house rule body locations

[mwsasser]

We're thinking about a new house rule for our game but I wanted to see if anybody else had tried this and had thoughts on it.

For humanoids instead of rolling d20 for hit locations, you'd roll 2D10 instead. The effect would likely cause more hits in the abdomen and chest area while reducing the odds of a head or leg hit.

Has anybody tried this or other methods to rescale (or reorder) the hit locations?

 

[kurgan84]

Personally, i use the unit's dice of the Combat Style roll but you can use the sums of the two dices of the roll if you want a 2D10 curve !

I know it don't match with critical but i don't care, if you have a critical you could "Choose location" if you want !

But if it is a problem you can use the opponent's roll instead ?

 

[danskmacabre]

Some years back I read about a dig of an ancient battlefield.
It showed the most common injuries were't abdomen and chest shots, but head and knee injuries.
Those bits stick out more I think and are more prone to get hit. So if you're looking for realism, I don't think this makes it more realistic.

 

[Mixster]

I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Oh, wait.

---
I was just thinking of re-arranged the hit table a bit for ranged combat so chest and abdomen would be hit more often since they are bigger targets.

 

[strega]

Possibly because those bits aren't or don't tend to be completely covered by armour. A mail shirt and shield covers the middle bit of the torso leaving the legs unarmoured. Unless wearing a pot helm or bascinet with visor part of the head, face and neck may be exposed.

I expect that arms, legs, and hands all took a certain amount of damage that might not be fatal. A hit to the head, even a glancing blow with a mace or sword, is likely to leave the recipient dazed or seriously damaged and probably unable to defend them selves against a killing blow.

 

[rust]

I think it will depend somewhat on the typical equipment used
by the fighters of a setting. If they tend to use shields, these
will cover the chest and abdomen best, so an attacker will be
likely to aim for the head and the legs not covered by a shield.
A hit location table which directs hits to the chest and abdomen
would then direct them towards the shield, which would seem
not very plausible to me.

Edit.: Strega typed faster ...

 

[danskmacabre]

I agree with Rust, it depends a lot on the setting.

One of my hobbies was Viking period Re-enactment. Using shields, mainly large round shields in battles were very common, to getting a chest, Abdomen shot was difficult. You have a few options depending on the weapons you use. If using a sword, you can try to run in and drop the sword behind the shield. But that's tricky as often the re-enactments were battles done in a shield wall, so charging into a shield wall would usually get you killed.
Using a 2 handed spear was easier in a shield wall, as you would try to push open your opponent's shield enough for the guy next to you to stab them in the chest/abdomen.

However the head, arms and legs stuck out a lot, especially as your arms are sticking out in order to stab someone with your spear, or whack them with your sword.

I remember being in a re-enactment society in Australia which allowed headshots (but had very strict rules about helmet use). In that the vast majority of the time people went for headshots, as the head is always gonna stick out.
I came from a re-enactment society where headshots were banned, so it took me a while to learn a headshot parry, as I didn't previously need to parry headshots.
But once I learned that I found I had an advantage, as hardly anyone bothered learning to parry body shots as is was far easier to attack the head.
So I DID start using bodyshots and did pretty well for a while, until people started learning to parry bodyshots as well.

If you want a realistic hit location table, I suppose you could vary the hit location depending on what sort of weapons, armor, shields (or lack of) you're using commonly in your campaign world.

I did find in Re-enactment I would often "Go for a bodyshot" to get the defender to defend the body more to I could get an arm, leg or shoulder shot, a sort of "feint manoeuvre".

Anyway, just my 2cents worth..

 

[mwsasser]

Very interesting points, thanks guys. I think we'll stick with the d20. :idea:

 

[danskmacabre]

I did find the point about setting specific very interesting tho.

I'd imagine a setting based in a culture that perhaps didn't commonly wear armor or use shields and instead used rapiers, pistols etc and generally light weapons with combat being faster and more fluid, you may well find that going for the bodyshot makes more sense.
Say like a Pirates campaign for example.

If you want to get fancy you could use different hit locations tables for different weapon, armor combinations, but I'd imagine that might be a nightmare to administrate.
Also, I think the premise for hit location tables is you won't necessarily get the location you want, what with the fluidity of combat in general, thus the random locations.