We are a few sessions into a new 350 point Champions campaign. My august GM (who also reads these forums ;-) has a house rule that not only are we using hit locations, but we are doing the multipliers before defenses are applied. As I suspected, this makes combats quicker and less predictable.
Here is what happened to my character, a hybrid martial artist/energy projector on Monday. I was almost at full and got hit by an enemy martial artist. The attack would have done 7 stun to me, but because he randomly hit me in location 12, the stun damage was increased by 50%, so that I was left barely conscious and stunned. Because I was stunned, my force field shut off. Then another villain hit me with a low power autofire attack (that hit five times). If my force field was working, I would have taken zero damage. Because it was down I took 100 stun and wound up in GM’s option land.
Other than general whining, I am posting this to ask what people’s experience has been using hit locations in super-heroic campaigns.
I am also thinking that this house rule unduly penalizes people with non-persistent defenses and that if the GM intends to continue using it that he might want to consider not using the stunning rules at all.
What do you y’all think?
Eusebius
PS. We are using mostly 5th edition rules, with a few from 6th.
