Roll for Hit location or Call Shot

[steph]

This is a question for the GM who use the Hit Location in game.

 

Just want to know if each time a character hit a target you roll for the hit location or you use it only if the player call the shot. When he don't  call is a chest attack.

 

TY in advance

 

Steph

[Christopher R Taylor]

In games where there are hit locations I roll randomly hit locations for every attack that isn't a full-body one (such as a rock slab 4m across).  Depending on angle and access, I may roll different dice (like 2d6+1 if they cannot possibly hit the legs and feet).  If someone calls a shot, I don't roll; they aimed for a specific location and either hit that, or missed.

[bluesguy]

The players either use called place shots in my game.  Almost everyone who does this has bought PSL vs. hit location penalty.  Mooks can't pick hit locations and I don't roll hit locations for them (actually HCM has a setting for mooks so they don't roll hit locations - shameless plug).  For other NPCs they can either do placed shots (with penalties) or it is a random hit location roll.

[Scott Ruggels]

If the game has hit locations (Danger International, Fantasy Hero, ect.) then general DCV is one value and hit location is rolled randomly on a a successful hit. The player has the option to call their locations, but the DCV and the Hit Location bonus stack. That's how i handle it.

[drunkonduty]

I use the method of roll location for every shot, unless a called shot is made. Of course called shots get the penalty.

 

FYI: there were an awful lot of groin shots in the random rolls.

[Christopher R Taylor]

13 is a pretty common roll on 3d6, almost worth reworking the table so its on the other end like head

[drunkonduty]

YEah, we did think about doing that.

But all those groin shots were just too funny to stop.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I have the characters roll every time. How I do this is roll 6 dice. Three of one color and three of another. One set is the to-hit roll. The other set is the location roll. It works pretty seamless that way.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah we do the same thing, although while it saves time, people enjoy rolling the location separately, too.

[Scott Ruggels]

The one advantage with having Hit locations is that armor can be built per location, so you don't have to roll armour activation, just see what type of armor is on each location .

[knasser2]

13 is a pretty common roll on 3d6, almost worth reworking the table so its on the other end like head

 

I didn't like having frequent blows to the reproductive organs in my game so I did re-work it. The greater reason though is that I was seeking ways to streamline play and so wanted to combine the hit and location rolls into one. Initially I was going to have the player roll all dice together and have the location dice be a different colour. But then you would endless questions as to which colour was which again so I reworked the table to work on 2d6. So you'd roll three blue dice, two red dice and it was fairly intuitive. But then you have to keep dice the same colours and also the 2d6 was a little restrictive on locations so I switched hit rolls to be 3d6+2d10 (percentile). This is easy to remember and always the same so you can just keep those dice to hand. My players very quickly got used to just rolling their "attack dice" and checking if they had hit and if so where all in one roll.

 

If anyone is interested, the revised hit chart (sans "vitals") is as follows. Liklihood of locations is roughly the same as the 3d6 chart with vitals included under stomach.

 

1-6 Head

7-19 Shoulder (L/R)

20-37 Arm (L/R)

38-63 Chest

64-79 Abdomen

80-83 Hand (L/R)

84-91 Upper Legs

92-97 Lower Legs

98-00 Feet

[Christopher R Taylor]

Technically, 13 is "vitals" not "genitals" and I've always understood that to be anything from a hit to the solar plexus to the heart.  Somewhere really painful and dangerous other than the head.  I mean it hurts a lot but you're not gonna take x2 body from a kick to the pills.  You might want to die, but you're not in serious danger.

[knasser2]

Technically, 13 is "vitals" not "genitals" and I've always understood that to be anything from a hit to the solar plexus to the heart.  Somewhere really painful and dangerous other than the head.  I mean it hurts a lot but you're not gonna take x2 body from a kick to the pills.  You might want to die, but you're not in serious danger.

 

Well the heart is in the chest and the solar plexus is in the stomach area, so I figured what was left to be meant by "vitals" is as how it is commonly used as a euphemism for the reproductive organs. Or at least historically has been used as such. I mean, most parts of the body are "vital" if you hit them hard enough, but if you refer to something as "the" vitals, that's usually what has been meant. At least around where I grew up. And the rest of the body is covered by other categories so it seemed logical. Every time someone rolls a hit on the vitals I hear Baldrick's voice from Blackadder remarking: "it's okay sir. By a thousand to one chance my willy got in the way."

 

https://youtu.be/1BOzOxry6lA

[Scott Ruggels]

When we were working on Cyberpunk 2020 for R. Talsorian back in the game, we actually did research onto the frequency of wounds  and their hit locations, most of which were from British Government  research,  from WW2, and used that to come up with our hit location charts for that. on a 1d10. According to the info, 10% were head hits, 10% for each arm, 40% on the torso, and 20% for each leg. We did this back in 1989, so new or different info may have different results today.
 

I still like and use the default Hero hit locations, though. 

[PhilFleischmann]

I've always considered location 13 to be everything covered by a speedo.  Which gives plenty of room that it doesn't have to be right in the nads.  It could easily be to either side, and is still a "vital" area, as you could bleed out quickly if you're hit in the femoral artery.  Likewise a lower intestine hit is not good.

 

And somewhere, I came up with a "Rear Hit Location" table, to reflect the slightly different effects of hits from behind.  If you're hit in the butt, that's probably not as bad as 13 from the front.  So I switched the multipliers for 12 and 13.  12 being about where your kidneys are.

[bluesguy]

I tell my players that vitals includes things like kidney/liver/heart.  Hitting someone in the chest means hitting some in the rib cage but not necessarily getting thru the rib cage.

