Reposted from another thread:



I've made a couple of "field rulings" after giving it some thought:

1) Damage increments (3, 6, 9, etc) to the Torso provides dice pool penalties to any actions, not just "torso" actions (of which there probably aren't any).

2) Cyberlimbs don't transfer a box of Stun damage when they hit the penalty increments, they just provide dice penalties to actions involving the affected limb as it takes damage and eventually breaks. This includes cybertorso and cyberskull (eg, cyberskulls also don't transfer Stun one-to-one) -- after all, they've got to provide some benefit.

3) Generally speaking, if a piece of armor covers a section of the body, that section of the body gets the full armor rating. If it only partially covers a section, that section gets half of the armor rating (round up). Example: a lined coat (armor 9) provides 9 armor to the torso and both arms. Since the coat partially covers the legs (it's a long coat after all) the legs each get 5 armor. Armor from multiple sources doesn't stack. Other example: a guy wearing an armor vest (9 armor) and armored clothing (6 armor) has 9 armor on the torso, and 6 armor on each arm and leg.

(Armor in general needs to be re-worked for this. An armor vest, for example, should probably provide 12 armor to the torso and 0 everywhere else. Also, a few types of helmet should probably be introduced at, say, 6, 9, and 12 armor -- armored cap, helmet, and security helmet.. military-grade might be 15 or so)

4) A new class of Called Shots needs to be introduced to target specific limbs. The standard -4 penalty applies, though the headshot should probably impose a -6 penalty.

5) Physical overflow from a limb applies to the limb and then also directly to the torso (no resistance possible). In other words, if your 0 armor Body 4 leg takes 15P from a sniper round, the round cripples your leg, you take 3 Stun (from hitting 3, 6, and 9 all in one go) and your torso also gets 5P (and you get another Stun from hitting 3P on the torso). On paper this looks horrifying, but you're really only taking 4S and 5P from a 15P attack (you're just losing the use of your leg in the process). Cyberlimbs don't transfer overflow to the torso (again, they just break). If the Head takes this sort of damage, you should probably check to see if you died before you start worrying about damage transfers.

6) Explosions: ????

I've run a couple of simulations and this doesn't seem to be a big time sink. It also adds a lot of flavor to combat, and makes some weapons decidedly more useful in the hands of a very skilled or very lucky combatant (a slivergun burst to an unprotected head is pretty nasty).

The biggest downside, if this is a downside, is that only torso and head hits are really threatening with respect to Physical track incapacitation and death (though 2/3 of shots hit the torso).

I'd suggest you look into the GURPS location damage system. I've only got a little bit of experience with it, but it seems solid so far.

While I've always been interested in locational damage, I think it will add complexity and confusion to fights, even if it's not a big time sink for the normal cases. And 6 separate damage tracks are definitely going to add to confusion, especially when players go to heal that damage or have some sort of area or non-specific damage.

For example, What happens to damage from drain? Or an indirect spell? Are they applied to the torso? Somewhere else?

Other areas to account for explosions (as you've mentioned), falling damage, crash damage, fire damage (which may spread and is usually not localized), combat chemicals, and bursts (do they hit mulitple locations?).

It might also be helpful to eliminate right and left side and just have one track for arms and legs. It will reduce the number of thing to keep track of and increase the likeliness that those hits will be incapacitating.

For 2, you might want to have it strike something on the person, like their firearm, commlink, etc.

You could rearrange the distribution for a called shot, extending the range for the targeted area, something like:
Called shot head (I grouped the arms and legs together into one group here)

12-10 Head
8-9 arms
7-5 Torso
3-4 legs
2 ???

So reduce the chance to hit the torso by 2 numbers and increase the appropriate targeted area by 2 numbers. A head shot is still hard, but doable.

Alternately, eliminate called shots all together and let people to trade net hits for 1 movement on their location roll.

i.e. They have 3 net hits and they rolled a 5 for a hit on the torso. They decide to trade one of those hits to move that location number to 4 and instead have a hit on the less armored right arm. They do less damage (+2 rather than +3), but most of the time the reduction in armor will make up for that.

That would diminish the fun of writing up a system I'll probably never actually use. I make systems for fun.



Most bookkeeping hassle can be resolved with a paper doll a la Battletech. It does make the table presence of the game feel a little more wargame-y, but it's still not plumbing the depths of Rolemaster or some other ultra-detailed system.

I think adding the granularity of locations and then compressing locations into the more abstract "arms" and "legs" would reduce some of the fun of popping the ork in his left cyberarm and then blowing his right leg off with a shotgun. For the probability distribution I was going with the assumption that uncalled shots would trend toward center mass, affecting the torso most frequently, then the arms (on the same plane as the torso), then the legs, then the head.

This is similar to the Fallout VATS system, but without all the extras (like "eyes" "hands and "groin").

Two options with Drain (Stun Drain isn't an issue, so it's only for overcasting and Physical Drain):

1) Drain simply affects the Torso, since this is the thing that most closely resembles the standard damage track.

2) Drain could somewhat more unpredictably and hilariously affect a random body part by rolling on the damage table (ie, you overcast a Fireball and take 3P Drain, which causes your left leg to briefly burst into flames).

I thought about rolling to target a location and then allowing hits to be expended to move the damage. That's actually really complicated to run at the table. I settled on "if you want to target something specific, use a called shot."

Explosions and Indirect Physical Area spells

1) Explosions hit all body parts equally. Ow. But wait, there's more.

2) The victim of an explosion actually rolls his regular defense dice (-2 for the area effect).

3) Subtract the number of hits on the defense test from 6. For each remaining value, roll on the location chart (re-roll if you target the same location twice).

4) Apply damage as normal to the targeted locations.

5) If the defense test is 6 or higher, no damage is taken.

Physical Direct spells, Direct Area spells, and Indirect spells

These all target a single body part. Even the Direct Area spells (manaball, etc) -- they go after the aura but the damage converges on one location instead of spreading out or automatically seeking the torso. Roll once on the chart.

Hello magical called shots for targeting specific locations.