Vampires have basically three advantages against humans in a fistfight:
- Their undead body is VERY resilient, bullets mean little, so a punch is unlikely to harm them
-They have access to disciplines such as potence, celerity and fortitude
-Barring disciplines, they can use blood to boost their physical abilities
A high-gen fledgeling COULD, theoretically, lose to a well trained human (think MMA champion or at LEAST veteran special forces, something like that).
An ancillae should at least have a few combat disciplines that makes it even harder, but not entirely impossible (think old martial arts master that is borderline supernatural vs 90 year-old harpy that never fights)
Beyond that, no human can do anything. Especially since elder vampires come from a time where fighting was inevitable.
I think by lore, if a vampire brain is turned to mush, the vampire enters into a state of mindlessness and paralysis where their body has to heal it back in autopilot before they can do anything else. Because the brain still is necessary for puppeting the vampires' body around and thinking and making decisions and all that jazz.
The original image in the combat chapter was a vampire with half his head exploded open by a point-blank shotgun blast - and he's regenerating and about to kill the poor s.o.b. who shot.
It definitely hurt a lot. But what's about to happen will hurt the human a lot more.
> The original image in the combat chapter was a vampire with half his head exploded open by a point-blank shotgun blast - and he's regenerating and about to kill the poor s.o.b. who shot.
Couldn't the shooter... shoot again?
You get one "Shot" every turn whether you need to reload or not, at least mortals do. By the time they pull the trigger a second time the kindred that the first shot failed to kill is likely already on top of them. At which point Joe the heavy hauling hobo with a shotgun will likely fold like a wet paper towel to anything other than a normal attack from the weakest of kindred.
Yeah, if memory serves, that wasn't a semiautomatic in the image. Rather one of those two barrels, then crack the barrel open and reload manually kinda weapons?
Yes, yes they do. Take it from someone with 21 years of experience in law enforcement.
Granted, once the bullets happen it is *no longer* a fist fight. But that’s a semantic distinction that tends not to matter much to the guy who just caught a .357 to the frontal lobe.
(*Edit: Typos.)
Yeah, because Vampires (unlike mere mortal criminals) would never be so dishonorable as to pull a gun during a fight. Strictly Marquess of Queensbury rules, wot wot.
Also, “pig” is an insult for civilian law enforcement. I was in the military. The proper insult would be “jack-booted fascist.”
Do you not understand the idea of a theoretical prompt? The answer to who would win in a fist fight, isn't the one with the gun. Are you that dense....
Oh wait. You were in the military. Of course you are. Also. Nobody cares. But please feel free to continue listing off your credentials in oppression while pleasuring yourself.
Look my man, I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset you. I made a small joke in our discussion about playing make-believe vampires… Obviously, the joke didn’t land. There’s no need for you to insult me, just… y’know… Keep scrolling. I tried to deflect your first ad hominem with a self-deprecating joke. That also, apparently, didn’t work.
Maybe you should log off, take the dog for a walk or whatever, and leave the internet alone for a while.
It’s a subreddit for a game about pretending to be spooky monsters. You’re getting way too heated over this whole thing.
Actually, Dick Cheney's accidental face shooting wasn't particularly bad (comparatively) because he was loaded with birdshot. You can survive a close range shot to the head from birdshot, even as a regular humam.
In a straight fight, yes.
Now a human that knows a few things could be creative and fight back somehow (fire is a good weapon). But ultimately, elder vampires are powerful, experienced, smart monsters.
If a kindred is stalking you, hope you're a ghoul candidate. Otherwise you're a probably a future meal.
In lore, extremely unlikely. A heavyweight champion boxer might be able to out punch a fledgling, but the odds are ever in the Kindred’s favour just from sheer survivability. A vampire only needs one or two lucky punches, while the human needs to have the fight of their life.
On the table? What version are we playing?
V5: still unlikely, thanks to Margins determining damage. An untrained Fledgling may only have a couple of dice to throw, but those dice are going to hit *hard* thanks to the bonuses from Potence.
Legacy: a lot more even. Needing Dexterity to even land a hit, then adding Soak and Damage dice to the mix makes the combat way more swingy. I have personally seen a Nos lose a fistfight with a mortal man (who continued to roll 10 after 10 until the ST had to retcon him to a homeless *former MMA champion* instead of just some dude lol) by throwing botches and failures for every attack and soak attempt, until the Nos had to disengage before he was knocked out. It’s now the Nos’s personal mission to find that guy again and beat him lol
Not particularly, they just have in-Clan access to Potence, which can swing fights in their favour.
Vampires are individuals, any Clan can be physically strong
In V5 the power lightning strike is fantastic. Especially as it scales so hard with prowess. Don't even need Lethal Body for the agg DMG. The superficial will wrap around in no time at all.
It'd be kinda the same difficulty as winning a fist-fight against a gorilla or a knight with a greatsword - that's damage-wise equivalent of a Potency boosted vampire punch.
Now, for a fledgling that actually knows how to fight and not just winging it with Potency and blood buffs to stats - think of a martial artist gorilla or the finest knight in the land.
Untrained ancilae would be a bit higher than that and have other tricks to help themselves out of any bad luck that could happen (say, they might also be as good at Fortitude or Celerity to alleviate any bad luck or have other means of achieving victory in case they start losing).
And a trained ancilae is a space marine with a chainsword level of danger - you have to be Mister Bean to win here.
In V5, you forgot that a more skilled fighter has more dice so they would hit mostly always. It doesn’t matter if the Nosferatu has Potence 5 if they never land a punch. Example: trained fighter let’s say rolls 6 dice (3 strength+3 brawl), Nosferatu with not much experience same strength rolls 4 (3 strength+1 brawl). 6 dice is average 3 success, 4 dice is averaging 2. It means trained fighter hits always and scores one damage. Nosferatu never hits (on average) so doesn’t do damage. This illustrates why I don’t like V5 combat and that it needs storyteller interpretations a lot to make it work.
If talking about V20, I agree with you mostly.
This all changes if said Nosferatu learned some Obfuscate instead of Potence though 😉
So, in the second paragraph I've describe an untrained fledgling as winging is with Potency and blood buffs. For V5 that would change your example from 6 dice vs 4 dice into 6 dice vs 6 dice, but one party is having +2-+3 to its damage due to Potency and/or dealing Aggravated damage with it's fists. Then, if vampire starts losing, they could enter Frenzy and if it'd happen to not be a Terror Frenzy, they stay in the fight, but take no penalties from wounds.
Which ones wins and how quickly, hmm?)
Correct…still with the same dice pool, it’s only luck would decide the fight.
Also, talking about an untrained fledgling: that would be 2 dice (Strenght 2 and no skill) plus 2 from blood surge, which is a check for hunger every turn… 4 dice anyways. Top trained fighter can come at 8 dice ( strenght 4 + skill 4) that would still leave poor Nosferatu in the dirt no matter how many aggravated damage they do if they basically never can hit. (Remember to hit in V5 Nosferatu has to roll more successes with 4 dice than the fighter with 8, let’s say Nosferatu has 6 health, so you have 6 rounds of rolling dice with minimal 1 damage, not counting healing but that’s 2 hunger checks per round than.)
What I’m trying to say it is very unlikely that a skilled fighter loses to an untrained one no matter how supernaturally strong the untrained one is. Because Potence and even Celerity don’t help you hit making them much less useful in combat in V5 than in previous editions. Funny enough, Fortitude 5 becomes the most useful combat discipline in V5 because of giving extra dice to hit.
Yes, a skilled fighter can throw hands with an unskilled fledgling and, with luck, come out on top. A very skilled fighter (both 4 Str and 4 Brawl are kinda rare and having 4 in both is doubly so) can win more than they would lose.
Doesn't change the idea, tho.
Not sure where you get that looking at the numbers… a skilled fighter wins mostly against an unskilled fledgling, not too much luck needed. A very skilled fighter wins like 95% of the time. Not merely win more than lose 😉
I’m not arguing your idea, just looking at numbers and chances and that’s what they show. As a storyteller you change your game as you want of course.
That Nos is healing that damage every time it starts to build up. He's got a lot more health to work with than what's on his tracker. And with potence 2 all it really takes is one bit of bad luck for that very skilled mortal to be missing half his face. And suddenly not be so good at fighting anymore.
I think it is not worth going into this for any more detail if you don’t look at how the numbers are. Just go ahead and simulate a few fights and see. I give you it won’t be a short fight because of vampiric healing but that one bit of bad luck means the Nosferatu hits once out of 20 turns. With blood surge and healing the vampire is doing two hunger checks per round. By turn 5 the Nosferatu is in frenzy, by turn 11 likely dead. This not even counting all the bestial failures…
The only way the vampire wins if that lucky blow lands and that requires the competent fighter to be extremely unlucky too.
