I was playtesting my game Saturday with a group of my son's friends, and the idea of called shots came up.  Several of them thought the game really, really needed it.  The game uses a variant on hit points so the problem, of course, is that called shots and hit points fit together very badly.  Issue 1 is that it conceptually doesn't work.  If you take out someone's leg then he's defeated, equivalent to losing all hit points.  You're bypassing one of the main mechanics of the game, and there's no way it's going to be anything but overpowered.  Issue 2 is that it will be used against the PCs many times over their career, and being taken out of the fight instantly and without warning is not fun.  They're all new to RPGs so they haven't experienced the flip side of their proposal.

So, definitely not a good idea, but if possible I'd like to come up with something that satisfies whatever they're seeking from called shots without breaking the game.  One idea that I kind of like is to add a combat maneuver where one can strike at the arms or legs, and if successful the defender takes a penalty for all skill checks (including attack and defense) involving that part of the body for a few combat rounds.  Called arm shots would affect attacking and defending, and called leg shots would affect mobility.  This fits well with the rest of the combat maneuvers and would be easy to implement as most of the mechanics needed are already in place.  I'll give a list of the maneuvers below just to give the flavor of them.

So, if you've played in a game with a mechanic like this, how well did it work?  Any suggestions would be appreciated too.




(Current list of melee combat maneuvers)
Strike            Attack an opponent
Furious attack    Strike for extra damage, but become vulnerable
Light attack    An easy attack for minimal damage
Stun                    The defender loses his next turn
Disengage     Leave combat without receiving an extra attack
Drive             Force one's opponent to move
Trap                     Immobilize an opponent's weapon
Free                     Remove one's weapon from trap or bind
Stagger             Interfere with an opponent's balance
Shatter             Break an opponent's weapon
Bind                     Immobilize an opponent's and one's own weapon
Knock down     Knock an opponent prone
Flurry             Strike multiple opponents
Furious defense  Defend strongly but do not attack
Disarm             Cause an opponent to drop his weapon

Extra damage in exchange for higher difficult to hit is probably the most hit point friendly. Targeting the unarmored bits allowing damage to go through seems to work for Savage Worlds and nWoD. Alternatively, called shots might impose debuffs, like movement penalty for hitting legs, instead of damage or with reduced damage.
The effect on could be mitigated by allowing the target to take increased damage instead of the debuff.

Mobility penalties can work if your system makes mobility matter.  Some more abstract systems really don't. 

My suggestion that fits in the "action economy" style (as much as I hate that phrase), is that targeted hits to the head or chest do some kind of stun or shock effect that penalizes initiative, and when the penalty is big enough, effectively causes the loss of an action.

Abstractly, if the character is close to dead, then losing an action is often taking them out.  OTOH, if the character still has a lot of hit point buffer left, then the successful called shot doesn't take them out, but it does make it more likely that they will be taken out sooner if the advantage is followed up.

For me, it is simply -4 to hit, and:

* +4 damage OR;
* Cause a -4 penalty to your foe for a round, OR;
*... etc.

Conversely, just deal half damage and the foe has to make a saving throw to avoid falling prone, being disarmed, etc.

Maybe your damage has to be at least equal to the target's HD, if you don't want to disarm a giant with a small dagger.

I forget which game I saw that did this, but I think the best version is where you call your shot, then make a regular attack roll, and then if the attack succeeds, you roll an additional check for a bonus effect. That sidesteps the action economy issue, but I think in an HP system that kind of thing is better used for a non-damage effect: stun, disarm, blind, trip, etc. Critical hits already kind of cover the idea of hitting a weak spot for bonus damage, and the armor class system already assumes having to bypass the opponent's armor as part of the attack roll.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 15, 2024, 08:46:22 AMMy suggestion that fits in the "action economy" style (as much as I hate that phrase)

Sadly, I think action economy is inevitably going to be a concern in any turn-based game, just because players gravitate towards efficiency, and optimizing how much you can get done in a turn will always be a big part of that. The only ways I see of getting out of it would be either extremely open-ended initiative/turns, or the way some story games abstract an entire fight as a single check.

In general, I don't use called shots for extra damage, but for extra effects. The attacker is attempting to disrupt something the target is doing or attempting to do. Disrupt a spell, trip them up, make them drop something, whatever. Usually at a penalty of three to hit. Hit points being what they are, the target is of course allowed a saving throw, possibly with a penalty proportional to the damage done.

The comments thus far have given me some ideas, thanks for the input. 

Just for some additional info on the system, mobility matters a lot.  The system uses a battlemat, moves are pretty short (3 hexes is typical), you can deny enemies passage through spaces around you, multiple enemies at a time get a big advantage, and glass cannons are a thing.  I'm trying to recreate the very tactical "protect the casters" strategy from 1E/2E.

