Should you be able to cut a beholder's eyestalks off?

[ExploderWizard]

If you can make a called shot to cut off a beholder's eyestalk, why can't you make a called shot to cut off someone's head? Or hand, etc.

That's the problem with this, and I don't see any way to reconcile the two scenarios.

Yep. As it stands, powerful magic such as a sword of sharpness or a vorpal weapon is needed to cause specific injury. Of what value are those items if anyone can just specific target with a called shot.

In general, called shots work at cross purposes to the abstract HP system. If you want hit locations and specific wounds as a regular feature of combat there are systems designed to handle it.

 

[Warbringer]

The heart of this was the comment by [MENTION=6690511]GX.Sigma[/MENTION]: do you cut of its heads to slow it down, or attack the body and kill it faster.

A simple rule would be when you do damage in a swing that exceeds a set number (threshold), you can either do that damage in hit points or have a called shot for an effect ; alternatively, if you do enough damage in a single attack, the target makes a Fort save to avoid an effect.

In my game this target is called "threshold" and is 25% of hit points. The rules also apply when a monster or hero passes through bloody and reaching 0 hit points.

The effects in general are slow, blind, sicken, sunder, penalty (disadvantage in next language), suppress special attack, and a couple of others. Simply add to certain monsters special threshold rules, if you want, but no options are instant kill (thats what hit points are for).

For the characters, I basically have a wound system that is a damage track that essentially gives the character a complication when "real" damage is taken.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The heart of this was the comment by @GX.Sigma: do you cut of its heads to slow it down, or attack the body and kill it faster.

A simple rule would be when you do damage in a swing that exceeds a set number (threshold), you can either do that damage in hit points or have a called shot for an effect ; alternatively, if you do enough damage in a single attack, the target makes a Fort save to avoid an effect.

In my game this target is called "threshold" and is 25% of hit points. The rules also apply when a monster or hero passes through bloody and reaching 0 hit points.

The effects in general are slow, blind, sicken, sunder, penalty (disadvantage in next language), suppress special attack, and a couple of others. Simply add to certain monsters special threshold rules, if you want, but no options are instant kill (thats what hit points are for).

For the characters, I basically have a wound system that is a damage track that essentially gives the character a complication when "real" damage is taken.

This makes a lot of sense in the context of D&D and hit points. Do enough damage on an attack, and you get to choose an additional effect. Then certain monsters can have special critical effects.

It plays well with the critical hit rules as well, because a crit increases the amount of damage you do, increasing the chance that you'll get a special effect.

Adding to that, a called shot could be a special attack where you get extra damage dice, but you don't do actual hit point damage. All you're doing is rolling for a chance at the special effect.

 

[Will Doyle]

I'd like the rules to support a variety of attacks without needing feats. If it's something I could reasonably try to do, there should be a rules framework of some sort to support it - even if it's a broad catch-all "stunt" rule. It sucks being told you can't do something because you don't have the feat.

Things I most often come across (especially with new players):

"I want to trip it over"
"I want to stand here and stop anybody getting past"
"I want to take out it's weapon/it's eye ray/whatever"
"I want to climb on top of it"
"I want to push it over the ledge"

Personally, I'd like to see three stunts in D&D Next:

1) The "Knock Prone" move expanded into a generic "forced movement" option that lets you bull-rush or trip.
2) A called-shot attack that allows you to forgo some or all damage to disarm an opponent or temporarily disable one of a monster's attacks.
3) The grapple rule expanded to allow climbing on top of giant enemies, and grapples as opportunity attacks.

 

[Slippery_Chicken]

A general called shot rule could be framed pretty harmlessly as "Declare your shot, the enemy can choose to either accept the special effect or take normal HP damage." That means it's not very useful unless you're trying to make a point and means that normal attacks are just called shots on the vitals.

When someone hacks into your wrist with a machete, do you get to choose whether to lose that hand or not?

 

[Kinak]

When someone hacks into your wrist with a machete, do you get to choose whether to lose that hand or not?