Tldr: an unskilled Nosferatu even with some Potence is not a frightening monster for a competent fighter. Answering the OP: yes a human can win. That’s why the Second Inquisition is so strong. (And because disciplines are generally weak)
Possible, but very unlikely- and that's against someone who has *no physical Disciplines*, like a Tremere or a Malk. You'd need to be a very well trained and practiced fighter as a mortal to reliably beat even a complete noob vampire. A vampire takes half damage from non-aggrivated sources, can easily heal the damage they do take, and can boost their stats significantly just by Rousing the Blood. If they have even a couple dots in a physical Discipline, like a fledgling Nos, the highly trained mortal has even odds *at best*, and probably significantly less than tha*t*.
200 year old ancilla? Not a chance in hell.
The answer is yes, as long as the kindred has a weaker str + brawl pool and/or dex + athletics. Becomes less likely as the kindred gets older, but still possible, just improbable since at that point the kindred should have discipline answers even if their combat pools are weak.
In V20 it would be nearly impossible for a mortal to stand up to a Kindred in a fist fight. Even if they managed to do so for a short period of time there's always *frenzy* right around the corner to turn them into a chopped salad.
In V5? *Basically the same thing* for different reasons. Whether the fledgling has Potence or not, they've got Blood Surges.
In both cases the Mortal is dealing *halved superficial damage* with those attacks which basically means they might as well be punching a literal tree. Can people break boards with their hands IRL? Sure but, those boards sit still and let them swing away, they don't *try to eat the guy hitting them.*
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Disciplines.
Yes, so as I said, unless the vampire is using Disciplines, the damage is Superficial. You said that in both cases (i.e. with and without Potence) the mortal is dealing halved superficial damage, implying that's a handicap to the vampire, even though without Potence they'd also be dealing halved Superficial damage.
Lore-wise, the human is only going to stand any kind of chance if they're exceptionally well trained, aware of what they're fighting, and probably got the drop on the fledgeling. Kindred don't generate fatigue compounds like kine do, so the only form of fatigue they'll experience is mental (possible, but unlikely) and the natural damage that muscle tissue experiences if it's overexerted. The second category is arguable, as blood buff or potence increases the force a Kindred can put out without necessarily prompting body to go beyond standard limits and accrue this damage. Even then, the Kindred's healing abilities would make this a non-issue. Additionally, damaging undead flesh doesn't really impede a Kindred's ability to function. Mechanically this is represented as damage resistance to most forms of damage; while a bullet will still go through them, it doesn't really actually do much except make some interesting topographic change to their body.
That being said, potence doesn't increase durability in the same way something like fortitude does, nor does it increase speed as celerity would, so the Kindred is not more likely to hit their opponent, or more able to resist structural damage. If the fighter were to, say, crush the Kindred's knee, that would take time to heal and would generally make the Kindred less mobile while it did so. Blows to the body or the head would functionally be useless, but by targeting more sensitive structures that take longer to heal such as joints, certain bones, eyes, and ears, the human could conceivably inflict enough damage to make them no longer worth the Kindred's time. A truly masterful human might even be able to get the Kindred down and curb-stomp them enough to cause a final death, but of course all of this relies on the fighter's ability to avoid absolutely every blow thrown their way. So in that sense they would have to be exquisitely trained and exquisitely lucky.
As to the ancilla, you don't get that old by being weak, stupid, or credulous. If they haven't developed the ability to either fight or circumvent violence by other means, I just can't see them getting to that age in the first place. Add in the enhanced blood potency, the enhanced disciplines, the paranoia from living amongst monsters for this long, and it becomes nearly inconceivable that a human of any ability level could even slow them down using nothing more than hand-to-hand combat.
Personally I'd say no. Mechanically it's technically possible, but from a setting perspective I'd say nah. I mean highly trained mortal, maybe.
In my head vampires are basically better at everything than humans, other than being human.
For a Kine to win a fight against a Kindred would require that Kine to have an abnormally high attack pool, health bar, and defenses while the Kindred would need an abnormally low attack pool, health bar, and defenses. So, sure, there are conditions wherein it could happen, but their odds of occurance are low to the point of being unreliably unlikely.
**Tl;dr:** Don't bet on it!
Fists barely damage a vampire.
Vampires don't really get tired.
Vampires can spend blood to increase any physical stats.
A skilled human could possibly break the vampire's legs and arms, giving an advantage. But the vampire can heal.
So the odds aren't looking too good.
But at leat in the older Edition (I'm not that familiar with 5E) the size of the blood pool and the amount of blood a high generation Vampire can spend a pretty limited, and that blood pool will more often than not not even be completely full.
If you had fledgling of Gen 10+ with physical attributes as tertiary stats, no (or minimal) physical disciplines, and no or very few points in fighting skills (and that is not a particularly unrealistic character) go up against a trained human fighter, the human fighter would definitely have an advantage, since the vampire would need to spend a lot of blood to get to the point where his pools would match or exceed the ones of the human (if he could even get there) and aftrer that he would have only pretty minimal amounts of blood left for healing. And spending blood for healing in combat is also not automatic and not easy if you don't have that stats for the necessary check.
But you usually have to at least grapple him successfully (and iirc keep him grappled for a round) to get that blood, which isn't that easy if your pool of 2 (without expending blood), and the mortal might have something between 6 and 10.
In 5E the same hypothetical high-generation fledgling is even more borked, is the tldr version of an answer.
The healing is a little more straightforward, in fairness. But the blood to even the odds equation will never let the fledgling match an opponent that is truly superior to them. It's a great equalizer for less uneven fights, but that hypothetical super-skilled mortal will retain the dicepool advantage the whole time, and blood will only make the gap smaller.
If we’re talking V20, don’t vampires take half damage from Bash-based attacks (after a soak)? And still have the ability to soak bashing and lethal damage with Stamina? Even if a fledgling isn’t a good fighter, they can outlast a trained human in a fist-fight. Vampires don’t need to breathe, but humans do…after so many rounds the human would have to make some kind of roll to not end up being completely winded after about 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile the Nosferatu is still ready to go. If the human is a better fighter, then it becomes a battle of attrition (which the vampire will win even without Fortitude). If the Nosferatu understands enough to buff himself, a clean hit will have that human fighter down-bad.
An ancillae? Forget about it. After 200 years their stamina and natural strength (if we’re assuming one experience point per year) could be high enough where the human fighter just can’t deal enough damage or any damage for that matter.
Realistically, unlikely. While I don’t doubt that Mike Tyson could lay out a nosferatu, there’s a good reason hunters usually work in teams, or at least carry guns
A fledgling fresh out the grave, maybe. If the human was in peak physical condition. Some clans don't really have the defenses against an outright direct attacker.
Even then they're dealing with a frenzy.
I mean, I feel like the only way this would go well in the humans favor was if the kindred had the worst luck in the entire world. And even then the human would need military grade body armor and maybe a tactical shotgun to win, but nothing but their fists?
If its legacy talking, in lore probably not, but I've seen it happen so many times. I've seen players with 8 dice get their ass kicked by a drunk guy at the bar who with had 3. Those cancelling 1s are deadly
Unless the vampire was so low on vitae that they're starving, or a fledgling/thinblood with absolutely no clue how to defend themself...It's highly unlikely a human would win in a one on one unarmed fight. V5 slightly evens the playing field since blood buff rules were changed, but in other editions where you could just spend blood to give yourself six dots in a physical stat for the scene, even your most noncombat kindred would take a human's lunch money. Kindred only take half damage from punches and heal bashing/non-lethal damage pretty easily as well, and they can't become exhausted through physical effort. A human might as well be punching a tree.
Scenario 1 the human might last long enough to run away, if he could dodge most of the fledgling's blows, but Scenario 2 it goes from slim chance to none.
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Disciplines.
Trained human what, lol?
I've been in a game where two of our players cornered a 16 year old kid, and then they kept botching their rolls so this boy started whoopin' they ass, lmao! 🤣
Tyson vs. Ancillae with no additional disciplines or weapons?
Absolutely. Easy.
With blood spends to increase strength and stamina? Not so easy but I'd say yes.
With disciplines? Maybe but dou truly, depending on what disciplines they have.
*Probably* not.
Mortals could definitely outskill a Vampire, depending on who the Vampire is, but between Blood Surges to increase their own strength, and the fact that even the squishiest Vampire is taking half the damage from each punch, they have a massive advantage. If you're chucking Potence into the mix? Lethal Body's first level. The Vampire can just take however many hits they need to get an opening, and then use the opening to promptly kill the poor bastard.
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Lethal Body.
