Houseruled Headshots, A Desert Eagle Should Do You Options

[Gyro the Greek S...]

Awright, I'm not advocating this over any other system or house rule or local law of the land or the Supreme Shadowrun Court Ruling, I'm just throwing this out there to get a feel for what other people think.

Anyhow, a while ago I was thinking about the called shot crazyness. Makes sense, I thought, until you make a shot to the head. If your target doesn't have a helmet or bone lacing crazyness or what have you, anything in the heavy pistol caliber, should it hit him/her in the head, will kill them. It's that simple. Nobody 'soaks' a .357 or equivilant to the head. Normally, the only soak happening is the wall behind their head, which is now soaked in bodily fluids.

To reflect this, I house ruled that called shots to the head up the damage two damage levels. I also made the difficulty an additional +1 (so, +5 modifier without Smartlink 2, +3 with) and added a -1 difficulty to dodge (tilt your head and what have you) This makes headshots as deadly as I feel they need to be as well as reflecting the difficulty of making them.

Unless he's a great dragon. But then you have bigger problems anyways.

My players have had this rule used against them as well as having used it to their advantage and they seem to like it. What do you all think?

[Kurukami]

Truth be told, the SR rules have all sorts of quirks like that.

[Gyro the Greek S...]

This is true. That's why they still get to roll body even if they do get hit with a heavy pistol in the head.
Odds are, most people won't survive eight or nine Deadly. But some will.
And if you don't, well...karma pool! ;)

[mfb]

our general houserule is to apply any and all of the three possible effects of a called shot, if the GM can be convinced that each one applies. for instance, a called shot to an unprotected arm wouldn't raise the damage level, but it might avoid armor, and will probably cause the target to drop his weapon (such effects are decided on the fly, with consideration given to what the intended effect was). a called shot to someone's eye will raise the damage level, negate armor if he doesn't have a helmet on, and blind that eye. not that the blinding part matters, usually.

[Tanka]

Sure it does, if they survive. Then they get the +TN for monocular vision.

[Kagetenshi]

I personally say that if the target didn't die, it was either a glancing shot off the skull (which can happen, and can be fairly undamaging for a shot to the head) or, more often, that the shot simply didn't hit the head regardless of what the player was trying to do. No houserule required, just interesting ways of expressing it.

~J

[Sahandrian]

People can survive massive head injuries. Here's a pretty famous incident...

September 13th, 1848. Phineas Gage, a railroad foreman was on a blasting site with his crew. He had to break up a fight a couple of times, and in doing so, he forgot to watch out for the blasting areas. He was caught in an explosion and a three-foot-long pole was blown through his head. It entered below his left eye, and passed through his brain, right through the division between the two hemispheres, and out through the top of his skull. Many doctors refused to believe it happened until they found they you stick their fingers in either end of the hole and have them touch in the middle. He lived for some time after the incident, but his personality changed entirely, becoming childish and impulsive.

[Austere Emancipa...]

There are tons of examples of people getting holes in their brain and surviving it (at least for some time). But I'd rather call that Hand of God than just plain soaking...

You could think of headshots that get soaked as hitting the sides/top of the skull at an extreme angle, and the troll's big bones deflecting them. Or you can just say that it crushed the person's jaw, or ripped off an ear, or something along those lines.

I use hit locations anyway, so I probably shouldn't comment much... Getting hit in the head is really bad news in my games. But then just getting hit is really bad news in my games in general.

[Gyro the Greek S...]

As mfb has mentioned, I also rule what makes sense: if somebody goes called shot for the arm or hand and makes it and there is sufficient penetration, then most likely the NPC or PC will have to drop their gun. This kind of thing.

[Shanshu Freeman]

There have been recorded cases where men have taken a handgun shot to the head, the bullet hit the skull, travelled around the skullcap and out the back, all without touching the grey matter.

[Quixotes Ghost]

I remember reading a Ripley's Believe It or Not that mentioned a French WWI soldier that survived a firing squad during which he recieved multiple wounds to the head with rifle-caliber bullets.

No idea how reliable Ripleys is though.

[Raygun]

[bwdemon]

Here's my personal take on the headshot... if you do enough damage to kill someone, then you may've hit them in the head. IMHO, called shots should only be used for specific non-living targets (e.g. held weapons, light fixtures, etc). If the player wants to RP calling their shot, that's fine, and I would work with it if the attack roll and damage supported the result.

[Shadow]

The biggest problem with called shots to the head (or called shots in general) is not realism, but game balance. With your called shot rules one of two things would happen in my game. Everybody would always do called shots, always. What the hell right, cause if you hit there dead. And in SR it really is easy to hit, It's just hard to damage. And the other thing is, everyone would where the most armored helmet they could find, cause all the npc's would be doing called shots as well.

[TheScamp]

[nezumi]

[easytohate]

More of a problem than headshots for me is people thinking that just because they have a high body that they can jump on a explosive. And smother it to protect the rest of the team. Anyone here ever have a troll or street sam do that? How did you or your GM handle it?

I also don't do headshots unless... someone can take 3 full turns to Aim and from surprise (sniper).
But they don't get the usual Aim bonus. They have to make a clean roll and hit. if they hit, dramatic effect. if not... Subject can return fire.

[nezumi]

Don't forget, leaping upon the grenade means you get TWICE the power of the grenade (the power is reflected back from against the ground). That normally does the trick. Also, you could say the armor wasn't designed with the idea of protecting the part of you pressed against the ground in mind (the soles of your feet are normally pretty safe in a gun fight), or that the rules in the book assume that you try to dodge at least a little from a grenade blast. As the gel in your armor is pressed up around your sides or otherwise compressed so it can't ablate, you decrease the armor rating. As you catch ALL of the shrapnel from the grenade and target it at your vulnerable belly (called shot against yourself) AND enjoy the explosive charge meant solely to send the shrapnel into the air, the power and damage level increase.

But that's just if you're feeling really mean.

Random factoid, while I couldn't find anything online about a victim who's bullet passed around his brain (not ricocheting nor 'safely' through), I did find out that a blank shot within a few feet of a person is almost as powerful as a bullet. Hrm... kinda defeats the purpose of buying blanks?

[easytohate]

Oh yea...

I handle explosives as nosoak. If you are not trying to get away. Then you do not get a soakroll. I give half body for close contact explosions that one would not have chance to escape (rolling with the blast). I.e the claymore boobytrap placed at your door. Explosives are deadly.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[easytohate]

I have always been under the impression that combat pool could not be used to soak anyway. Only could be used to dodge.

[El_Machinae]

Just remember, only a well-placed head shot will kill someone. So, you have to stage a moderate to a deadly. And soaking a 9 deadly is nearly impossible.


Think about those suicide attempts ... chances are, they're augmenting their skill with their combat pool (if they're serious). And they still fail!

[Fortune]

[Raygun]

[Tziluthi]

I remember watching something on the idiot box about a bloke who had half of his brain blown out by a .44 magnum, but he survived and his brain pretty much rewired itself after a short hiatus on life support. IIRC, he went on to college and got himself a degree, or diploma, or whatever.