[Kesedrith]

I use the method of roll location for every shot, unless a called shot is made. Of course called shots get the penalty.

 

FYI: there were an awful lot of groin shots in the random rolls.

Yeah, we had a "Night of a Thousand Nut Shots" one time that had a ninja character's name shifting from "Night Dragon" to "Nut Dragon".

 

What I was really going to point out that on calling shots, there are also "rules" you can use for allowing a call of "high shot" that doesn't roll against any location below the waist, and all sorts of similar location roll modifiying calls.....if you want to add that complication. The point being that people can aim high or aim low, not trying to hit particular locations, but simply localize a zone. Lower penalty than calling a specific location, but beats a sniper who's almost certainly aiming for center of mass (if not the head) and hitting.....their foot!

[Woolshedwargamer]

We had one character who named his sword "Nutsplitter" on account of the number of 13s he rolled. Another samurai archer character in our Sengoku game once hit five guys in a row in the 13s. It adds something to fireside chats about old games that "You remember when Pete's Akiro character  hit five guys in the lower torso in a row" just doesn't manage to do. 

[Hyper-Man]

There is no reason that the random hit location roll can't be combined with the called shot rules in a seamless fashion.

 

Forum member Etherio did something regarding this several years ago that can be found on this old thread:

http://www.herogames...on/?hl=location

 

The referenced hit location chart can be found at the bottom of this page:

http://www.realschlu...ules/index.html

 

HM

[Nolgroth]

When I use Hit Locations, I have the players roll for every attack. I also, being a MapTool user, have automated that roll into the batch of rolls so it is all one click.

 

Lately, I have been feeling this urge to do away with locations as anything other than color commentary and using the OCV roll to determine if the attack is severe enough to do extra damage. That way, no matter which location you hit, a really good roll is going to have a concrete effect on damage. I'm sure that violates some sort of "Conservation of Hero Sacred Cows" law somewhere, but I think it would be quicker than adding another roll to the busy roll schedule as is. Not sold on the idea completely. Then again, I have been missing systems (namely Shadowrun) where the roll to hit and deal damage is pretty much the same thing. That could be impacting my desire to "clean up" Hero, in terms of reducing complexity without (hopefully) reducing utility.

[Hugh Neilson]

Technically, 13 is "vitals" not "genitals" and I've always understood that to be anything from a hit to the solar plexus to the heart.  Somewhere really painful and dangerous other than the head.

 

 

I tell my players that vitals includes things like kidney/liver/heart.  Hitting someone in the chest means hitting some in the rib cage but not necessarily getting thru the rib cage.

 

Every time this issue crops up, I wonder why non-gamers think gamers are immature...at least a few people get it.

 

What I was really going to point out that on calling shots, there are also "rules" you can use for allowing a call of "high shot" that doesn't roll against any location below the waist, and all sorts of similar location roll modifiying calls.....if you want to add that complication. The point being that people can aim high or aim low, not trying to hit particular locations, but simply localize a zone. Lower penalty than calling a specific location, but beats a sniper who's almost certainly aiming for center of mass (if not the head) and hitting.....their foot!

The high shot that gets a head hit 50% of the time is a sweet use for 4 PSLs...May not be the current High Shot, though - it was a few editions ago that I built that sharpshooter character.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One device I used to allow is for people to adjust toward a target.  So you took a -2 straight OCV penalty, and tried to hit a target.  For every 2 points you hit by, you moved what you rolled to the target location.

 

So Bob has an 9 OCV, he takes -2 to that and wants to hit A_Kobold_001 in the stomach.  He rolls to hit and even with the penalty lands a blow, by 4!  He rolls location, but its a 17: feets.  However, since he hit by 4, he can move his location by 2 points (4/2) and manages to move the blow up closer to his target: the lower leg with a 15.

 

It worked pretty well but since 13 is relatively easy to roll on 3d6 and too near the center bell curve, I had to assign a -3 penalty for targeting vitals; it was too easy to move to.

[Cantriped]

In my past campaigns I've always used Hit Locations for all qualifying (non-area) attacks. It is one of my favorite optional rules.

They add a lot of flavor to combat (without much extra work for the GM), take very little extra time. They do make combat more unpredictable, but I came from D&D/Pathfinder with Critical Hits and Fumbles being a thing, so I consider it a feature, not a bug.

 

 

It worked pretty well but since 13 is relatively easy to roll on 3d6 and too near the center bell curve, I had to assign a -3 penalty for targeting vitals; it was too easy to move to.

Statistically, one in ten standard Hit Location rolls will result in hitting the Vitals.

 

The high shot that gets a head hit 50% of the time is a sweet use for 4 PSLs...

According to my Hit Location Probability Table (shameless plug), a High Shot actually only has a ~17% chance of hitting someone in the Head, and a Head Shot only has a ~33% chance.

 

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/371-%7B%3F%7D/

[Christopher R Taylor]

Probably a better table would look like this:

 

3-5 head

6 lower leg

7 stomach

8 lower arm

9 shoulders

10-11 chest

12 upper arm 

13 thighs

14 hands

15 feet

16-18 vitals

 

It looks weird and scrambled, but high-quality targets like stomach and vitals should be pushed out and not so close to the center of the curve.  it doesn't have that pretty "head to toe" pattern that's easy to remember and visualize, but it makes better sense of the odds to me.

 

*edit: swapped lower leg and hands, so hands are slightly more likely to be hit and lower legs less so.

[Steve]

I've never really had a problem with the current chart, since it just seems to me like the center of mass areas should be getting most of the hits, and extremities less often.