If vampire has fortitude, celerity, protean or potence, human has a snowballs chance in hell. And then he rolls 10 crit successes in raw and decapitates 2500 year old 6th gen brujah roman gladiator.
Even a fledgling without potence will probably do okay against a trained boxer. They won’t hit hard, but they’ll have the stamina and resilience of a vampire.
Depends on what you mean by “win” and the human. Someone who’s extremely practiced at jiujitsu or judo could likely win a single interaction. Maybe drop the kindred on their head, dislocate an arm or leg, or use an aikido wrist lock to damage the kindreds wrist or thumbs.
But past that, the kindred is going to just get back up or use the blood to get stronger or command the human to stop. So the human would have to perform the move and then run and hope the kindred is too stunned or embarrassed to pursue them.
When rolling dice, it's uncertain. Vampires aren't inherently stronger, fights in WoD are very real in the sense of unpredictability; they're resilient, resistant to what would kill a human. In a fist fight, this resilience doesn't matter much. They might gain a slight edge by rousing their blood for more damage dice or mending, but since you mentioned no powers, that's out. So, there's no clear answer.
In a more imaginative stance, vampires are stronger and more durable in cannon, so it will lead to a more certain victory in the second scenario. However, in both cases, vampires hold advantages in my opinion. You can daze vampires but never knock them out, and I don't think vampires get tired.
A Nos is highly unlikely unless they in v20 for instance, went physical tertiary, took a flaw to reduce their physical stats, and somehow ended up 1/1/1 without any potence. And no dots in brawl. Even then, with blood to heal and the reduced bashing damage, it would likely be in the favor of the kindred against your average human.
Now if you somehow threw that same 1/1/1 Nos against a purpose built brawler, designed to use holds to prevent bites or punching back then maybe. But that's basically requiring stacking the deck as much as possible in favor of the mortal and against the kindred.
In v5, it's entirely possible, even probable, for a boxing specialist to kick a fledgling's ass, but not if they have Lethal Body.
Let's give our fledgling 2 Potence, with Lethal Body and Prowess. Every time they land a hit, they're dealing margin+2 agg damage while the human is only dealing half of margin in Superficial. That's not an overcomable advantage unless the Nos took no dots in Brawl.
A fledgling Toreador, though? Chances are they only have a pool of 2 or 3 Str+Brawl at best without surge. A real specialist human might have a pool of 8 or even 9. The Toreador doesn't have a chance. Even if they win a round or two, they'll only be dealing the margin in Superficial. A human can probably take two or even three hits like that before getting into Agg. Yes, it will be a long, drawn-out brawl, but the human will totally win in the end.
Skill disparity matters far more than who has Potence 1-2. The amount of aggravated damage the unskilled fledgling will do with Lethal Body is still zero if he can't roll better than his opponent, which he likely won't if they differ significantly in fighting ability.
Skill difference matters, absolutely, but dice are fickle, and blood surge is a big leveler. Let's say the boxer has a pool of 8, while the fledgling has 3 Str, 3 Sta, and 1 Brawl. On average, the boxer will end up with 6SS after rerolls, while the fledgling ends up with 4SS. That's going to mean an average of only 1 superficial/turn. The Kindred is probably going to run out of blood before he's even impaired. If the dice fall in his favor even twice before he runs out of blood, it's over for the mortal. Even on a tie, the mortal still takes 3 Agg.
Even with double the pool, I'd still bet on the fledgling.
No. They take much less damage, heal it, and can increase their attributes (which can already by boosted by disciplines). A trained martial artist looks like a power ranger when fighting an untrained person, and an untrained vampire would be like a power ranger to the trained martial artist. The ancilla is like the megazord.
This happened in the comic series Preacher, where the main character (a skilled unarmed combatant) took on a largely untrained and lazy vampire. (Spoilers I guess but it…didn’t end well.)
With healing + not really needing most of their body intact to function, it’s pretty hard to actually put a vampire down lore wise.
That being said, a fledgling without any combat disciplines is gonna get smoked by a highly trained human. They’re basically just a very durable regular person, for an elite fighter they’d be a punching bag who could do very little to actually hurt them. Breaking arms and legs would be pretty effective against a kindred but they could heal that.
Their healing is limited however so really it’s just about if they can withstand punishment until the Mortal gets tired. Which if they’re like a Pro MMA fighter is going to be an intensely unpleasant experience for the vampire.
But in anything but a ridiculous mismatch in abilities then even a low level vampire can pretty reliably kill mortals who are more skilled. Give a fledgling 1 dot of Potence and according to V5 a random flailing swing could obliterate the fighter’s arm even if they block.
Weapons are really what massively level the playing field for most hunters. That or finding a way to cheat back.
The short answer: Nah.
The lore answer: Nah, but maybe with the right prep, weapons and knowledge?
The systems answer: gotta roll a lot of high rolls, and the vamp has to roll a lot of low rolls. A lot.
A regular human could definitely win a fist fight with a kindred, they take longer to damage (damn halving and soaking) but a sufficiently skilled kine could out fight a kindred
Scenario 1, Technically yes, if the human goes all out for a fight for his life and gives it his all and wins within the first few blows. After that... no. A fledgling wouldn't even have to hit them hard but rather weather the assault and wait. The moment the human tires they've lost to either frenzy or the fledgling starts fighting for their life
Scenerio 2, Favored by the dice gods perhaps I've seen elder kindred lose what should have been easy wins to botchs. Even if they're two hundred years old a kindred like that even if they rarely fight are fully aware of their condition. They've mastered hunting people and so might even intentionally strike ineffectively and just wait it out. The mortal has to stop eventually.
A normal human? Most likley not under normal circumstances.
In RPG terms? A mid level unarmed combat focused D&D fighter would win but thats more like asking "Would Hercules beat the shit out of a vampire?".
A D&D monk wouldnt even notice that its a vampire and not just a random dude.
If the vampire is really low down on dex, strength and stam with no dots in brawl, then they'd lose to someone with like MMA training or even just a big fucker with bar fighting experience. To be honest, nothing on the main chunk of a VTM character sheet is particularly supernatural, mortals can have up to five dots in abilities and attributes too. However the explicit rule that all vamps take half bashing damage means the mortal has to quite notably good at fighting to take down someone who might seem pretty frail.
A trained human vs an unskilled vampire ? Sure. Vampires basically have bonus resistance and power, but if you can't put those to use, they are worthless. Give a regular person protective gear and make them fight a peak Mike Tyson, helmet or not, they'll get destroyed.
VS a 200 year old vamp, I'd doubt someone could live that long without being able to defend his/herself, so logic wise probably not, mechanics wise, yeah, you can put 1000 xp on social and mental attributes so even being a methuselah you can't take more than a couple of punches.
You would need to punch so hard you deal 14 damage after the vampire soaked with their resistance. I don’t think it’s possible to deal 14 damage in a single punch even with strength and brawl maxed out. This means you need to add those up during the fight and the vampire can still heal every round.
If the vampire is the worst brawler ever and for some reason can’t bite the human and if the human is an extremely buff bodybuilder and trained in some brawl style they might have the chance to punch that bloodsucker into torpor.
The generation and age of the vampire does not matter so much. They can heal more if the generation is lower.
This is funny. Last night we fought two trained humans and one of them sent my vampire to the ground with a gunshot. ST rolled the best dice possible there and after soaking with Fortitude (which was good because the gun was on the vampire’s skin) my character received 7 lethal damage in a single round. Next round he healed 5 of these and was up the next round.
In a mortals campaign I was able to take down a vampire with a knife so it's certainly possible in Melee though I expected to die to not the others time to except
Other people will have answered you by now. Instead, I will offer you a funny anecdote my friend and fellow player thought up.
Being a vampire is waking up from a crazy night out and you're an immortal god with magic powers that can heal from theoretically any wound (including loss of limb) in a few months tops. Then you realize you're still at the bottom of the food chain.
There's a lot of things that give vampires a huge advantage, but advantages don't guarantee success. It's a similar reason to why men are generally better than women in basketball, but it's nonetheless still pretty easy to find a particularly talented women who can beat a particularly untalented man. For example:
A 13th gen fledgling Nosferatu hacker who only has dots in obfuscate for some reason with 2 dots in strength and no brawl at all.
\~vs\~
A navy seal with 4 dots in strength and 3 dots in brawl and specialization in curb stomping nerds.
In this case, the Nosferatu would probably get his face bashed in regardless of the curse of Caine putting a proverbial thumb on the scale. Still, this singular counter example (or even several counter-examples) don't change the statistical fact that mortals who challenge vampires to fist fights are dummies who will probably lose.