Sure, if you're not helpless. I'd generally advise against letting people chop your hands off if you can help it, but sometimes you run out of options (or HP).

I'm just suggesting handling it the same way as chopping someone's head off. A PC can try to cut her enemy's head off all day, but it won't work until the enemy lets her for whatever reason or the "called shot" deals enough damage to reduce the enemy to "dead."

Looking at it from the other direction, if a PC hacks off someone's hand or puts out their eyes, she could have killed them just as easily. That seems reasonable enough to me.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Slippery_Chicken]

Sure, if you're not helpless. I'd generally advise against letting people chop your hands off if you can help it, but sometimes you run out of options (or HP).

I'm talking about real life. When an actual piece of shrapnel flies at your arm faster than you can perceive it, do you get to choose whether to lose your arm or not? Of course not, and that illustrates why letting the player make that decision in-game is ridiculous.

 

[Argyle King]

I pretty much subscribe to the same philosophy: your character is always trying to hit a vital area, so it doesn't really make sense to have called shots in the game mechanics.

On the other hand, for a monster like the Hydra, it's a legitimate in-character choice. Do you cut off the heads to slow it down, or attack the body to kill it faster? In situations like that (and with the beholder), I think it makes sense to be able to call your shots.

The question is, is the battle so chaotic that you don't have the luxury of choice? In old D&D, there was the idea that you can't choose which enemy you attack, because you're fighting all of them at once, and you can't control which one lets their guard down at the right moment for you to strike. So I think it depends on the system. For AD&D, random hit locations make sense. For D&D Next, I think the player having the option makes sense.

In the context of D&D (abstract HP, passive defenses, and various other things) it may not make sense to have called shots, but I do think the concept makes sense. There are plenty of reasons why I'd want to target a specific body part. It could be that I don't want to kill someone, but need to eliminate their ability to kill me so that I can capture them. On the other end of the spectrum, it may be that I very much do want to kill them, but their body is heavily armored. For example, maybe they're wearing body armor, so I want to go for the head. Things like the Mozambique Drill exist for a reason.

 

[RangerWickett]

If you can make a called shot to cut off a beholder's eyestalk, why can't you make a called shot to cut off someone's head? Or hand, etc.

That's the problem with this, and I don't see any way to reconcile the two scenarios.

My logic goes like this:

"We're fighting. Hit him! Hit him wherever you can! Ha, he let his guard down a bit and I knicked his shoulder! Take 4 damage!

"I attack again! He's guarding himself pretty well, but at least I can get in a sideways sword bash into his helmet to jostle him. Take 6 damage!

"You know what? I bet if I put my mind to it, I could cut his damned hand off! I try to draw him into a situation where he leaves his wrist undefended. This is hard, so I take a -4 penalty, but ha! It worked! Dammit, I only did 7 damage. That probably wasn't worth the risk. But if I'd rolled higher, he'd have no hand!"


Okay, maybe instead of a flat -4 to get anything, there'd be a set of targets. Hitting a leg is easier than an arm because you can move the arm faster, so perhaps you just take -2 to aim for a leg. Take -4 for an arm or the torso. Take -6 for the head because people instinctively protect their heads. Take -8 for the neck.

But for different critters it'd be easier. Hydras are all neck, so it's -2 for the legs, -4 for neck, -6 for head.

Beholders? -2 for the central eye (but it can close it and get a higher AC or something), -4 for the eyestalks (and if you hit, determine which one randomly), -6 for a specific eyestalk.

 

[pneumatik]

Is there a reason for enemies to not use this against PCs? I worry that smart enemies would try to hack limbs off at levels well before PCs have access to magic to heal those injuries.

More generally DnD bounds player freedom in some specific ways but not in others. It's heavily bounded at the individual level in combat. There's a set list of options that a player can choose from that generally result in status effects and/hp damage. The system is designed to with those constraints in mind. Winning a fight is about the party coming up with the best overall strategy for doing sufficient HP damage. At the party level during combat players are relatively unconstrained and ingenuity is encouraged and rewarded. Not so at the individual level. Adding that flexibility at the individual level would require a fair amount of new rules.