Also, I want the maneuvers to connect.  As an example if an enemy is charging you, then this sequence would make sense, assuming I get the design right

   Light attack – to stop his momentum
   Stagger – to make the next action easier, getting a stun is pretty hard
   Stun – so you don't get clobbered while doing the next move, which leaves you defenseless
   Power attack – buckets of damage

So to fit in the called shots should not only provide an interesting advantage, they should also be situational (but not really rare), lead to other maneuvers, be a fair tradeoff for damage, and create interesting tactical decisions.  The more I think about it, the more I think that's doable.  I'll need to talk to the players to get a better idea of what they really are looking to get out of it before I proceed, though.

Quote from: Mishihari on October 15, 2024, 04:24:56 AMI was playtesting my game Saturday with a group of my son's friends, and the idea of called shots came up.  Several of them thought the game really, really needed it.  The game uses a variant on hit points so the problem, of course, is that called shots and hit points fit together very badly.

All I can offer is my experience working with classic D&D. Like with magic, I fleshed out the combat mechanics while maintain strict compatibility with classic D&D stats. The trick that works is yes you can do X but the targets gets a save.

I realize that classic D&D's notorious save or death mechanics can be leveraged to do more interesting things in combat. The save mechanics has been traditionally used to avoid "bad things" happening to the character. So I created the combat stunt mechanic.

Keep in mind I don't view Hit Points as special. To me they are a measure of combat endurance. When I ran GURPS, Fantasy Hero, and other campaigns with detailed combat system, there are lot of factors that increased a character average combat endurance. But it was just that an average. There also things that could end a fight quicker or prolong it greatly. With my Majestic Fantasy rules I added to the base classic D&D combat rules some straight forward options that made combat flow similarly to those campaigns.

The details of the specific stunts varied. For example, a knock-out blow to the head requires a surprise from behind, and if the target wore a helmet, they get an advantage on their save.

With called shots, I ask the players what they intended to do, a to hit roll is made, and the target saved. If the goal was to knock a goblet out of the lich's hand, then it is a normal attack roll. If the goal was to cripple a limb then, I looked at the weapon being used, the target area and decided whether the attack roll was a disadvantage or not. If the target failed the save they took full damage and were left with a crippled limb. If the target made their save then they took half damage but the limb was fine. Remember the save comes after a successful to-hit roll.

Incorporating the save prevents the mechanic from being imbalanced. High level or high HD targets will almost always make their save. Which I found mirrors roughly the same outcomes, using OD&D as a base, that I got with highly skilled GURPS characters or tough GURPS monsters.

This is not the only addition I made to combat so high level characters or high HD monsters still have tactical options.

Hope this helps.

It gets to the old question of "what are HP?".

Theres lots of ways to do it. Depends on what you're after. If you're looking for "realism" and you want it backed up by mechanical effects then you need to also consider how your "degrees of damage" are going to play out on each bodypart.

Head - Stun/Dazed/Distracted.
Arm - Broken/Disabled/Disarmed
Leg - Broken/Crippled/Sprained

Or whatever.

Again - I hate to be a broken record. Literally everything you covered in your system is almost verbatim with how Savage Worlds operates. And it has Hit Location, and Death Spiral mechanics. It does this easily because it doesn't use HP, it uses Wounds. It takes into account relative skill. Armor absorbs damage (so you can target unarmored areas of your opponents). There are clear rules for what happens when you hit various body-parts too.

You could convert that to d20 by dividing your HP to your various body parts and assigning them like baby-Battletech rules? At 50% or lower you start racking up penalties. Not sure how granular you want to make it. Definitely could be done.

A couple of folks have mentioned saving throws.  I don't have those.   Or perhaps everything has a saving throw, depending on how you look at it.  Any attack, whether physical or magic is an opposed skill challenge.  The simplest case is strike, also known as "I hit it with my sword," the check is

d6 + attack taken + sword skill  vs  d6 + defense talent + sword skill + armor

and damage is the margin of success.  There are a lot of possible complications, but that's the simple version.  And for harder things like stun the attacker gets a negative modifier on his check, to make it more difficult to succeed.  So the question is, does that fill the same need y'all see for a save?

Quote from: tenbones on October 15, 2024, 03:23:54 PMIt gets to the old question of "what are HP?".

Theres lots of ways to do it. Depends on what you're after. If you're looking for "realism" and you want it backed up by mechanical effects then you need to also consider how your "degrees of damage" are going to play out on each bodypart.

Head - Stun/Dazed/Distracted.
Arm - Broken/Disabled/Disarmed
Leg - Broken/Crippled/Sprained

Or whatever.