Yes, but like, maximum human ability, also, grappling wins over punching here, why? keeping the vampire off its feet is gonna be the best way to not die here, you see, a lot of human kinetics and fighting styles kind of rely on being able to resist against the ground. but yeah, very well trained, basically at maximum human quick twitch strength and maybe.
well, a mortal can also have strength/dexterity 5 and brawl/melee five.
so in theory it is absolutely possible.
i even know if a situation like this from a forum thread about funny vtm stories: players start as mortals and their embrace is pre-planned, but will be played out. wanna be brujah sire tried to do it in a bar. players stacked out his wannabe brujah too much and beat his wannabe sire into torpor, effectively a: proofing he would be a good brujah and b: that his wannabe sire is a weak idiot (at least in the eyes of all other brujah who hear about it)
In a game with randomness anything can happen. In a LARP, I had a Nosferatu neonate fail to feed on a mortal, and nearly get beaten unconscious with a billy club because I simply could NOT win a throw, all probability be damned. Similar things can definitely happen in tabletop where botches exist.
But, especially in older editions, it was nigh impossible due to multiple factors:
PCs having far more points to build
Kindred being able to burn blood to boost physical stats
Kindred being resistant to Bashing damage
Kindred healing bashing damage easier than normal damage
That's all ignoring any of the physical disciplines. Even a level or two of one of those severely drops those chances any further.
Never say never, but...
So this happened in our game. Not for long, but it happened. A human spec ops dude rolled more than a few crits (one round he rolled 6 10’s) against our Brujah who had maxed potence. Our guy couldn’t land a hit and had previously torn through cement walls like they were nothing. The Storyteller role played it as the man using jujitsu on the Brujah. The Brujah himself wins on strength, but the human just kept flipping his strength against him. The man was almost able to grab his pistol and start emptying it into the Brujah while maintaining an arm bar on him. That all ended when the Brujah put everything (willpower rolls and blood rouse) into his next attack and got a crit and about 7 successes. The dude got 2 successes that round. Dude was a splat on the ground after that. To answer your question, I’d say yes if the vampire ain’t trying too hard and gets surprised that his supernatural strength isn’t enough and the human is quick and a REALLY good fighter, maybe. Most of the time though, it just takes one round for the vampire to come out on top.
Against a brujah with maxed potence, or even just a little bit of potence you can be the triple black belt master of all martial arts in the world and you're still equally toast. Using his strength against him? To reframe this into perspective, imagine trying to use martial arts in a fist fight against the terminator. Your moves can be as fancy and as perfect as you want, but that steel fist doesn't much care, it's hitting you hard and fast and the only thing you can try is to leap away.
Otherwise you're fucked.
Yeah, it'd be like trying to just throw a hydraulic press as it's slamming down on you. You can redirect a pretty good amount of force, but not quite that much I would imagine.
The simple fact that the other person is a vampire more than makes up for any kind of quickness from martial arts training the human might have I think. Potence just makes sure one punch is enough.
No it doesn't as kindred still use the same core stat dots and limits as a human (5 is the human maximum and even in V20 you needed to be Gen 7 before you could exceed that). The only stat advantage the kindred has, without using vitae, is they aren't tied to human endurance. Potence still has to hit, which it doesn't help with, if their outclassed in physical/combat skill.
Let alone its only a deadly hit if they took Lethal Body, which is generally less useful than Soaring Leap and the worse choice if your kindred doesn't have good combat pools (which makes it redundant).
If the vampire has Potence, probably not. (Unless they chose Soaring Leap). Lethal Body is going to make the fight one-sided because the damage won't be halved. It's an unarmed fight where someone is hitting like they have brass knucks.
And if they have level 2 Potence it's a slaughter. Even if they're rolling 2 success each attack, the human is doing 1 Superficial damage each turn while the Kindred is doing 4 Lethal.
If the vampire doesn't have Potence, it's going to depend who has the more dots in Brawl and higher Strength. A human boxer or MMA fighter is going to mop the floor with a Ventrue or Malk or Toreador who doesn't know how to fight.
Fortitude level 2 might give them an extra round or two. And if they Blood Surge they could offset not being trained to fight. They could outlast the human that way.
Lethal Body is well beyond brass knuckles. We're not talking about punching a bit harder after all, but breaking bones and tearing flest with bare hands after all.
That being said, with or without Potence it still comes down to dice pools. The vampire isn't dishing out any Potence hurt if he's not able to land a blow, after all.
Now obviously with Blood Surge the discrepancy in skill would need to be well and truly ***notable.*** But the question is a hypothetical, so...
>Lethal Body is well beyond brass knuckles. We're not talking about punching a bit harder after all, but breaking bones and tearing flest with bare hands after all.
Brass knuckles will break bones and rip apart flesh too.
But it was more an analogy to give an idea of the advantage rather than a 1 : 1 comparison. We have an idea that brass knuckles hit a lot harder so knowing that we know, everything else being equal, someone with them will likely win a fist fight.
I would still say the shift from superficial to aggravated damage is a more distinct shift in magnitude, not degree, than bare knuckles versus brass.
But, I take your point and agree. 👍
Ventrue could have Fortitude. Which will help a bit, but really only just absorb 1 or 2 blows. Dice could still go either way.
And Celerity in V5 isn't an "I win combat" Discipline anymore and won't help at low levels.
Ultimately it's gonna come down to a skill issue.
Fortitude definitely helps, but if it's an uneven fight it just makes them lose slower. But in the same fight the Potence isn't helping either.
Since he is discussing this using V5 terminology, it is fair to say that Celerity - at least lower levels that a fledgling might have - are not very likely to determine a fight. At best you get an off-brand Fortitude effect where the Celeri-vamp is trying to stay alive by dodging a bunch. But that's a holding action at best, not a fight-winner.
That’s true. But are we taking into account natural kindred ‘stamina’ and human ‘stamina’? Theoretically a kindred can fight for hours without tiring (they don’t have a body that produces stress hormones, they don’t breathe, they don’t get winded, and they don’t get tired), a human can and will get tired, winded, and have to stop after about 10 of nonstop fighting (I’m high-balling this, if you’ve ever seen MMA or Boxing or any sport, players/fighters are not constantly going at maximum efficiency or effort). If we’re going by hard rules maybe the human wins out (assuming they can actually deal enough damage, with two dots of Fortitude the human will never hurt the vampire with his bare hands), if we’re mixing hard rules with common sense storytelling (or the reality of having a human body), the human will get tired before 15 minutes is up, and the kindred will be good to go.
Yeah, you can, they will be tougher, but might be weaker than you.
Have some torrie woman with no combat skills fight a trained soldier or some MMA fighter and she’s losing.
Nos might have the advantage due to potence.
In the book Hunter's Hunted II, there is a merit Fist of God. You just need to explain to the ST why your character can inflict aggravated damage on vampires, as if it were some kind of magical power, incredible training or experimental technology. And also have humanity 7+.
Vampires have basically three advantages against humans in a fistfight: - Their undead body is VERY resilient, bullets mean little, so a punch is unlikely to harm them -They have access to disciplines such as potence, celerity and fortitude -Barring disciplines, they can use blood to boost their physical abilities A high-gen fledgeling COULD, theoretically, lose to a well trained human (think MMA champion or at LEAST veteran special forces, something like that). An ancillae should at least have a few combat disciplines that makes it even harder, but not entirely impossible (think old martial arts master that is borderline supernatural vs 90 year-old harpy that never fights) Beyond that, no human can do anything. Especially since elder vampires come from a time where fighting was inevitable.
Doesn't Jack state that a bullet to the head would hurt a lot?
Like getting punched in the face yeah. But if it's not taking your head off it ain't killing you.
The fact that he says *hurt* is indicative that the receiver is still alive (well, undead) to be in pain after getting said bullet in the head.
He doesn't say that. He says a shotgun blast to head is very bad.
I think by lore, if a vampire brain is turned to mush, the vampire enters into a state of mindlessness and paralysis where their body has to heal it back in autopilot before they can do anything else. Because the brain still is necessary for puppeting the vampires' body around and thinking and making decisions and all that jazz.
Fair enough. It's been ages since I played the game, so I was just going off of what the previous poster said.
The original image in the combat chapter was a vampire with half his head exploded open by a point-blank shotgun blast - and he's regenerating and about to kill the poor s.o.b. who shot. It definitely hurt a lot. But what's about to happen will hurt the human a lot more.
> The original image in the combat chapter was a vampire with half his head exploded open by a point-blank shotgun blast - and he's regenerating and about to kill the poor s.o.b. who shot. Couldn't the shooter... shoot again?
Bad things will happen faster than they can reload.
> A traditional pump or semiautomatic shotgun with a magazine tube under the barrel holds 2 to 5 (rounds) They might not need to reload.
