Questions on Fighting Styles

I was reading up on fighting styles and I had a few questions that you people that know the game better may be able to answer.

I was talking to another player and he stated that you get your fighting style dots to your rolls when making attacks, but I can't find that mentioned anywhere in the rules. All the rules state is that you gain access to the combat maneuvers listed.

"Dots purchased in this Merit allow access to special combat maneuvers. Each maneuver is a prerequisite for the next. So your character can't have ______ until she has ______. The maneuvers and their effects are described below, most of which are based on the ________ Skill."

This text is nearly identical on every fighting style I have found.

Secondly, same player stated that if you have quick draw, you are treated as having the weapon in your hand for abilities that trigger for having said weapon. However, the Quick Draw merit does not state this, and merits that trigger explicitly say you must wield it.

For Example: Fighting Style (Heavy Sword):
Wards: Add 1 to defense when you wield a weapon compatible with this fighting style.

For Example: Combat Marksmanship:
Shoot First: Whenever she begins a combat with a firearm already in her hand, she gains a bonus to her initiative roll equal to her Firearms Skill. If she also has the Quick Draw Merit for firearms and draws a firearm during the first turn of combat, this bonus is added retroactively, starting at the beginning of the second turn of combat.

Am I reading this stuff wrong? Is there a house rule I'm not aware of?

Any info would be appreciated, I'm still trying to figure out the system and want to understand all the mechanics before our characters get set in stone.

Thanks for the question Justin! I knew we'd have some after seeing the first fight . The rule that you are looking for is actually not on the fighting style, but under combat rules in the Blue book.
It states "Other factors apply, however, such as any weapons he wields or special effects that he attempts or initiates. That is, a number of bonus dice are added to your pool equal to the rating of the tool or effect used"
WoD, Page 153.

So say you have a Sword rated at 3, its sharpened, you have Fighting Finesse, and you have FS: Fencing, and are using the level two power. Your dice pool would be Dex(3)+Weaponry(3)+Sword(3+1 for sharpening)+FS(2) for a total die pool of 12.

I believe I was the one talking about this on my first night. I was referring to the merit Combat Marksmanship which states: Shoot First: Whenever your character begins combat with a firearm already in her hand, you gain a bonus to your Initiative roll equal to your Firearms Skill. If you also have the Quick Draw Merit for firearms (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 113) and draw a firearm during the first turn of combat, this bonus is added retroactively, at the beginning of the second turn of combat.


Quick draw makes it where you don't have to use an action to draw a melee or pistol.
Effect: Your character can draw a pistol and fire or
pull a melee weapon and attack without penalty as a single action in a turn. If a weapon is hidden on your character's person (under a coat or in a purse), it can be drawn and used in the same turn without the normal loss of Defense. A separate Quick Draw Merit must be acquired for use with firearms and melee weapons.

The Combat Marksmanship can be found in the WOD Armory and Quick draw can be found in the WOD Core book.

@RavenH
I do not see anywhere on page 154 that states you add your fighting style dice to the attack, nor do I see it at all in the combat section.

Page 157:
More versatile and even exotic maneuvers - throws, nerve pinches - are learned by studying the martial arts. See the Boxing and Kung Fu Fighting Style Merits (pp. 110 and 111) for examples of such training. The average guy on the street with no martial training can perform any of the following basics.

Here it seems to indicate that you only gain access to the maneuver, and no bonus dice is added.
I looked through the errata and found no change or clarification on this text.

@Chad
Ok, that is what I was thinking too. It requires an action to draw a weapon or shoot a weapon, but with Quickdraw you can draw it an attack. Though it does seem to indicate that since it is an action to do both at once, you can only do it on your turn, and any bonuses for having a weapon in your hand (i.e. defense, initiative or whatever) do not apply till you pull it out and physically have it in your hand. A bonus to defense would only apply to attacks that are made after you pull your weapon, and bonuses to initiative apply round two, so you may go second in round one, but after you pull that weapon, you may go before the other guy in round 2, meaning that if the initiatives work out to be close, you could possibly go twice in a row.
So in effect, if you and 2 other people are fighting, and you go between them, then if you have a 4 defense and a style gives you +1 to defense while holding a wiffle bat, then you would have defense 4 for the first attack, then defense 4 for the second. (4 Base +1 style -1 for second attack). Round two you would have 5 defense against the first guy (4 Base +1 style) and 4 again for the second guy.

