Something interesting that happened in a game last night...

[Mista Collins]

Better thing would talk with the guy, poin him that article (great addition though) and also show him that the system is still in some kind of abstract, or else just let him do it, no special result, say his descriptions are flavor things, and know what? Flavor is awesome!

This is how I handle called shots as a player and DM. They are purely flavor to the game. One time I was fighting a dragon from a mount with my Mounted Combat Fighter and I said "I want to drive my lance down the dragon's throat!" I made the attack roll (oddly enough it was a crit) and killed the beast. I killed the beast because of the damage, not because I did a called shot. There really was no called shot. It was just me explaining what my character was doing without and in-combat modifiers. I say keep called shots a flavor thing.

My two cents.

 

[maddman75]

Player "I want to make a called shot"
Me "So, you want to take a penalty to your attack roll to hit him somewhere that will cause more damage?"
Player "Exactly!"
Me "That feat is called 'power attack'."

 

[Darklone]

Give him a barbarian and let him use Power Attack ALWAYS. With full BAB. If he hits it will be exactly what he wants.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Player "I want to make a called shot"
Me "So, you want to take a penalty to your attack roll to hit him somewhere that will cause more damage?"
Player "Exactly!"
Me "That feat is called 'power attack'."

You allow power attack with a bow? Cool!

And you changed the feat to have a dex prereq instead of str to make it usable by a finesse fighter, who are the ones who would most want to do called shots? even better! I wanna play in your game!

Oh, you just use the standard rules, but claim it in any way emulates what most people would want to do with called shots (ranged or finnessed attacks) when it really doesn't? Man, never mind...



Kahuna burger

 

[Hypersmurf]

"I sunder his head."

Well, as long as it was a 3.5 Hydra Elven Kensai, he's good to go...

Anyway, just treat his head as an object with a hardness of 0 and hit points of 84 (or whatever the kensai's current total is).

-Hyp.

 

[Tortoise]

My big problem with the whole called shot thing is this ... aren't you always trying to get in the best possible shot during combat? If not then why are you goofing off when your life is at stake?

Seems to me that the whole called shot thing is assumed in the system and that is where criticals come into play ... you've managed to land a more damaging blow to a vital and/or vulnerable area by getting one of your shots through the defenses and into/on some location you were aiming for. Sure it may not be a kill shot, but the enemy isn't just sanding there letting you hit where you want.

 

[Czhorat]

The other problem with called shots is that they'd cut both ways. "I sunder his head" is great fun; "He sunders your head" could be quite discouraging. The hitpoint system allows insane levels of heroic by abstracting damage to the point that a character doesn't even really seem hurt until he's almost dead and by making damage easy to fix. Allowing called shots could be interesting, but would make the tone of combat much grittier and grimmer. I prefer to use sunder for called shots to objects and just avoid the issue with called shots to people.

 

[Nifelhein]

Hmmm...

In other words, D&D combat is damn complex -- it is not "simple & abstract" unless, like my own group, you ignore 75% of the rules of combat and never haul out a battleboard.

The only matters that are "simple & abstract" are armour and hit points.

Combat is abstract because it takes in consideration that duing a round there are many parries, defenses and other fighting stuff, all that and with HP and AC makes for a good abstraction, in the sense of unreal or just uncaring...

Complex it is, a hell lot!

Because then every fighter would take a level of Sorcerer in order to get True Strike!A Bladesinger that could cast a quickened True Strike once a turn and then make a called shot to the head would be a true terror to face.

Hmm... neve thought of it that way... very good point... it worke very well in 2nd edition, but there were no feats there and combat options were very limited...

My big problem with the whole called shot thing is this ... aren't you always trying to get in the best possible shot during combat? If not then why are you goofing off when your life is at stake?

Seems to me that the whole called shot thing is assumed in the system and that is where criticals come into play ... you've managed to land a more damaging blow to a vital and/or vulnerable area by getting one of your shots through the defenses and into/on some location you were aiming for. Sure it may not be a kill shot, but the enemy isn't just sanding there letting you hit where you want.

You are right, right again and ends in a total right way!

I do think that and it is well expressed on the link posted above by you, that is how I am seeing it now, and gonna use this argumetns whenever someone comes with that "What do ya mean there is no Called Shot??"

 

[Norfleet]

Hey, I like the entire head-sundering thing. I used to have an entire set of homebrew rules for various specific goodies like that: Whenever a specific bodypart was struck, the table of special side effects got consulted: It was entirely possible for a character to thus be decapitated with most of his hitpoints remaining. In this case, he suffered continuing damage from blood loss and asphyxiation, although he was still "alive". Being a decapitated head or a headless body, however, severely limits one's course of action. The body, lacking a head to tell it what to do, is limited to reflexive flopping about, and the head, lacking a body to do anything with, is largely limited to making goofy expressions at people.

On the off chance that you manage to get your head taped back on and healed before you expired, you survived! Yippee! Who says it's not heroic? It results in a heroic struggle as the rest of your party attempts to retake your head and attach it to your body before you die.

Sticking to raw hitpoints only makes battles really kind of dry. You can attach all the florid descriptions you want to it, but when the results stop matching up with the descriptions, it doesn't work. Besides, a mace through the noggin is just one of those once-in-a-lifetime, mindblowing experiences.

 

[S'mon]

Just a thought - it wouldn't be game-breaking to let someone make a called shot to head at -10 to hit, doing +5 damage on a success. Would it? You could always rule that the called shot always misses on a 1-10 and doesn't automatically hit on a 20. That way it's a sub-optimal combat choice (which it _should_ be, unless you're using a sniper rifle on an unaware target) but does have an in-game effect.