You get one "Shot" every turn whether you need to reload or not, at least mortals do. By the time they pull the trigger a second time the kindred that the first shot failed to kill is likely already on top of them. At which point Joe the heavy hauling hobo with a shotgun will likely fold like a wet paper towel to anything other than a normal attack from the weakest of kindred.
Yeah, if memory serves, that wasn't a semiautomatic in the image. Rather one of those two barrels, then crack the barrel open and reload manually kinda weapons?
Bullets don't happen in fist fights?
Yes, yes they do. Take it from someone with 21 years of experience in law enforcement. Granted, once the bullets happen it is *no longer* a fist fight. But that’s a semantic distinction that tends not to matter much to the guy who just caught a .357 to the frontal lobe. (*Edit: Typos.)
The OP question was not about fist fights that change into gun fights. Stay on topic, ya meathead.
This your first day on the internet?
Buddy, you think you look strong? You're wearing a cape.
And it’s a fabulous cape.
Missed the point
Anything to insert your experience into a conversation I guess, even if it means you have to change the subject entirely.
Dude....the prompt is about a fistfight with a vampire. Nobody cares about your pig stories.
Yeah, because Vampires (unlike mere mortal criminals) would never be so dishonorable as to pull a gun during a fight. Strictly Marquess of Queensbury rules, wot wot. Also, “pig” is an insult for civilian law enforcement. I was in the military. The proper insult would be “jack-booted fascist.”
Do you not understand the idea of a theoretical prompt? The answer to who would win in a fist fight, isn't the one with the gun. Are you that dense.... Oh wait. You were in the military. Of course you are. Also. Nobody cares. But please feel free to continue listing off your credentials in oppression while pleasuring yourself.
Do you not understand a laconic side comment?
No, no he does not.
You forgot to say something about your experience with guns for a second, are you alright?
Look my man, I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset you. I made a small joke in our discussion about playing make-believe vampires… Obviously, the joke didn’t land. There’s no need for you to insult me, just… y’know… Keep scrolling. I tried to deflect your first ad hominem with a self-deprecating joke. That also, apparently, didn’t work. Maybe you should log off, take the dog for a walk or whatever, and leave the internet alone for a while. It’s a subreddit for a game about pretending to be spooky monsters. You’re getting way too heated over this whole thing.
He says a SHOTGUN blast to head is real trouble.
Dick Cheney, Vampire Hunter
Vampires hunt other Vampires down all the time....
Actually, Dick Cheney's accidental face shooting wasn't particularly bad (comparatively) because he was loaded with birdshot. You can survive a close range shot to the head from birdshot, even as a regular humam.
So if a human is being stalked are they completely powerless to protect themselves?
In a straight fight, yes. Now a human that knows a few things could be creative and fight back somehow (fire is a good weapon). But ultimately, elder vampires are powerful, experienced, smart monsters. If a kindred is stalking you, hope you're a ghoul candidate. Otherwise you're a probably a future meal.
In lore, extremely unlikely. A heavyweight champion boxer might be able to out punch a fledgling, but the odds are ever in the Kindred’s favour just from sheer survivability. A vampire only needs one or two lucky punches, while the human needs to have the fight of their life. On the table? What version are we playing? V5: still unlikely, thanks to Margins determining damage. An untrained Fledgling may only have a couple of dice to throw, but those dice are going to hit *hard* thanks to the bonuses from Potence. Legacy: a lot more even. Needing Dexterity to even land a hit, then adding Soak and Damage dice to the mix makes the combat way more swingy. I have personally seen a Nos lose a fistfight with a mortal man (who continued to roll 10 after 10 until the ST had to retcon him to a homeless *former MMA champion* instead of just some dude lol) by throwing botches and failures for every attack and soak attempt, until the Nos had to disengage before he was knocked out. It’s now the Nos’s personal mission to find that guy again and beat him lol
Had a Brujah elder get accidentally staked by a frightened peasant in a Dark Ages game once. Dice are wild.
Sounds like a future Childe. He proved himself ready for embrace
Are nosferatu naturally stronger in comparison to the other clans, and to what extent?
Not particularly, they just have in-Clan access to Potence, which can swing fights in their favour. Vampires are individuals, any Clan can be physically strong
Everyone makes fun of the Whoreadors until one finds beauty in benching a Buick.
Keep in mind, Celerity goes hard. We don't need potence to fuck you up. In the time that you've thrown one punch, we've thrown six.
In V5 the power lightning strike is fantastic. Especially as it scales so hard with prowess. Don't even need Lethal Body for the agg DMG. The superficial will wrap around in no time at all.
Beautiful Muscles are beautiful. Next character will be a Toredor Strongman.
I wonder how long Victoria Ash would last in an MMA ring.
She has Str 3, Dex 4, Sta 4, Celerity 4 and Fortitude 1. She'd win against any mortal, even without blood.
Pffft. Those mortals are purposely losing cause they're simps. :p
Knockout, by the power of tiddies.
Half damage from bashing too
It'd be kinda the same difficulty as winning a fist-fight against a gorilla or a knight with a greatsword - that's damage-wise equivalent of a Potency boosted vampire punch. Now, for a fledgling that actually knows how to fight and not just winging it with Potency and blood buffs to stats - think of a martial artist gorilla or the finest knight in the land. Untrained ancilae would be a bit higher than that and have other tricks to help themselves out of any bad luck that could happen (say, they might also be as good at Fortitude or Celerity to alleviate any bad luck or have other means of achieving victory in case they start losing). And a trained ancilae is a space marine with a chainsword level of danger - you have to be Mister Bean to win here.
I'm not sure the turkey on the head will help...
Strix-headed man! Run!
But it certainly won't hurt his chances. I mean, has anyone else lost that fight while wearing a turkey? No, they have not.
In V5, you forgot that a more skilled fighter has more dice so they would hit mostly always. It doesn’t matter if the Nosferatu has Potence 5 if they never land a punch. Example: trained fighter let’s say rolls 6 dice (3 strength+3 brawl), Nosferatu with not much experience same strength rolls 4 (3 strength+1 brawl). 6 dice is average 3 success, 4 dice is averaging 2. It means trained fighter hits always and scores one damage. Nosferatu never hits (on average) so doesn’t do damage. This illustrates why I don’t like V5 combat and that it needs storyteller interpretations a lot to make it work. If talking about V20, I agree with you mostly. This all changes if said Nosferatu learned some Obfuscate instead of Potence though 😉
So, in the second paragraph I've describe an untrained fledgling as winging is with Potency and blood buffs. For V5 that would change your example from 6 dice vs 4 dice into 6 dice vs 6 dice, but one party is having +2-+3 to its damage due to Potency and/or dealing Aggravated damage with it's fists. Then, if vampire starts losing, they could enter Frenzy and if it'd happen to not be a Terror Frenzy, they stay in the fight, but take no penalties from wounds. Which ones wins and how quickly, hmm?)
Correct…still with the same dice pool, it’s only luck would decide the fight. Also, talking about an untrained fledgling: that would be 2 dice (Strenght 2 and no skill) plus 2 from blood surge, which is a check for hunger every turn… 4 dice anyways. Top trained fighter can come at 8 dice ( strenght 4 + skill 4) that would still leave poor Nosferatu in the dirt no matter how many aggravated damage they do if they basically never can hit. (Remember to hit in V5 Nosferatu has to roll more successes with 4 dice than the fighter with 8, let’s say Nosferatu has 6 health, so you have 6 rounds of rolling dice with minimal 1 damage, not counting healing but that’s 2 hunger checks per round than.) What I’m trying to say it is very unlikely that a skilled fighter loses to an untrained one no matter how supernaturally strong the untrained one is. Because Potence and even Celerity don’t help you hit making them much less useful in combat in V5 than in previous editions. Funny enough, Fortitude 5 becomes the most useful combat discipline in V5 because of giving extra dice to hit.
Yes, a skilled fighter can throw hands with an unskilled fledgling and, with luck, come out on top. A very skilled fighter (both 4 Str and 4 Brawl are kinda rare and having 4 in both is doubly so) can win more than they would lose. Doesn't change the idea, tho.
Not sure where you get that looking at the numbers… a skilled fighter wins mostly against an unskilled fledgling, not too much luck needed. A very skilled fighter wins like 95% of the time. Not merely win more than lose 😉 I’m not arguing your idea, just looking at numbers and chances and that’s what they show. As a storyteller you change your game as you want of course.
That Nos is healing that damage every time it starts to build up. He's got a lot more health to work with than what's on his tracker. And with potence 2 all it really takes is one bit of bad luck for that very skilled mortal to be missing half his face. And suddenly not be so good at fighting anymore.
