Vitals hit location

[Scott Ruggels]

It may be an odd quirk of timing, but I pulled out my copies of Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2020, to confirm something I remember. Back in 1988, we were working on Cyberpunk, and I was involved in finding statistics to back up my assertions for the combat system. One of the things I found was a copy of the wound location statistics from WW2 compiled by the U.S. Army afterwards,  and it broke down where wounds occurred by location on the body, So we boiled the percentages down to a 1D10 hit location table. 
 

1...........Head

2 -4.....Torso

5..........Right Arm

6..........Left Arm

7 - 8 ...Right Leg

9 - 10..Left Leg

There were no damage enhancements upon each location, except the head which was double damage. * points of damage against a limb would render it severed or too damaged to use.  Cyberpunk handled stun, shock and wounding very differently than Hero, though.  The use of "Stun Shock" rolls handled the  high stun low damage hits, that made even a hit from a small .25 Browning ACP round could take an unarmored, average individual out of the fight with an unfortunate roll, but more likely you just gave them a wound and they could decide to continue the fight, or flee.  We went through a lot of FBI Crime reports in writing the combat system for Cyberpunk, back then, and that was in the days before the internet was big.

[Chris Goodwin]

Scott, I've never forgotten those statistics.  Thank you.

[Duke Bushido]

On 12/6/2020 at 7:38 PM, Spence said:

 

And the chart has "12 - Stomach" for that

 

Problematically, the stomach is up behind the ribs, and the abdomen, where your colloquial "vitals" are, isnt listed at all. 

 

Speaking purely hypothetically, I have long-suspected that the commonality of misapplication of the word "stomach" is responsible for a large part of the chronic confusion regarding Location 13.

 

 

[Old Man]

On 12/11/2020 at 3:06 AM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Problematically, the stomach is up behind the ribs, and the abdomen, where your colloquial "vitals" are, isnt listed at all. 

 

Speaking purely hypothetically, I have long-suspected that the commonality of misapplication of the word "stomach" is responsible for a large part of the chronic confusion regarding Location 13.

 

 

 

This entire problem has been compounded by published sectional armor charts that, at minimum, imply very strongly that location 13 is below the belt and above the thighs.  I speculate that what happened is that 13 'vitals' originally meant any or all vital organs, and was assigned location 13 out of game balance considerations.  But this wasn't adequately explained anywhere, leaving players with a 'vitals' location that happened to be between the gut and the thighs on the hit location chart, and the rest is history.

[Duke Bushido]

There was a published move That targeted 13, and it was called "low blow."

 

Can't recall who had it, and I'm at work so I cant look it up.

 

I think that did less than help.