Hit Locations

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Hit Locations

 

People in real life do in fact sometimes get shot and not realize it until after the shooting is over.

 

Stopping power discussions turn into flamewars on gearhead gun discussion sites.

 

Shot with what? A .22 pistol? I've heard of a few cases like that, but they were the exception, not the rule.

 

I think HERO's hit location rules reflect this fairly well; while it's possible to shrug off hits from small-caliber weapons, it's much harder to do so against larger calibers, especially those big enough for an inherent +1 Stun mod.

[Markdoc]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Shot with what? A .22 pistol? I've heard of a few cases like that' date=' but they were the exception, not the rule.[/quote']

 

It might not be the rule, but I've been shot myself and seen a guy shot to death. I sure as hell noticed being shot - I took one in the head and got a big steel plate in my skull as a result - but it didn't actually hurt - it felt more like a punch. I passed out and fell down though, so I guess I took a fair amount of STUN. I've seen a guy take two 7.62 rounds through the chest (and out the back): he didn't even notice he'd been shot until he saw all the blood. I got a bit of shrapnel right through my hand once too - I didn't notice that at all, until I saw blood all over my jeans and then realized that it was coming out of me. (as an aside, being stunned can also be modeled as nausea: in the shrapnel incident, I got all wobbly and thought I was going to throw up - I think that was from realizing that I had something stuck all the way through my hand, rather than the blood loss which - while spectacular, in that it was all over my clothes - was actually pretty minimal).

 

I've talked with others who have been shot too. Basically a bullet - even large calibre - doesn't hit as hard as movies and popular myth would have it, and trauma responses often damp immediate feelings of pain. So a pretty substantial proportion of people don't realise at first that they have been shot, even with rifle caliber bullets. In my relatively limited experience, the people who report not having noticed being shot are pretty much always those who were involved in physical action and their attention was elsewhere - the same way you sometimes end up with a huge bruise whose origin you can't identify. You must have hit yourself on something - but simply didn't notice.

 

Anyway, on the whole, I'm pretty happy with the way Hero systems hot locations operate: the only thing I'd change if I could really be bothered is to de-emphasise arm and hand hit locations for ranged attacks: they seem to me to sit about right for melee combat. But I think having two hit locations charts is too much bother for a minor gain in "game realism".

 

cheers, Mark

[Manic Typist]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Um. Markdoc..... what do you do for a living?

 

The reason I ask is that you said you were wearing jeans during the shrapnel bit....not BDUs.....

[L. Marcus]

Re: Hit Locations

 

He's a medical man. ^^

[Lucius]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Thus the name

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, what's up MarkDoc?

[lensman]

Re: Hit Locations

 

I currently run a Heroic 100 pt Competent Normal game of Fallout HERO, using 6th ed. and I have the following as House Rules for Hit location.

 

Ranged attacks

Specific Hit Locations may only be used if the character is Braced and Set

 

Area locations may be used but the character may not move in the segment he targets an area location

 

 

Melee attacks

Specific Hit Locations may only be used if the Specific location modifier

is <= the number of Melee CSL a character possesses.

This limit does not apply to opponents that are Zero DCV

 

Area locations may be used anytime.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Those are some nice house rules. So no aiming for a Head hit location unless your character has 8 CSL's or more?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Hit Locations

 

It might not be the rule, but I've been shot myself and seen a guy shot to death. I sure as hell noticed being shot - I took one in the head and got a big steel plate in my skull as a result - but it didn't actually hurt - it felt more like a punch. I passed out and fell down though, so I guess I took a fair amount of STUN. I've seen a guy take two 7.62 rounds through the chest (and out the back): he didn't even notice he'd been shot until he saw all the blood. I got a bit of shrapnel right through my hand once too - I didn't notice that at all, until I saw blood all over my jeans and then realized that it was coming out of me. (as an aside, being stunned can also be modeled as nausea: in the shrapnel incident, I got all wobbly and thought I was going to throw up - I think that was from realizing that I had something stuck all the way through my hand, rather than the blood loss which - while spectacular, in that it was all over my clothes - was actually pretty minimal).

 

I've talked with others who have been shot too. Basically a bullet - even large calibre - doesn't hit as hard as movies and popular myth would have it, and trauma responses often damp immediate feelings of pain. So a pretty substantial proportion of people don't realise at first that they have been shot, even with rifle caliber bullets. In my relatively limited experience, the people who report not having noticed being shot are pretty much always those who were involved in physical action and their attention was elsewhere - the same way you sometimes end up with a huge bruise whose origin you can't identify. You must have hit yourself on something - but simply didn't notice.

 

Anyway, on the whole, I'm pretty happy with the way Hero systems hot locations operate: the only thing I'd change if I could really be bothered is to de-emphasise arm and hand hit locations for ranged attacks: they seem to me to sit about right for melee combat. But I think having two hit locations charts is too much bother for a minor gain in "game realism".