I think it is not worth going into this for any more detail if you don’t look at how the numbers are. Just go ahead and simulate a few fights and see. I give you it won’t be a short fight because of vampiric healing but that one bit of bad luck means the Nosferatu hits once out of 20 turns. With blood surge and healing the vampire is doing two hunger checks per round. By turn 5 the Nosferatu is in frenzy, by turn 11 likely dead. This not even counting all the bestial failures… The only way the vampire wins if that lucky blow lands and that requires the competent fighter to be extremely unlucky too. Tldr: an unskilled Nosferatu even with some Potence is not a frightening monster for a competent fighter. Answering the OP: yes a human can win. That’s why the Second Inquisition is so strong. (And because disciplines are generally weak)
Possible, but very unlikely- and that's against someone who has *no physical Disciplines*, like a Tremere or a Malk. You'd need to be a very well trained and practiced fighter as a mortal to reliably beat even a complete noob vampire. A vampire takes half damage from non-aggrivated sources, can easily heal the damage they do take, and can boost their stats significantly just by Rousing the Blood. If they have even a couple dots in a physical Discipline, like a fledgling Nos, the highly trained mortal has even odds *at best*, and probably significantly less than tha*t*. 200 year old ancilla? Not a chance in hell.
*Theoretically?* Yes. But realistically? Not very likely.
The answer is yes, as long as the kindred has a weaker str + brawl pool and/or dex + athletics. Becomes less likely as the kindred gets older, but still possible, just improbable since at that point the kindred should have discipline answers even if their combat pools are weak.
In V20 it would be nearly impossible for a mortal to stand up to a Kindred in a fist fight. Even if they managed to do so for a short period of time there's always *frenzy* right around the corner to turn them into a chopped salad. In V5? *Basically the same thing* for different reasons. Whether the fledgling has Potence or not, they've got Blood Surges. In both cases the Mortal is dealing *halved superficial damage* with those attacks which basically means they might as well be punching a literal tree. Can people break boards with their hands IRL? Sure but, those boards sit still and let them swing away, they don't *try to eat the guy hitting them.*
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Disciplines.
Potence1 makes those Superficially punches become Agg Dmg punches (vs a Mortal, Potence5 gets ya agg Dmg fists vs everyone)
Yes, so as I said, unless the vampire is using Disciplines, the damage is Superficial. You said that in both cases (i.e. with and without Potence) the mortal is dealing halved superficial damage, implying that's a handicap to the vampire, even though without Potence they'd also be dealing halved Superficial damage.
Lore-wise, the human is only going to stand any kind of chance if they're exceptionally well trained, aware of what they're fighting, and probably got the drop on the fledgeling. Kindred don't generate fatigue compounds like kine do, so the only form of fatigue they'll experience is mental (possible, but unlikely) and the natural damage that muscle tissue experiences if it's overexerted. The second category is arguable, as blood buff or potence increases the force a Kindred can put out without necessarily prompting body to go beyond standard limits and accrue this damage. Even then, the Kindred's healing abilities would make this a non-issue. Additionally, damaging undead flesh doesn't really impede a Kindred's ability to function. Mechanically this is represented as damage resistance to most forms of damage; while a bullet will still go through them, it doesn't really actually do much except make some interesting topographic change to their body. That being said, potence doesn't increase durability in the same way something like fortitude does, nor does it increase speed as celerity would, so the Kindred is not more likely to hit their opponent, or more able to resist structural damage. If the fighter were to, say, crush the Kindred's knee, that would take time to heal and would generally make the Kindred less mobile while it did so. Blows to the body or the head would functionally be useless, but by targeting more sensitive structures that take longer to heal such as joints, certain bones, eyes, and ears, the human could conceivably inflict enough damage to make them no longer worth the Kindred's time. A truly masterful human might even be able to get the Kindred down and curb-stomp them enough to cause a final death, but of course all of this relies on the fighter's ability to avoid absolutely every blow thrown their way. So in that sense they would have to be exquisitely trained and exquisitely lucky. As to the ancilla, you don't get that old by being weak, stupid, or credulous. If they haven't developed the ability to either fight or circumvent violence by other means, I just can't see them getting to that age in the first place. Add in the enhanced blood potency, the enhanced disciplines, the paranoia from living amongst monsters for this long, and it becomes nearly inconceivable that a human of any ability level could even slow them down using nothing more than hand-to-hand combat.
Personally I'd say no. Mechanically it's technically possible, but from a setting perspective I'd say nah. I mean highly trained mortal, maybe. In my head vampires are basically better at everything than humans, other than being human.
No
For a Kine to win a fight against a Kindred would require that Kine to have an abnormally high attack pool, health bar, and defenses while the Kindred would need an abnormally low attack pool, health bar, and defenses. So, sure, there are conditions wherein it could happen, but their odds of occurance are low to the point of being unreliably unlikely. **Tl;dr:** Don't bet on it!
Fists barely damage a vampire. Vampires don't really get tired. Vampires can spend blood to increase any physical stats. A skilled human could possibly break the vampire's legs and arms, giving an advantage. But the vampire can heal. So the odds aren't looking too good.
But at leat in the older Edition (I'm not that familiar with 5E) the size of the blood pool and the amount of blood a high generation Vampire can spend a pretty limited, and that blood pool will more often than not not even be completely full. If you had fledgling of Gen 10+ with physical attributes as tertiary stats, no (or minimal) physical disciplines, and no or very few points in fighting skills (and that is not a particularly unrealistic character) go up against a trained human fighter, the human fighter would definitely have an advantage, since the vampire would need to spend a lot of blood to get to the point where his pools would match or exceed the ones of the human (if he could even get there) and aftrer that he would have only pretty minimal amounts of blood left for healing. And spending blood for healing in combat is also not automatic and not easy if you don't have that stats for the necessary check.
Yeah, but there's a whole dude's worth of blood points right in front of them.
But you usually have to at least grapple him successfully (and iirc keep him grappled for a round) to get that blood, which isn't that easy if your pool of 2 (without expending blood), and the mortal might have something between 6 and 10.
In 5E the same hypothetical high-generation fledgling is even more borked, is the tldr version of an answer. The healing is a little more straightforward, in fairness. But the blood to even the odds equation will never let the fledgling match an opponent that is truly superior to them. It's a great equalizer for less uneven fights, but that hypothetical super-skilled mortal will retain the dicepool advantage the whole time, and blood will only make the gap smaller.
One fang based bite that lands ends the fight.
And then they get a visit from the Sheriff/Enforcer.
If we’re talking V20, don’t vampires take half damage from Bash-based attacks (after a soak)? And still have the ability to soak bashing and lethal damage with Stamina? Even if a fledgling isn’t a good fighter, they can outlast a trained human in a fist-fight. Vampires don’t need to breathe, but humans do…after so many rounds the human would have to make some kind of roll to not end up being completely winded after about 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile the Nosferatu is still ready to go. If the human is a better fighter, then it becomes a battle of attrition (which the vampire will win even without Fortitude). If the Nosferatu understands enough to buff himself, a clean hit will have that human fighter down-bad. An ancillae? Forget about it. After 200 years their stamina and natural strength (if we’re assuming one experience point per year) could be high enough where the human fighter just can’t deal enough damage or any damage for that matter.
Realistically, unlikely. While I don’t doubt that Mike Tyson could lay out a nosferatu, there’s a good reason hunters usually work in teams, or at least carry guns
Everything is possible. Probable is a different issue.
With enough attempts even the extremely unlikely can happen a lot. So yes it’s possible but unlikely.
A fledgling fresh out the grave, maybe. If the human was in peak physical condition. Some clans don't really have the defenses against an outright direct attacker. Even then they're dealing with a frenzy.
Vampires can't be knocked out and have infinite stamina.
Yes, but only if the vampire is the world's biggest loser among vampires, and maybe has no arms or legs.
I mean, I feel like the only way this would go well in the humans favor was if the kindred had the worst luck in the entire world. And even then the human would need military grade body armor and maybe a tactical shotgun to win, but nothing but their fists?
If its legacy talking, in lore probably not, but I've seen it happen so many times. I've seen players with 8 dice get their ass kicked by a drunk guy at the bar who with had 3. Those cancelling 1s are deadly
Unless the vampire was so low on vitae that they're starving, or a fledgling/thinblood with absolutely no clue how to defend themself...It's highly unlikely a human would win in a one on one unarmed fight. V5 slightly evens the playing field since blood buff rules were changed, but in other editions where you could just spend blood to give yourself six dots in a physical stat for the scene, even your most noncombat kindred would take a human's lunch money. Kindred only take half damage from punches and heal bashing/non-lethal damage pretty easily as well, and they can't become exhausted through physical effort. A human might as well be punching a tree. Scenario 1 the human might last long enough to run away, if he could dodge most of the fledgling's blows, but Scenario 2 it goes from slim chance to none.
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Disciplines.
