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Wounded Ronin
post May 17 2006, 03:14 AM
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Since I'm away from the gaming table for a couple of years I'm using this time to brainstorm and think about how to come back later and run SR3 better.

One idea that I'm toying with is hit locations. In my experience as a GM a lot of times players would want to "shoot him in the leg", or "headshot him", and then there was always a little bit of disgruntlement about how Called Shots technically could EITHER bypass armor OR raise the damage level by one. (So that there isn't really a genuine headshot per se.)

Perhaps introducing hit locations would be kind of flavorful and a bit more intuitive. In most cases this would mean that certain body parts such as the head would be unprotected by socially acceptable armor but on the other hand you wouldn't ever have Fallout-esque bizareness of a shot to the torso magically bypassing armor. The biggest problem of course would be trying to keep the mechanic simple and easy so as to not make combat take too long or get a lot more complicated.

Now, from a perspective of completeness and realism, I think the game Riddle of Steel has the *best* hit location system. The combat engine seems pretty realistic as do the wound effects and there's a great deal of detail. There's even different tables for male and female groin hits. With the male groin hits horizontal stabs or blows are more devastating than with the female groin but the female groin suffers more with vertical stabs or blows. Seriously. That's a lot of detail.

Obviously that would be too much for Shadowrun and it would be a poor patch on the SR combat engine. But how about this? Every time someone is hit they are randomly hit either in the legs, arms, head, or torso. Torso hits are the most probable. The condition monitor fills up as normal (complete with damage scaling) to represent blood loss and shock; perhaps an S wound inflicted to the leg represents a worse bleeder than an S wound to the torso does in the abstract. If someone is shot in the arm for a D wound it means something like their arm is ripped off and the shock makes them fall dazed and incapacitated to the ground. Maybe shots to the head would get a damage level upgrade.

The only difference that this would make over normal shadowrun is that you'd have a certain chance of hitting an unarmored part of the body, such as the head. Called Shots would no longer explicitly either bypass armor or raise the damage level but would isntead enable you to hit the specific body part you wanted. So you could aim for the legs on a guy wearing a vest to bypass his armor, or you could make a called shot to the head and get both an armor bypass and a damage upgrade if the target wasn't wearing a helmet.

Perhaps also if someone took a D wound to a limb and failed the organ loss roll he could just "automatically" lose that limb rather than, say, an eye, just for consistiency.

What do you think? Too much detail, not enough payoff? Or do you think it would be a relatively easy way to make things more dramatic and make injuries more imagineable?
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Posts in this topic
- Wounded Ronin   Casual brainstorming about hit locations   May 17 2006, 03:14 AM
- - mfb   i can only scream and cover my horrified face with...   May 17 2006, 03:49 AM
- - Arethusa   I can only scream and cover my horrified face with...   May 17 2006, 08:02 AM
- - L.D   I tried introducing hit location many years ago an...   May 17 2006, 08:52 AM
- - nezumi   Remember, you can do this, but you will have to pr...   May 17 2006, 01:33 PM
- - Kagetenshi   *Screams, covers horrified face* If there's o...   May 17 2006, 02:22 PM
- - Austere Emancipator   QUOTE (nezumi) Remember, you can do this, but you ...   May 17 2006, 02:54 PM
- - Shrike30   I didn't really have a problem with the way ...   May 17 2006, 06:45 PM
- - nezumi   QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) QUOTE (nezumi) Remembe...   May 17 2006, 06:57 PM
- - mfb   i'm not against hit locations per se. i think ...   May 17 2006, 07:28 PM
- - Austere Emancipator   QUOTE (nezumi) Well... I didn't say it would b...   May 17 2006, 08:26 PM
- - Shrike30   QUOTE (Austere Emancipator) I should've just s...   May 17 2006, 08:57 PM
- - Austere Emancipator   With only a few separate pieces of armor (even inc...   May 17 2006, 09:13 PM
- - Kagetenshi   QUOTE (nezumi) Hey, that was pretty neat. So what...   May 17 2006, 09:32 PM
- - Shrike30   If you generalize it out down to the "arm, le...   May 17 2006, 09:37 PM
- - Kagetenshi   The fact that the person in question dies is irrel...   May 17 2006, 09:43 PM
- - Unrest   This is the old "too much realism" debat...   May 17 2006, 09:45 PM
- - Shrike30   A system my brother put together let you exchange ...   May 17 2006, 09:56 PM
- - Kagetenshi   But it still makes no sense. Why do you suddenly h...   May 17 2006, 10:02 PM
- - Voran   GURPs had something like this right? (It's bee...   May 17 2006, 10:05 PM
- - Austere Emancipator   QUOTE (Voran)When it comes to hit locations, I fin...   May 17 2006, 10:12 PM
- - Shrike30   QUOTE (Kagetenshi) But it still makes no sense. Wh...   May 17 2006, 11:40 PM
- - ChuckRozool   QUOTE (Shrike30) Shooting someone in the head isn...   May 17 2006, 11:51 PM
- - Wounded Ronin   I've read through this thread and thought some...   May 18 2006, 11:05 PM
- - jklst14   I've given up on hit locations but when I play...   May 18 2006, 11:19 PM
- - Kagetenshi   QUOTE (Shrike30 @ May 17 2006, 06:40 PM) Uh, ...   May 18 2006, 11:45 PM
- - ChuckRozool   What if you just used the battletech hit location ...   May 19 2006, 04:56 AM


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