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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eltern" data-source="post: 2986740" data-attributes="member: 5870">Well, let's take the easiest question first:Smack them over the head with something. Two wounds = unconcious. The obvious response to this is "But that's really close to killing them!" To this I would say: If you're going to get a heavy object and smack someone over the head with it really hard, hard enough to knock them out in one blow, I would think you have a good shot of accidentally breaking their skull.A safer alternative would be to give the target a couple of "softer" punches to the face, like in boxing. Now how to ensure that you're giving light blows, and not something that will kill your target? Sounds like we need a "pulling the punch" mechanic. A simple solution is to say you can willingly take a penalty on your attack, and I see no reason that this shouldn't be true, even in standard d20. I'm sure at -some- point the D&D fighter has tried to just look like he's fighting, "without really trying". This would be taking penalties to attack.As for the other questions:As much as possible, I would like to keep the nature, number, and location of wounds similar across the boards. Sometimes this is not possible, but in a lot of cases it is.Big creatures typically have a larger Con, which means that they will shirk off small wounds, like those from itty bitty greatswords  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  However, they also have lower Dex and size penalties to hit. This is a counter balance that may be too large or too small, depending on what you want. If you want large creatures to be tougher, you want the Con to outweigh the Dex and size penalties, which is how it is now using standard d20 size increases chart. This is fine by me, personally, and fits with my campaign. Obviously someone else could just jigger the Con, dex, natural armor, and size penalties to fit with what they want.As for small creatures, the reverse is true. If want them to be harder to hit, give them bonuses to Dex and size bonuses (which standard d20 size advancing rules gives them). However, there's also Constitution. In my mind, most smaller creatures will die from wounds that would just annoy a man, so they should summarily have a lower Con. Standard d20 size advancement does this a little bit, but not as much as I might like. It depends on the animal, though, as a badger can take a lot more hell than a bunny.Most creatures have the basic head/torso/limbs setup, and so animals like dogs and cows can use the wounds arrangment as presented. This doesn't work all the time (ie. A kangaroo's lower legs are a heck of a lot sturdier than its upper legs), and for those exceptions I would finally say it's time to change the number of wounds. It's that, or alter the Con mod for individual limbs, which is something I think will be more annoying to deal with. So, each octopus leg might have just one or two wounds, a snake would have a torso with six wounds. The dragon would remain the same, except it gets two wing locations which also have 3 wound points each.Yup. If your opponent is wearing armor on their head, shoot them in the face. Actually, even if they're wearing weak armor, shoot them in the face. That, or the heart. Attacking limbs are for disabling and slowing down your opponent. Attacking the torso and head are to kill them, or maybe knock them out.I kicked around the idea of having limbs of different sizes having different defense bonuses, and this is how my thought process went. There are three main factors in how difficult it is to hit a body part: Its size, how fast it moves, and how likely another limb can get in the way. I decided very early that introducing the second factor was overly complicated for the minute differences it would bring. The third factor is incorporated in the "throw up an arm" mechanic. That left size. For this, I looked to standard d20 for what would be balanced bonuses for something that size. Looking at the size bonus/penalty guidelines for creatures and objects in D&D, the difference in size needed to get a change in AC was too big for the various body parts. At best, you could say your torso is close to a small creature and your head is a tiny creature (a +1 difference), but then the arms and legs are in between.If D&D allowed for more nuanced differences in size to affect armor class, I would be all over having different body locations have different defense bonuses. As it is, though, I didn't want to overhaul the size rules, too. However, I do understand that the head is marginally more difficult to connect with than other parts of the body, if only because people protect it more by blocking with arms/shields/weapons/etc. I think the "throw up an arm" mechanic might be sufficient for this, but maybe not. If need be, I can definitely see giving the head a +1 or +2 bonus. But since that's only absorbing 1/5 or 2/5 of a wound, I decided not to go with that, initially.</blockquote>

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