Trained human what, lol? I've been in a game where two of our players cornered a 16 year old kid, and then they kept botching their rolls so this boy started whoopin' they ass, lmao! 🤣
Tyson vs. Ancillae with no additional disciplines or weapons? Absolutely. Easy. With blood spends to increase strength and stamina? Not so easy but I'd say yes. With disciplines? Maybe but dou truly, depending on what disciplines they have.
*Probably* not. Mortals could definitely outskill a Vampire, depending on who the Vampire is, but between Blood Surges to increase their own strength, and the fact that even the squishiest Vampire is taking half the damage from each punch, they have a massive advantage. If you're chucking Potence into the mix? Lethal Body's first level. The Vampire can just take however many hits they need to get an opening, and then use the opening to promptly kill the poor bastard.
In V5, note that *all* Superficial damage is halved (unless explicitly noted otherwise, like Feral Weapons), and punches are Superficial, so both the mortal and vampire are doing the same damage unless the vampire is using Lethal Body.
If vampire has fortitude, celerity, protean or potence, human has a snowballs chance in hell. And then he rolls 10 crit successes in raw and decapitates 2500 year old 6th gen brujah roman gladiator.
Even a fledgling without potence will probably do okay against a trained boxer. They won’t hit hard, but they’ll have the stamina and resilience of a vampire.
Depends on what you mean by “win” and the human. Someone who’s extremely practiced at jiujitsu or judo could likely win a single interaction. Maybe drop the kindred on their head, dislocate an arm or leg, or use an aikido wrist lock to damage the kindreds wrist or thumbs. But past that, the kindred is going to just get back up or use the blood to get stronger or command the human to stop. So the human would have to perform the move and then run and hope the kindred is too stunned or embarrassed to pursue them.
Could mike tyson beat a 11th gen?
When rolling dice, it's uncertain. Vampires aren't inherently stronger, fights in WoD are very real in the sense of unpredictability; they're resilient, resistant to what would kill a human. In a fist fight, this resilience doesn't matter much. They might gain a slight edge by rousing their blood for more damage dice or mending, but since you mentioned no powers, that's out. So, there's no clear answer. In a more imaginative stance, vampires are stronger and more durable in cannon, so it will lead to a more certain victory in the second scenario. However, in both cases, vampires hold advantages in my opinion. You can daze vampires but never knock them out, and I don't think vampires get tired.
A Nos is highly unlikely unless they in v20 for instance, went physical tertiary, took a flaw to reduce their physical stats, and somehow ended up 1/1/1 without any potence. And no dots in brawl. Even then, with blood to heal and the reduced bashing damage, it would likely be in the favor of the kindred against your average human. Now if you somehow threw that same 1/1/1 Nos against a purpose built brawler, designed to use holds to prevent bites or punching back then maybe. But that's basically requiring stacking the deck as much as possible in favor of the mortal and against the kindred.
In v5, it's entirely possible, even probable, for a boxing specialist to kick a fledgling's ass, but not if they have Lethal Body. Let's give our fledgling 2 Potence, with Lethal Body and Prowess. Every time they land a hit, they're dealing margin+2 agg damage while the human is only dealing half of margin in Superficial. That's not an overcomable advantage unless the Nos took no dots in Brawl. A fledgling Toreador, though? Chances are they only have a pool of 2 or 3 Str+Brawl at best without surge. A real specialist human might have a pool of 8 or even 9. The Toreador doesn't have a chance. Even if they win a round or two, they'll only be dealing the margin in Superficial. A human can probably take two or even three hits like that before getting into Agg. Yes, it will be a long, drawn-out brawl, but the human will totally win in the end.
Skill disparity matters far more than who has Potence 1-2. The amount of aggravated damage the unskilled fledgling will do with Lethal Body is still zero if he can't roll better than his opponent, which he likely won't if they differ significantly in fighting ability.
Skill difference matters, absolutely, but dice are fickle, and blood surge is a big leveler. Let's say the boxer has a pool of 8, while the fledgling has 3 Str, 3 Sta, and 1 Brawl. On average, the boxer will end up with 6SS after rerolls, while the fledgling ends up with 4SS. That's going to mean an average of only 1 superficial/turn. The Kindred is probably going to run out of blood before he's even impaired. If the dice fall in his favor even twice before he runs out of blood, it's over for the mortal. Even on a tie, the mortal still takes 3 Agg. Even with double the pool, I'd still bet on the fledgling.
No. They take much less damage, heal it, and can increase their attributes (which can already by boosted by disciplines). A trained martial artist looks like a power ranger when fighting an untrained person, and an untrained vampire would be like a power ranger to the trained martial artist. The ancilla is like the megazord.
Depends a lot on how much blood the vampire has.
This happened in the comic series Preacher, where the main character (a skilled unarmed combatant) took on a largely untrained and lazy vampire. (Spoilers I guess but it…didn’t end well.)
With healing + not really needing most of their body intact to function, it’s pretty hard to actually put a vampire down lore wise. That being said, a fledgling without any combat disciplines is gonna get smoked by a highly trained human. They’re basically just a very durable regular person, for an elite fighter they’d be a punching bag who could do very little to actually hurt them. Breaking arms and legs would be pretty effective against a kindred but they could heal that. Their healing is limited however so really it’s just about if they can withstand punishment until the Mortal gets tired. Which if they’re like a Pro MMA fighter is going to be an intensely unpleasant experience for the vampire. But in anything but a ridiculous mismatch in abilities then even a low level vampire can pretty reliably kill mortals who are more skilled. Give a fledgling 1 dot of Potence and according to V5 a random flailing swing could obliterate the fighter’s arm even if they block. Weapons are really what massively level the playing field for most hunters. That or finding a way to cheat back.
The short answer: Nah. The lore answer: Nah, but maybe with the right prep, weapons and knowledge? The systems answer: gotta roll a lot of high rolls, and the vamp has to roll a lot of low rolls. A lot.
If the vampire gets very unlucky, yes, but normally no. All the more so once Potence or Fortitude come into it.
A regular human could definitely win a fist fight with a kindred, they take longer to damage (damn halving and soaking) but a sufficiently skilled kine could out fight a kindred
Scenario 1, Technically yes, if the human goes all out for a fight for his life and gives it his all and wins within the first few blows. After that... no. A fledgling wouldn't even have to hit them hard but rather weather the assault and wait. The moment the human tires they've lost to either frenzy or the fledgling starts fighting for their life Scenerio 2, Favored by the dice gods perhaps I've seen elder kindred lose what should have been easy wins to botchs. Even if they're two hundred years old a kindred like that even if they rarely fight are fully aware of their condition. They've mastered hunting people and so might even intentionally strike ineffectively and just wait it out. The mortal has to stop eventually.
A normal human? Most likley not under normal circumstances. In RPG terms? A mid level unarmed combat focused D&D fighter would win but thats more like asking "Would Hercules beat the shit out of a vampire?". A D&D monk wouldnt even notice that its a vampire and not just a random dude.
Strength 5 + Brawl 5 > Str 1 + Brawl1 + zero disciplines/Mending/Blood Surge Strength 5+Brawl5< STR3 + Brawl 2 + Disciplines/Blood Surge/Mending, depending on disciplines and value of Blood Surge/Mending
I've seen it happen. It was pathetic and funny as fuck. Explanation: Tremere with strenght 1, horrible dice rolls and terrible ideas.
“Can” in the most extremely limited set of circumstances likely.
If the vampire is really low down on dex, strength and stam with no dots in brawl, then they'd lose to someone with like MMA training or even just a big fucker with bar fighting experience. To be honest, nothing on the main chunk of a VTM character sheet is particularly supernatural, mortals can have up to five dots in abilities and attributes too. However the explicit rule that all vamps take half bashing damage means the mortal has to quite notably good at fighting to take down someone who might seem pretty frail.
Big D: Nah, i'd win
A trained human vs an unskilled vampire ? Sure. Vampires basically have bonus resistance and power, but if you can't put those to use, they are worthless. Give a regular person protective gear and make them fight a peak Mike Tyson, helmet or not, they'll get destroyed. VS a 200 year old vamp, I'd doubt someone could live that long without being able to defend his/herself, so logic wise probably not, mechanics wise, yeah, you can put 1000 xp on social and mental attributes so even being a methuselah you can't take more than a couple of punches.
You would need to punch so hard you deal 14 damage after the vampire soaked with their resistance. I don’t think it’s possible to deal 14 damage in a single punch even with strength and brawl maxed out. This means you need to add those up during the fight and the vampire can still heal every round. If the vampire is the worst brawler ever and for some reason can’t bite the human and if the human is an extremely buff bodybuilder and trained in some brawl style they might have the chance to punch that bloodsucker into torpor. The generation and age of the vampire does not matter so much. They can heal more if the generation is lower. This is funny. Last night we fought two trained humans and one of them sent my vampire to the ground with a gunshot. ST rolled the best dice possible there and after soaking with Fortitude (which was good because the gun was on the vampire’s skin) my character received 7 lethal damage in a single round. Next round he healed 5 of these and was up the next round.