Upon searching nWOD forums for the last 30 minutes, I found in several places that you do not add your fighting style points to your dice pool. They only give you access to maneuvers.

This makes sense since you could easily just 1 dot several merits in the same category and crank up your damage for very little XP. It also means that those brawl/weaponry/firearms dots, that specialty and your str/dex are far more important stats. That extra point in vigor is cost effective since you can't just spend 2 xp to get that 1 damage from whatever fighting style.

Take it further and you could wield a light blade and a shield then take 2 dots fencing, 2 dots sword and shield and 2 dots in 2 Iado, and add 6 dice to your damage, in addition to all the bonuses you get for the styles themselves.

Incorect you can only apply 1 fighting style at a time.

I will take this issue up with the NST and get her ruleing since there is some misunderstandings from carry over of 2 diff Live action settings, nwod forums mean nothing if they are not part of the gwb game system that has its own variations on rules. As soon as I have the NST's wording it will be posted.

@Fallnor - awesome.

Understand please that I didn't bring this up to be confrontational or beligerent. I will play the game the way the STs want to run it. If it is decided by them that we add our FS dots, cool, I'll add my two dice. If not, that is fine too.

I am very grateful to all the STs that take the time out of their lives to do this thing for all of us. I have DM'd many systems for many years and I understand how difficult it is just to do it in a living room, I'm sure running a LARP is far far more difficult. I'm just happy to be getting to play with all you guys. Please don't think I'm that guy that comes in and tries to ruin everyone's day. If I came off that way, I sincerely apologize.

I'm loving the LARP aspect. What you guys are doing is amazing and I'm super excited to be a part of it and I hope to be a part of it for years to come.

See you guys Monday

@Justin- Your fine hon, This is what keeps us on our toes!

Your example isn't entirely accurate, as Jer pointed out, you can only attempt one thing at a time. Each fighting style also has pre-requisites to take it, and some of them can be pretty steep. (Like Iaido (Armed Defensive Striking) Reload p76 *pre: Strength ••, Dexterity •••, Composure •••, Weaponry •••, Quick Draw ) That right there is At least 6 CP, and could be upwards of 30xp depending on how you build your sheet. Then you have to still spend the XP for the FS, which is 30 xp (over three months worth of XP) to have full access to it.

Brandy,
The rule you are quoting, WoD p153, does NOT automatially include dots in fighting styles. It does include any bonuses the character may get while using a specific technique, but it does not add additional dice for the rating in the fighting style.

(Example:
The character has Dex 4, Firearms 2, a semi-auto pistol with damage 2, and Fighting Style: Combat Marksmanship 3. When the character attacks, the normal dice pool is 8 (4+2+2). If the player uses the technique Double Tap (Combat Marksmanship 3) to fire a short burst (by expending 2 extra bullets) the character receives an additional +1, per the short burst rules, for a total of 9.)

Adding the fighting style dots to every attack roll would be way too unbalanced. Why would the player ever buy more than the prerequisite dots in a skill at [dot x3] XP when he can get the same bonus AND cool extra techniques or passive abilities at [dot x2] XP for the fighting style.

Justin,
You are reading that exactly right. Also, the Shoot First technique is one of VERY few fighting style abilities that specifically mentions Quick Draw. Chad was probably thinking of it and accidentally used poor wording in describing how that works.

I really love that you obviously researched this before posting. I also like that you already knew exactly the correct places to look, which means we've done a good job at posting the right links and discussing the right directions to the appropriate resources.

Keep it up, man. That's awesome.

~Carl Jordan

None of this matters anymore the conversation is closed the DST says it works this way and that's the way she is going to run it so that's the way it is. case closed.

I will ask the mods at this point to lock the thread if possible.

Thank you , all for your posts.

So the ruling is that we add our FS dots to our dice pool? OK, I'll modify my sheet accordingly.