Hit Location

[Hand of Evil]

I would love to see something like this in more games. Burning Wheel is close with the Fight mechanic. If the attacker succeeds enough, he can declare where to strike. The defender can also declare what is open ("My legs are unguarded") which determines where the strike is going normally, then the attacker can move for the blow. It even allows piecemeal armor with real effect.

Again, I think this is a mechanic / rule system, I am sure you could come up with a descriptive system using called shots and two card decks: example would be call your shot, roll to hit, misses are pulled from the blue deck, hits from the red deck. You hit and from the deck a list of effects for each hit location. Head = lose an eye, core = stomach death in X hours, Leg = knee blown, no movement. From the miss deck things like, you over extend, opponent has increase attack to called shot DISARM...

You just have to make sure of balance and that it does not slow down the flow of the game.

 

[Janx]

I think one of the additional challenges is that hit locations tend to increase the severity and lethality of injuries, as compared to the generic and simplistic HP system.

If you have 20 HP, and I hit you for 8 damage with my longsword, you're hurt, but keep fighting.

If I did the same hit, and roll a location and get Leg, knee blown, no movement, you are more functionally screwed.

calling body parts always leads to more traumatic, less recoverable injuries that should have long term and lasting impact on a character. Making the job of adventurer much more dangerous and less prone to excitement.

A fight might be cool if these body location effects were handled as crits (roll on the body part table for additional effect), but having every hit include a body location side effect would be excessively traumatic on the adventurer (who, like critical fumbles, stands to face more of them in his lifetime than the typical enemy monster/NPC).