Damage Types
Introduction
Characters in the game of Vampire, regardless of what era, can suffer injury from a broad range of sources. It may be bruising from punches and kicks, broken bones from being hit with a titanium base-ball bat or slashes from a sword. A character's physical nature determines her susceptibility to injury and the degree to which she is affected. A vampire can shrug off wounds that would maim a mortal, yet sustain injury from sources that a human would not regard as a risk, at all.
Bashing Damage
Bashing damage is unlikely to kill, and it can be healed swiftly, even by mortals. It represents bruises, sprains and similar minor injuries, inflicted by falls, punches and the like. Vampires are largely unaffected by bashing damage. The absence of blood in their body tissues means that they do not bruise in the same manner as mortals, so they suffer only half (round down) the indicated number of health levels from bashing damage. Both mortals and vampires use Stamina to soak bashing damage, though vampires add their Fortitude rating to the roll (if they have that Discipline). A vampire can heal a level of bashing damage by spending a point of blood.
While Bashing damage rarely kills, it can weaken the character to a point where she is more susceptible to other forms of damage. If a vampire character falls to Incapacitated due to "normal" (i.e., bashing or lethal) damage and takes another level of normal damage, she is forced into torpor. If a vampire character is Incapacitated due to "normal" damage and takes a point of aggravated damage, she suffers the Final Death. Bashing damage alone cannot destroy a vampire although a mortal may die from its effects. Once a mortal's Health chart is full, additional levels of bashing damage cause existing bashing slashes to be replaced with lethal crosses, as bones are broken and internal organs rupture.
Lethal Damage
As the name suggests, lethal damage is more serious than bashing with the potential to kill or maim, especially if the character is mortal. Most bladed weapons inflict lethal damage, as do some blunt weapons if targeted appropriately (+2 difficulty). Vampires soak lethal damage with Stamina (+ Fortitude, if any) because their undead flesh is less prone to debilitating injury and internal bleeding is rarely an issue for them. Mortals, however, cannot soak lethal damage at all (save with armor). Similarly, a vampire can heal lethal damage as easily as bashing, while a mortal must spend many weeks or months recovering.
A mortal character at Incapacitated who suffers a level of lethal damage dies. A vampire in a similar position is driven into torpor by the additional level of lethal damage, but she does not meet the Final Death as a result. As with bashing damage, however, such injuries make the character vulnerable to aggravated damage, and if she is at Incapacitated or in torpor as a result of lethal damage and then sustains a level of damage from an aggravated source, she is destroyed.
Aggravated Damage
Although their bodies are more resilient than those of mortals, some forms of injury are grievous even to vampires. Largely elemental or supernatural in origin (e.g., fire, sunlight, or the teeth and claws of other vampires) these sources of injury are hard to resist and can be soaked only with the Discipline of Fortitude. Aggravated damage is also much harder to heal, as each level requires five blood points and a full day of rest to remove. Provided the vampire gets at least one full day of rest, however, she may spend points of Willpower in lieu of the additional days of rest as long as she can meet the blood-point cost of the healing. A vampire who is incapacitated or in torpor and who suffers a level of aggravated damage suffers the Final Death.
Fire and the claws of supernatural beasts cause lethal damage to mortals. There are some rare instances where mortals do suffer aggravated damage, however, which cannot be healed save through other supernatural means. (These are explained on a case-by-case basis as they occur.) Sunlight causes no damage whatsoever to mortals, of course (save for prolonged exposure - of course - which can be bashing or lethal depending on the circumstances).
