NWoD Translation Guide

City of Hope uses Old/Classic World of Darkness (mainly Revised, see here for full details).

For the benefit of players more familiar with New World of Darkness aka Chronicles of Darkness, this is an unofficial guide to how OWoD/CWoD differs from NWoD. Corrections are welcomed.

For combat, see Combat. For non-combat situations (even if being resolved at combat speed), see Dramatic Systems.

Attributes

• Mortal and Mortal+ get 6/4/3, supernaturals get 7/5/3
• Mental attributes: Perception instead of Resolve
• Social attributes: Charisma/Appearance instead of Presence/Composure
  • These do not follow a consistent Power/Finesse/Resistance pattern

Abilities

• "Skills" -> "Abilities"
• Mortal and Mortal+ get 11/7/4, supernaturals get 13/9/5
• "Mental skills" -> "Knowledges" (untrained: automatically fail)
• "Physical skills" -> "Skills" (untrained: roll attribute at +1 difficulty)
• "Social skills" -> "Talents" (untrained: roll attribute at normal difficulty)
  • Some abilities are classified differently
• Abilities with different names:
  • "Larceny" -> "Security" (OWoD "Larceny" is narrower in scope)
  • "Weaponry" -> "Melee"
  • "Socialize" -> "Etiquette"
• Primary abilities not in (core) NWoD:
  • Talents: Alertness, Awareness, Dodge, Leadership
  • Skills: Performance, Technology
  • Knowledges: Bureaucracy, Cosmology, Enigmas, Finance, Law Linguistics
  • By game line: Lore
  • Shifters: Primal Urge, Rituals
  • Changelings: Kenning, Gremayre

Ability rolls

• There are no attribute+attribute rolls, just attribute+ability
• "Target number" -> "Difficulty": default 6, but some modifiers affect difficulty instead of dice pool (generally ranges from +3 to -3)
• Each 1 cancels out a success
• 10-again rule is limited to specialties ('+rules specialties')
• "Dramatic failure" -> "Botch": occurs when you get one or more 1s and no successes (even before they're canceled by 1s)
• There are no chance rolls: if your dice pool is empty, you automatically fail

Other stats

• There is no automatic Defense modifier, only when you perform a defensive action (e.g. dodge)
• Health normally starts at 7
• Initiative = (Dexterity + Wits + 1 die) and is re-rolled each turn
• "Morality" -> "Humanity" (Path of Enlightenment for some vampires/ghouls)
• There are no dedicated Size and Speed stats (but there are some relevant merits/flaws, e.g. Huge Size, Short)
• Willpower is determined differently depending on game line: spend Willpower to gain one automatic success on an action roll
• Instead of Virtue and Vice, there are Nature (what you're really like) and Demeanor (how you act): gain a Willpower for acting in accordance with your Nature
• Mortal and Mortal+ get 21 freebies, supernaturals get 15: similar but not identical to experience points
• Merits are optional, each dot costs 1 freebie
• Flaws are optional, each dot gives 1 freebie (max 7 or your two biggest flaws, whichever total is greater)
• For details by game line, see Character Generation
• Experience point costs are different, see XP Chart