At one time, when I still tinkered with games, I considered systems that modeled where on your body an attack feel nearly essential. But now it seems that no game design that did not feature them in a prior iteration seeks to exclude such subsystems, opting for a simpler damage tally or abstract wound track sort of system.

Have body hit systems fallen by the wayside?

I can understand why, to a certain extent. When tinkering with hit location systems in my Starfarer RPG, the resulting system was resisting attempts to simplify it without removing detail I felt necessary.

But there must be a way to do hit locations elegantly. I sort of have one as a d20 house rule, but it relies on being able to do short division in your head. Probably not terribly portable.

So what have you got? What games out there have done this sort of thing elegantly?

I knew there was a reason I kept WFRP so close to the computer.

In WFRP, attack rolls that hit are "reversed" into hit location rolls.  If I were to hit with an attack roll of 28, I would then check the hit location table entry for 82 (right leg, FYI.)  The only real step is looking up the chart, which I have on a 3x5 card in my GM binder.

It's the best hit location system I've encountered.  Keep in mind, though, that most of the hit location play I did was back in my early teens with houseruled Shadowrun.

Hit locations do seem to have a bit of a stigma to them, don't they?

Something about them just seems vaguely complicated.

I'm not terribly familiar with non-d20 games thus far... are there any really good ones?

"Elegantly" is the tough part.

Still, I think that WFRP2e has a system that works out pretty elegantly, and you could probably model any hit location system on a concept similar to theirs.

RPGPundit

I always liked Top Secret SI's version myself which used one of the numbers from the to hit roll to determine location but each "level" of skill let you bump it to nearby locations--so a really skilled person hit what they wanted more often than not.


In my mecha game I've got body-maps for people and mecha however it doesn't really have a mechanic behind it--players can choose to take a hit somewhere or target a foe in a specific spot.

I think some of the problems I have with hit location system are...

If a random roll means your shot in the head what could be normally survivable damage becomes lethal so it becomes harder for characters to judge when to pull out of a fight.

If you are shot in the head but survive because of your massive hit points (or whatever) at the power level you've reached, then removes some of the believability, because you expect people shot in the head to die (I know there are lots of cases for people surviving).

If you loose a limb, it is sometimes worse than having the character actually die. Dead character means I get to roll a new character and try a new concept, loosing a limb means I now have to roleplay a disabled character.

I used to pretty much insist on hit locations but now I think the complication is too much for most players. Elric! (Stormbringer 4/5) has a nice deal where armor has variable absorption, which represents hit locations somewhat. Also, IIRC both Elric! and the old Dragonquest handled hit locations via Criticals. Non-crits wouldn't have a special effect; crits would affect a specific area as part of their description.

That said I like Harnmaster if a group is into it.

Runequest4 has hit locations. But I'm not up on how they work in this iteration.

DJ uses an abstract system. You roll percentiles against the following chart:

• 01-60: Non-Vital (damage time 1)
• 61-75: Vital (damage times two)
• 76-90: Super Vital (three times damage)
• 91-00: Ultra Vital (four times damage)

So a broadsword (4d6 damage) could do from 4 to 96 points depending on the swordsman's luck. There is also a K/S Area that allows a Persona to chose where he'd like to hit.

The Chronicles of Ramlar, which just came out, uses hit locations, and does a decent job of keeping it simple.

See, you guys are giving me pangs of nostalgia.

I didn't care much for Harnmaster in general. I dug the damage system though, even though it was chart dependant.

WFRP and Top Secret SI were influential to my homebrews. Using methods like those to minimize rolling seems a good technique.

My problem when designing these systems is I all to often sacrifice playability for realism, and it gets complicated real fast. I cut to many corners, I soon begin to feel that it's not worth doing half way and I quickly drop back into hp/damage track mode.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadSee, you guys are giving me pangs of nostalgia.

WFRP isn't nostalgia. Its the future, baby...

RPGPundit

all of Hinterwelt's games have hit locations.

I like them and they don't seem to complicate or slow things down. A combat scene doesen't seem to take any longer that d20 or gurps does.

Question re: WFRP:  Does the hit location determination method result in certain locations being more likely based on skill level?  I would assume that if I had skill 31% then I'd have 4 chances to hit location 1 versus 3 chances to hit the other locations, but I haven't seen how they do it, so maybe I'm misinterpreting something.
RQ has a d20 with 7 locations: each arm, each leg, abdomen, chest and head, each with their own hit points and armor.  Arms have less hp than legs/abdomen/head (all the same), which have less than chest.  There are different charts for different body types - so a quadruped version, a winged quadruped version, etc.  In the previous edition, there were two versions of the chart - one for melee, one for missile.
In general, hit locations are bookkeeping intensive with little payback for the extra effort.  Its ultimately subjective whether its worth the effort, but the trend seems to be away from them as you note.

I think WFRP's system works pretty well because it doesn't require additional rolls.  I'm fine with some kind of hit location table so long as...

(1) Hit points in the system really represent physical damage and not abstract ... stuff ... like D&D, and

(2) The added complexity really adds something of value to the game.

I always thought Runequest did a pretty good job at both of these.  Sure, there was an extra roll or two in combat.  However, combat had the potential to be nasty, brutal, and short.  The increased number of rolls was offset by the shortened combat duration.

Honestly, though, I kinda dig abstraction nowadays.  In my FATE CoC game, I've been using arbitrary hit locations based on what makes sense.  In my AE game, I'll use locations for flavor (especially for criticals & death-blows) but otherwise ignore them.

-O

edit: I'll note after reading the post above mine that my feelings about RQ combat are purely aesthetic and were not arrived at through actual gameplay.

Another voice in favour of the elegance of WFRP reversed percentile to-hit roll here. Algauble asked if the WFRP system means that hit location varies according to skill level. I think the answer is yes. There is a recent thread on the Black Industries board where this was discussed.

 HERO is another game that uses hit-locations. Not the supers games so much, but the use of hit locations does seem to be pretty common in the other genres, certainly if the comments on the HERO boards are anything to go by. Hit location in HERO requires another dice roll- something I don't like; but the rules for the effects of hit location- on damage and for the penalties for called shots- are pretty good.