Characters can resist a certain degree of physical punishment; this is called soaking damage. Your character's soak dice pool is equal to her Stamina. A normal human can soak only against bashing damage (this reflects the body's natural resilience to such attacks). A vampire (or other supernatural being) is tougher, and can thus use soak dice against lethal damage. Aggravated damage may be soaked only with the Discipline of Fortitude. Against bashing or lethal damage, Fortitude adds to the defender's soak rating (so a character with Stamina 3 and Fortitude 2 has five soak dice against bashing and lethal damage, two soak dice against aggravated damage).
After an attack hits and inflicts damage, the defender may make a soak roll to resist. This is considered a reflexive; characters need not take an action or split a dice pool to soak. Unless otherwise stated, soak rolls are made versus difficulty 6. Each soak success subtracts one die from the total damage inflicted. As with damage rolls, soak rolls may not botch, only fail.
Example: Liselle the Gangrel has Stamina 3 and Fortitude I. She is attacked with a knife, and the attacker scores three levels of lethal damage. Liselle may soak this attack with four dice (Stamina 3 + Fortitude 1). She rolls 1,9,9,7. The "1" cancels out one of the successes, leaving Liselle with two. She thus ignores two of the three health levels inflicted by the knife, taking only one level of damage.
Had Liselle been merely human, she would not have been able to soak the (lethal) knife wound at all, and would have taken the full three health levels.
For more information on what vampires or mortals can soak and how they heal please see: Health and Healing Times. Also see: Armor for more information on Armor as it helps you soak damage.