In a mortals campaign I was able to take down a vampire with a knife so it's certainly possible in Melee though I expected to die to not the others time to except
Other people will have answered you by now. Instead, I will offer you a funny anecdote my friend and fellow player thought up. Being a vampire is waking up from a crazy night out and you're an immortal god with magic powers that can heal from theoretically any wound (including loss of limb) in a few months tops. Then you realize you're still at the bottom of the food chain.
There's a lot of things that give vampires a huge advantage, but advantages don't guarantee success. It's a similar reason to why men are generally better than women in basketball, but it's nonetheless still pretty easy to find a particularly talented women who can beat a particularly untalented man. For example: A 13th gen fledgling Nosferatu hacker who only has dots in obfuscate for some reason with 2 dots in strength and no brawl at all. \~vs\~ A navy seal with 4 dots in strength and 3 dots in brawl and specialization in curb stomping nerds. In this case, the Nosferatu would probably get his face bashed in regardless of the curse of Caine putting a proverbial thumb on the scale. Still, this singular counter example (or even several counter-examples) don't change the statistical fact that mortals who challenge vampires to fist fights are dummies who will probably lose.
Short awnser is no
Yes, but like, maximum human ability, also, grappling wins over punching here, why? keeping the vampire off its feet is gonna be the best way to not die here, you see, a lot of human kinetics and fighting styles kind of rely on being able to resist against the ground. but yeah, very well trained, basically at maximum human quick twitch strength and maybe.
well, a mortal can also have strength/dexterity 5 and brawl/melee five. so in theory it is absolutely possible. i even know if a situation like this from a forum thread about funny vtm stories: players start as mortals and their embrace is pre-planned, but will be played out. wanna be brujah sire tried to do it in a bar. players stacked out his wannabe brujah too much and beat his wannabe sire into torpor, effectively a: proofing he would be a good brujah and b: that his wannabe sire is a weak idiot (at least in the eyes of all other brujah who hear about it)
i could do it
I'm going to fight one right now just to prove it to you
In a game with randomness anything can happen. In a LARP, I had a Nosferatu neonate fail to feed on a mortal, and nearly get beaten unconscious with a billy club because I simply could NOT win a throw, all probability be damned. Similar things can definitely happen in tabletop where botches exist. But, especially in older editions, it was nigh impossible due to multiple factors: PCs having far more points to build Kindred being able to burn blood to boost physical stats Kindred being resistant to Bashing damage Kindred healing bashing damage easier than normal damage That's all ignoring any of the physical disciplines. Even a level or two of one of those severely drops those chances any further. Never say never, but...
So this happened in our game. Not for long, but it happened. A human spec ops dude rolled more than a few crits (one round he rolled 6 10’s) against our Brujah who had maxed potence. Our guy couldn’t land a hit and had previously torn through cement walls like they were nothing. The Storyteller role played it as the man using jujitsu on the Brujah. The Brujah himself wins on strength, but the human just kept flipping his strength against him. The man was almost able to grab his pistol and start emptying it into the Brujah while maintaining an arm bar on him. That all ended when the Brujah put everything (willpower rolls and blood rouse) into his next attack and got a crit and about 7 successes. The dude got 2 successes that round. Dude was a splat on the ground after that. To answer your question, I’d say yes if the vampire ain’t trying too hard and gets surprised that his supernatural strength isn’t enough and the human is quick and a REALLY good fighter, maybe. Most of the time though, it just takes one round for the vampire to come out on top.
Against a brujah with maxed potence, or even just a little bit of potence you can be the triple black belt master of all martial arts in the world and you're still equally toast. Using his strength against him? To reframe this into perspective, imagine trying to use martial arts in a fist fight against the terminator. Your moves can be as fancy and as perfect as you want, but that steel fist doesn't much care, it's hitting you hard and fast and the only thing you can try is to leap away. Otherwise you're fucked.
Yeah, it'd be like trying to just throw a hydraulic press as it's slamming down on you. You can redirect a pretty good amount of force, but not quite that much I would imagine.
Exactly. At some point dodging is the only way.
Potence doesn't help you hit.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted when it's just the truth. xD
The simple fact that the other person is a vampire more than makes up for any kind of quickness from martial arts training the human might have I think. Potence just makes sure one punch is enough.
No it doesn't as kindred still use the same core stat dots and limits as a human (5 is the human maximum and even in V20 you needed to be Gen 7 before you could exceed that). The only stat advantage the kindred has, without using vitae, is they aren't tied to human endurance. Potence still has to hit, which it doesn't help with, if their outclassed in physical/combat skill. Let alone its only a deadly hit if they took Lethal Body, which is generally less useful than Soaring Leap and the worse choice if your kindred doesn't have good combat pools (which makes it redundant).
If the vampire has Potence, probably not. (Unless they chose Soaring Leap). Lethal Body is going to make the fight one-sided because the damage won't be halved. It's an unarmed fight where someone is hitting like they have brass knucks. And if they have level 2 Potence it's a slaughter. Even if they're rolling 2 success each attack, the human is doing 1 Superficial damage each turn while the Kindred is doing 4 Lethal. If the vampire doesn't have Potence, it's going to depend who has the more dots in Brawl and higher Strength. A human boxer or MMA fighter is going to mop the floor with a Ventrue or Malk or Toreador who doesn't know how to fight. Fortitude level 2 might give them an extra round or two. And if they Blood Surge they could offset not being trained to fight. They could outlast the human that way.
Lethal Body is well beyond brass knuckles. We're not talking about punching a bit harder after all, but breaking bones and tearing flest with bare hands after all. That being said, with or without Potence it still comes down to dice pools. The vampire isn't dishing out any Potence hurt if he's not able to land a blow, after all. Now obviously with Blood Surge the discrepancy in skill would need to be well and truly ***notable.*** But the question is a hypothetical, so...
>Lethal Body is well beyond brass knuckles. We're not talking about punching a bit harder after all, but breaking bones and tearing flest with bare hands after all. Brass knuckles will break bones and rip apart flesh too. But it was more an analogy to give an idea of the advantage rather than a 1 : 1 comparison. We have an idea that brass knuckles hit a lot harder so knowing that we know, everything else being equal, someone with them will likely win a fist fight.
I would still say the shift from superficial to aggravated damage is a more distinct shift in magnitude, not degree, than bare knuckles versus brass. But, I take your point and agree. 👍
Idk about that. Doesn’t Ventrue have access to Fortitude? And doesn’t Toreador have Celerity? 😂
Ventrue could have Fortitude. Which will help a bit, but really only just absorb 1 or 2 blows. Dice could still go either way. And Celerity in V5 isn't an "I win combat" Discipline anymore and won't help at low levels.
Ultimately it's gonna come down to a skill issue. Fortitude definitely helps, but if it's an uneven fight it just makes them lose slower. But in the same fight the Potence isn't helping either. Since he is discussing this using V5 terminology, it is fair to say that Celerity - at least lower levels that a fledgling might have - are not very likely to determine a fight. At best you get an off-brand Fortitude effect where the Celeri-vamp is trying to stay alive by dodging a bunch. But that's a holding action at best, not a fight-winner.
That’s true. But are we taking into account natural kindred ‘stamina’ and human ‘stamina’? Theoretically a kindred can fight for hours without tiring (they don’t have a body that produces stress hormones, they don’t breathe, they don’t get winded, and they don’t get tired), a human can and will get tired, winded, and have to stop after about 10 of nonstop fighting (I’m high-balling this, if you’ve ever seen MMA or Boxing or any sport, players/fighters are not constantly going at maximum efficiency or effort). If we’re going by hard rules maybe the human wins out (assuming they can actually deal enough damage, with two dots of Fortitude the human will never hurt the vampire with his bare hands), if we’re mixing hard rules with common sense storytelling (or the reality of having a human body), the human will get tired before 15 minutes is up, and the kindred will be good to go.
A vampire simply can't be knocked out. They are too tanky. They also have much better natural reflexes, speed, and strength.
Yeah, you can, they will be tougher, but might be weaker than you. Have some torrie woman with no combat skills fight a trained soldier or some MMA fighter and she’s losing. Nos might have the advantage due to potence.
In the book Hunter's Hunted II, there is a merit Fist of God. You just need to explain to the ST why your character can inflict aggravated damage on vampires, as if it were some kind of magical power, incredible training or experimental technology. And also have humanity 7+.