Again - I hate to be a broken record. Literally everything you covered in your system is almost verbatim with how Savage Worlds operates. And it has Hit Location, and Death Spiral mechanics. It does this easily because it doesn't use HP, it uses Wounds. It takes into account relative skill. Armor absorbs damage (so you can target unarmored areas of your opponents). There are clear rules for what happens when you hit various body-parts too.

You could convert that to d20 by dividing your HP to your various body parts and assigning them like baby-Battletech rules? At 50% or lower you start racking up penalties. Not sure how granular you want to make it. Definitely could be done.

My last system sounds a lot like the one you describe, the one that I designed with the goal of being realistic.  Attacks are an opposed skill check, with effect being determined by margin of success, and random body area targeting.  A low margin adds 1 to damage, which is a modifier to all skill checks until it is healed.  A higher margin gives a wound, which will disable an arm or leg , immobilize on a torso hit, or knock out on a head hit.  An even higher margin is a kill.  So basically if it's 2 guys they accumulate damage until one has enough of an advantage to get in a finishing shot, assuming they don't try anything fancier.  There's a degree of attrition to it, but winning is more about creating advantages during the fight.

This game is a bit different.  It's aimed to be friendly and accessible to new players, so it's actually really hard to get killed for good.  Hence hit points, which I don't actually like very much.  This time they were the tool that fit the job though.  Savage Worlds sounds like an awesome system, but what you describe doesn't really fit with my goals.

On the general subject of what HP represent and how to rule wounds, I quite like the solution that Warlock! arrived at. You have a small pool of HP, which are instead called "stamina", and when that runs out, you roll 1d6 on the wound table,  modified by how far into negatives the last attack would have knocked you. The higher numbers on the wound table correspond to more serious wounds, with death occurring on a 10+. It's a nice elegant compromise between a HP system and a wound system, and I think it addresses several concerns at once:

-Neatly separates combat endurance from "meat points"
-Makes it nearly impossible to be killed by a low damage attack, so no more "1st level mage killed by a housecat"
-Allows stamina to be easily recoverable without breaking immersion (since it clearly does not represent serious wounds), eliminating much of the need for magical healing.
-incorporates the effect of a death save, without actually requiring a separate saving throw. Also since you will be wounded if you drop below zero, there's no "whack-a-mole" effect of characters falling unconscious and then popping back up fully functional a round later.

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 15, 2024, 07:00:23 PMOn the general subject of what HP represent and how to rule wounds, I quite like the solution that Warlock! arrived at. You have a small pool of HP, which are instead called "stamina", and when that runs out, you roll 1d6 on the wound table,  modified by how far into negatives the last attack would have knocked you. The higher numbers on the wound table correspond to more serious wounds, with death occurring on a 10+. It's a nice elegant compromise between a HP system and a wound system, and I think it addresses several concerns at once:

-Neatly separates combat endurance from "meat points"
-Makes it nearly impossible to be killed by a low damage attack, so no more "1st level mage killed by a housecat"
-Allows stamina to be easily recoverable without breaking immersion (since it clearly does not represent serious wounds), eliminating much of the need for magical healing.
-incorporates the effect of a death save, without actually requiring a separate saving throw. Also since you will be wounded if you drop below zero, there's no "whack-a-mole" effect of characters falling unconscious and then popping back up fully functional a round later.

Man, now I have to find my copy of Warlock!! I'll get to it after I move.

My main objection to called shots is the math. The probabilities can work out one of two ways: either the resultant effect is so much better than the loss of your chance to hit that it makes no sense to ever not do a called shot, or, the reverse, that the benefit is so low that called shots are always sub-optimal. My players carried around a chart that told them exactly when a called shot was viable based on the target's current AC. Not really fun.

The other objection is just one of pacing. Deciding to make a called shot took time (and extreme amounts of time for some players) destroying the flow of combat.

In the end I decided to just implement a critical hit system where if they player rolls well, he can choose to either do extra damage (like a normal critical hit) or apply a specific special result: disarm, trip, grapple, etc. This way things move along at a nice pace and special results happen just about as often.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 16, 2024, 02:15:37 PMThe other objection is just one of pacing. Deciding to make a called shot took time (and extreme amounts of time for some players) destroying the flow of combat.

This is more or less how I approach it with my system. 

I'm tempted to write something into the rules that explains that the default is that every effective attack is a "called shot".  People that use weapons to try to kill others and keep themselves alive don't just flail around randomly. Maybe I should include a rule that does the opposite:

The Uncalled Shot:  If you don't care about having an effective hit, you can get a +4 to hit. Any successful hit only does 1d6-3 damage (zero damage is possible), since it's only blind luck that lands anywhere effective.  Such strikes can intimidate the weak willed, the easily distracted, or the almost dead.

I don't think the maneuver would get used very often, but it would prevent players asking to do called shots.