy might even, sufficiently away, leave behind a quick heal toy of some sort behind to further make the point to anyone who thinks going after them is really the better idea for bingo night. THe main reason this is effective is that any sane and defensively minded team is going to want one person doing the recovery and one person guarding both the healer and healee, and anyone taking a versimilitudinous cue from emergency medics would want to two people working on the healee, and one to two people defending. Depending on which you go with and the size of your play group (and reasonably the size of groups doing the same sort of shit your player groups), that's anywhere from your entire party to at best half of it. Of course, it could just be one person doing the healing, but if yer devious or want to otherwise actually kill them, some creative looping makes that a two for one deal easy. If you'd like to keep the hostilities down, sure, some people will be mad at you for nearly killing them, but it's not like you actually did, and you definitely could have if you wanted to (even if you're lying through your teeth as you say that), and and considering the alternatives, this is a good way of saying you don't quite want someone dead, but they're starting to get on your nerves, or that you wouldn't mind leaving their life to chance rather than your own hands at this point. But wait, sharp pointy objects? what about
Lethal Damage But With Guns This Time-There Were No Smiles
The province of gun fights, gun duels, and gun accidents, you may be wondering why this is it's own category. Answer: of the four primary damage skills, Firearms is the only one that automatically ignores Defense, and since Defense is the primary stat most everything survives attacks with, combat that takes to removing it is a clear demarcation of intent. At this point, it's safe to say whoever is conflicting with each other wants someone dead. If you're following the narrative of escalation to this point, that's likely because you've been getting in each other's ways enough that the costs of letting each other live is cutting into the business of getting what you want. THere could be other factors that influence this level of "Don't fuck around", but whatever it is, it's Serious Business, the stakes are starting to really matter. Maybe if it's not rooted in the escalating violence between two continual opponents, after resolving those stakes, future conflicts can afford to drop down a peg or two, but for the most part, this is where things start to get concerning, that they might really really mean to kill you this time.. One thing that makes this the beginning of really, seriously trying to kill each other is that it becomes that much easier to do it-sure, you can get them bleeding out in a few actions, but by similiar token it's not as much additional work to get them to full aggravated. Worth noting that almost every gameline includes a power, Merit, or some other quirk that allows for Defense here, and that's a big deal, but it's also much rarer.
Aggravated Damage-It's Like They're Personally, Finally, Trying to Tell You They Hate You
The province of chainsaws, mystical horseshit, and fire (Even If It's Not That), aggravated Damage is both really available and really not available-in terms of mundane stuff, the most readily available source is the unwieldy and unfriendly chainsaw, and other mundane means are the province of wood chippers, junk crushers, cruise missiles, and nearly revealing that the all the Templars are part marshmallow. More usually, it's the province of magical bullshit, from banes to spells to whatever the form. Because the occult means to inflict aggravated usually have some symbolic importance to your character, and the mundane methods probably involve a lot of close proximity and up-close wrestling and struggling, there's no way of employing aggravated damage without things getting personal, and as the tier where completion means death, no, really, actually death this time, this means that the relationship between you and your opponent is that you're ready to personally, finally, kill each other. This is the realm of grievance, this is the realm of ending a curse that entered your life, this is "We are never, ever, ever getting back together" territory between people whose regular interactions are violence. If for any reason a fight does not end here, you can bet your ass that the next time they run into you, they will be trying to bring the same level of pain. This is Climax Of The Story shit.
Tilts and Conditions-Summoning the End
Tilts primarily, but on occasion Conditions, are primarily here to make it easier to reach the end of the row of whatever damage you are trying to escort your problem children to, but there is another aspect that must be given attention. That aspect is that by inflicting a Tilt, you actually rush the otherwise conventional end of the row up ahead of schedule. Simply put, having a -2 or -3 on all or most of you relevant actions can be as demoralizing and debilitating as getting a full rack of damage, so by inflicting a Tilt, you actually have a lot of leverage to try and convince a person to stand down and back off while you go win the stepping stone. Breaking someone's arm is not a small thing, and even if you can magically heal it, it's enough of a thing you may not want to distract from the combat to handle it. Breaking everyone's arms is an even better way of going about it. Remember, most of the time you're not out to kill someone, you're fighting someone because they're in the way of what you want. Tilts are a good way of hastening the end of a distraction and uncontrolled moment to the end and providing amiable lose conditions that beat the pants off of all the work that otherwise goes into killing someone in a fight.
So with that, you can see how a narrative might emerge amongst a lot of the regulars of your setting, and of course you can easily imagine how playing with that basic expectation can go a long way in creating tension or surprise, how it can relate to someone being a threat, or possibly being more human than you expected. Point is, you now see the rough escalating narrative.
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