 

cheers, Mark

 

Thanks for posting that, Markdoc. A couple of observations:

 

1) I stand corrected. The cases of unnoticed gunshots wounds I was aware of were second-hand information; they only involved small-caliber rounds.

 

2) I'm amazed you call this "relatively limited experience!"

[lensman]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Those are some nice house rules. So no aiming for a Head hit location unless your character has 8 CSL's or more?

 

Correct, if it applies to melee attacks and allows for the exception of 0 DCV

 

Melee attacks

Specific Hit Locations may only be used if the Specific location modifier

is <= the number of Melee CSL a character possesses.

This limit does not apply to opponents that are Zero DCV

 

and thanks.

[LordGhee]

Re: Hit Locations

 

So Markdoc do you get radio?

 

For that information you get rep!

 

Lord Ghee

[LordGhee]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Must spread . . . . Ahuuuughgua

 

someone give this man some rep, I mean if you do not get rep about that there is no justice!

 

Lord Ghee

[mayapuppies]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Must spread . . . . Ahuuuughgua

 

someone give this man some rep, I mean if you do not get rep about that there is no justice!

 

Lord Ghee

Done and done

[Lucius]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Markdoc's always posting stuff he should be reputized for.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I'm always posting palindromedary taglines

[Markdoc]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Um. Markdoc..... what do you do for a living?

 

The reason I ask is that you said you were wearing jeans during the shrapnel bit....not BDUs.....

 

The shrapnel thing was entirely my own fault: as a kid, I was into chemistry (my dad was a science teacher, who helped with getting "reagents" ). Things were (literally) different then. We had a shop in my town called "scientific supplies" that sold .. well, you can guess from the name. Back then home-making explosives was considered good clean fun for red-blooded young boys*. We upped the ante, by deciding to make "depth charges" for fishing by putting our explosives inside a larger can filled with junk metal. We had the foresight to scrape a shallow trench before detonating our prototype (thank god!) but I had overlooked the fact that the hand that set off the charge was - briefly- out of the trench.

 

I put a 3 inch nail right though mine and still have a pair of neat round scars making the spot.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*we also home-made napalm, giant fire balloons (my favourite!), 3-stage rockets and a giant iron-framed kite that flew over a kilometer high - probably a real air-traffic hazard!

[Markdoc]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Thanks for posting that, Markdoc. A couple of observations:

 

1) I stand corrected. The cases of unnoticed gunshots wounds I was aware of were second-hand information; they only involved small-caliber rounds.

 

2) I'm amazed you call this "relatively limited experience!"

 

It's relatively limited in that:

1) I have been shot once

2) I've seen one guy shot and killed

3) I've talked to maybe a dozen guys who have been shot in hospital.

A trauma surgeon or paramedic in a large US city could probably rack those numbers up over a busy weekend (OK, maybe not #1 )

 

Anyway, I like an active life

 

cheers, Mark

[McCoy]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Things were (literally) different then. We had a shop in my town called "scientific supplies" that sold .. well' date=' you can guess from the name. Back then home-making explosives was considered good clean fun for red-blooded young boys [/quote']

 

Yep My explosive experiments were confined by a earthen berm, and observed with a periscope made from two steel mirrors. How I lusted for the mirror described in Rocket Ship Galileo.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Hit Locations

 

I still think it would be a nice idea to modify the STUNx of hit locations to match the 1d3 STUN multiple

 

I tend to disagree; the 1d3 STUNx is, I imagine, intended for Superheroic games or those games where you are not at all worried about "realism." Heroes don't get shot in the head, nor do they shoot their foes in the head.

 

Hit locations are more for lower powered, heroic level games - where the hero might indeed suffer a blow to the head, or purposefully strike the villain in the head, etc. So that head shot is going to have a higher STUNx than the typical 1d3.

 

Or at least that is my reasoning on it.

[Lucius]

Re: Hit Locations

 

I tend to disagree; the 1d3 STUNx is, I imagine, intended for Superheroic games or those games where you are not at all worried about "realism." Heroes don't get shot in the head, nor do they shoot their foes in the head.

 

Hit locations are more for lower powered, heroic level games - where the hero might indeed suffer a blow to the head, or purposefully strike the villain in the head, etc. So that head shot is going to have a higher STUNx than the typical 1d3.

 

Or at least that is my reasoning on it.

 

Which makes Killing Attacks more powerful in heroic campaigns, but those are precisely the games where such attacks are probably not paid for with character points.

 

I'm not crazy about it, but it's an improvement over what we had.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is confident of surviving a headshot

[dmjalund]

Re: Hit Locations

 

but it nerfs KAs that can't target hit locations

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Hit Locations

 

The shrapnel thing was entirely my own fault: as a kid, I was into chemistry (my dad was a science teacher, who helped with getting "reagents" ). Things were (literally) different then. We had a shop in my town called "scientific supplies" that sold .. well, you can guess from the name. Back then home-making explosives was considered good clean fun for red-blooded young boys*. We upped the ante, by deciding to make "depth charges" for fishing by putting our explosives inside a larger can filled with junk metal. We had the foresight to scrape a shallow trench before detonating our prototype (thank god!) but I had overlooked the fact that the hand that set off the charge was - briefly- out of the trench.

