Hit Location System for D&D 4e

People seem to like the idea of actual descriptive damage in their RPG's. Even though in D&D the notion of hit points is expressly an abstraction of a character's fortitude - especially since third edition - people like the notion of slicing a sword across the torso or bashing the skull of their enemies. The problem is that any system complicates the rules and slows down play, as well as increasing the hazard to the player character. Here's an option that I was working on back in third edition but it proved kind of complicated and cumbersome. Fourth edition, though, let me kind of riff on the idea and come up with a decent little system.

Every time a character is hit, roll d20 against the following table to determine location:

1 - 3 R. Leg
4 - 7 L. Leg
8 - 10 R. Arm
11 - 13 L. Arm
14 - 19 Torso
20 Head

Location does not affect damage. A hit point is still an abstract thing. It either represents an actual wound or a close call or luck or a bruise or any other thing that brings the character closer to his death. But we don't want to play with the numbers and redefine the game. But damage to a body part will have a negative impact in other terms. But first, make a saving throw. On a success, go no further. The wound is superficial, or a near miss or whatever. On a failure, the attacker assigns the target one of the following penalties based on location.

leg - -2 on initiative (possibly moving you down in the order), - 1 square movement, -1 acrobatics, -1 stealth, -1 Reflex

arm - -1 melee attack, -1 damage, -1 athletics

torso - -1 fortitude, -1 athletics,-1 endurance

head - -1 attack and damage, -4 initiative, -2 reflex, -2 will, -1 on all INT based skills, -1 on all WIS based skills

These effects are cumulative, so that 2 hits to the legs can cause -2 squares of movement; except that the penalties applied in this way cannot be more than half the original bonus. So movement for a normal character could not be reduced to below 3. Critical hits guarantee that there is a wound and double the penalty.

Each time a healing surge is spent by or on the character, one of these penalties is reduced by one.

An example of this in action:

Aust swings his sword at Corvac and scores a hit. Rolling for location, he gets a 17 and hits in the torso. Corvac rolls a 12 for his saving throw - it was a glancing blow. Corvac swings and rolls a 20 - critical hit (no need for Aust to try his save). For location Corvac rolls a 3 - right leg. He chooses for the wound to affect Aust's movement. Aust now has 4 squares of movement. Next round, Aust spends a healing surge for his second wind. He receives back hit points equal to his surge value, as well as decreasing a penalty of his choice. He chooses his only one - movement - and his movement is now 5.

As hit location systems go, this is a fairly easy one to manage. You can remember the location table and the penalties fairly easily and it doesn't add a lot of time to the game. It doesn't mitigate the value of hit points or healing surges, but it does apply pretty logical set of repercussions based on hit location.

Note: I haven't playtested this yet. The locations table is based on a modification we used for Cyberpunk 2o2o - it was just too easy to get hit in the head. I'll give this a go sometime in the near future. It's a prototype house rule, but I think it's fundamentally sound.