Re: nWoD "damage soaking" explain?
No, nWoD doesn't use something like that. There is just your Defence stat, that reduces down an attacker's pool by the same number of dice. So if someone has an attack pool of 5 and you have a Defence of 2, the attacker only rolls 3 dice now.
You can also spend a Willpower pt to boost Defence by 2, so in the above example the attacker only rolls 1 die, so likely won't succeed in damaging their target. Of course Willpower is a limited reserve, needing to be replenished by playing to your Virtue and Vice.
You can also spend the action Dodging rather than doing anything else, which doubles your Defence. Yep, you can spend a Willpower pt and add 2 to that, so in the example above, you can spend a turn Dodging, boosting Defence to 4, then spend a Willpower, making your Defence 6 and leaving the attacker to do a chance roll to hit you.
Whatever you do though, Defence doesn't work against Firearms unless within a yard of you or so and also you need to be aware of the attack and able to move to have it work, being tied up or ambushed means you don't get Defence against an attack.