 

I put a 3 inch nail right though mine and still have a pair of neat round scars making the spot.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*we also home-made napalm, giant fire balloons (my favourite!), 3-stage rockets and a giant iron-framed kite that flew over a kilometer high - probably a real air-traffic hazard!

 

yep, right there with you. My holy trinity of favorite stores as a kid were the Hobby Shop, the Army/Navy store and the Scientific Supply. If a kid did the stuff I did, they'd be in Juvie by the time they were 10

 

Edit: Note: the only reason I don't have childhood shrapnel scars is because I wisely took cover behind an oak, which probably still has metal fragments imbedded in it.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Which makes Killing Attacks more powerful in heroic campaigns, but those are precisely the games where such attacks are probably not paid for with character points.

 

I'm not crazy about it, but it's an improvement over what we had.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is confident of surviving a headshot

 

Actually, it doesn't make killing attacks more powerful, because Normal attacks (and NND's etc) gain X2 effect for hitting the head location, so they get just as big, if not a bigger boost than killing attacks (a 2D6K attack doing 12 body hitting someone in the head does 60 stun. A 6D6 Normal Attack hitting someone in the head max damage does 72 Stun! Now granted, defenses are subtracted first, but in many Heroic games, defenses won't be much more than 8 or 10 points, meaning 26 Stun gets through defense, times 2 for 52 points of Stun damage. Sounds pretty even to me!)

 

The disparity between Killing Damage and Normal Damage has always been when NOT using Hit Locations and Killing attacks had a random 1-5 (D6-1) Stun multiplier. Occasionally X4 or X5 would be rolled and ungodly Stun damage would result. When you factor in Hit Locations, Normal Damage gets a boost from hitting the Head or Vitals location as well, thus things are evened out a whole lot more.

[Beast]

Re: Hit Locations

 

I did not mind going to a d3 stun multiplier,it was also lumping non resistant def to the mix that really nerfed KA's

in the 5th ed game I played face to face we use all def vs killing stun and it worked fine

but when combined ,almost no stun is done and def has to be really watched to have KA's have any effect except to break things

 

Which makes Killing Attacks more powerful in heroic campaigns, but those are precisely the games where such attacks are probably not paid for with character points.

 

I'm not crazy about it, but it's an improvement over what we had.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is confident of surviving a headshot

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Hit Locations

 

I did not mind going to a d3 stun multiplier,it was also lumping non resistant def to the mix that really nerfed KA's

in the 5th ed game I played face to face we use all def vs killing stun and it worked fine

but when combined ,almost no stun is done and def has to be really watched to have KA's have any effect except to break things

 

I found it very rare to see combat-capable characters who had no resistant defenses whatsoever. Even 1 point of rDEF meant all your defenses counted against the KA Stun, so few, if any, credible combatants were getting less than their full defenses against the STUN from a KA.

 

A KA could be purchased AVAD to have STUN reduced by only rDEF. I wonder how that would work out in the current model.

[Old Man]

Re: Hit Locations

 

Actually, it doesn't make killing attacks more powerful, because Normal attacks (and NND's etc) gain X2 effect for hitting the head location, so they get just as big, if not a bigger boost than killing attacks (a 2D6K attack doing 12 body hitting someone in the head does 60 stun. A 6D6 Normal Attack hitting someone in the head max damage does 72 Stun! Now granted, defenses are subtracted first, but in many Heroic games, defenses won't be much more than 8 or 10 points, meaning 26 Stun gets through defense, times 2 for 52 points of Stun damage. Sounds pretty even to me!)

 

The disparity between Killing Damage and Normal Damage has always been when NOT using Hit Locations and Killing attacks had a random 1-5 (D6-1) Stun multiplier. Occasionally X4 or X5 would be rolled and ungodly Stun damage would result. When you factor in Hit Locations, Normal Damage gets a boost from hitting the Head or Vitals location as well, thus things are evened out a whole lot more.

 

 

What you have to watch out for, though, is the greater randomness of KA resulting from the lower amount of dice. Sure a 6d6 HA to the head maxes out at 72 stun, but it's really unlikely. The 2d6 KA to the head will do at least 55 stun every 12 rolls.

 

I personally am guilty of exploiting this effect by piling ludicrous extra STUNx on top of a 1d6 KA (no bell curve at all). Cold cock your opponent 1/3 of the time with next to no chance of actually killing him. Worked great in Champions games where killing is frowned upon for some reason or other.

[L. Marcus]

Re: Hit Locations

 

... You sly old powergamer, you. ^^