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

[hong]

The thing is, it's kinda hard to visualise a called arrow to the eye that won't also really hurt or kill the target. +10 damage doesn't really count as "really hurting" when you've got 100 hp or more.

HAW HAW! Visualise? Shot in the eye? Geddit? Geddit?


Hong "I'll be here all week" Ooi

 

[clark411]

Or, you could not read my post literaly...

Ok, to put this another way:

Do you think that a slash on the leg (21 hit points for a level 10 fighter with a decent con isn't horrible) that the other fighter made because it was the only thing open is the same as being blinded because the fighter took a risk and slashed across the eyes, even though he had less chance of making it?

That's what I mean by "doing something". Something other than just random wacking.

First, I'm must really be bored this morning to keep on this thread...

Second, absolutely not. If someone's hit in the eyes, they should be blinded if not killed. However, simply relying on AC as a gauge of getting the opportunity to hit the eyes is insufficient (even with penalties), as it ignores the second aspect of the equation in actually hurting someone (HP). As per the SRD, "Hit points represent a character's luck, health, and basic physical condition." Slashing someone for a fraction of their hitpoints can be interpreted as whittling away at their luck as well as actually contacting their skin or armor with your weapon.

The spirit AND letter of the rules states that people aren't necessarily damaged with every swing, but instead withstand and ignore the consequences of being injured based on HP.

What we do, if we try to "actually do something" beyond simply HP Damage, is remove a good chunk of what HP are.

As far as I'm concerned, the swing that connects with the eyes, or the heart, any combat stopper, is the one that finally signifies the end of a character's luck in negating the consequences of combat with pointy things. Negating that luck entirely with a One Shot One Kill variant, is a huge deal. Even just saying "He's just blind." or "His left leg is lame" is a big deal.

This guy is either just looking for an arguement, skimming, Trolling, or incapable of comprehending the written word...

And Steverooo, I'm neither skimming, trolling, or failing to comprehend you (I simply am choosing to disagree). If you believe I am trolling, please report this thread to a moderator and allow him or her to make that decision. What I'm doing is addressing two different interpretations of what "called shots" are . Read the paragraph above the one you quoted and you'll see that... heck, I thought I was doing a rather decent job of being clear with whom I'm responding to- thanks for the insults :/ You may ask for penalties for being blinded by throwing sand in the eyes with a called shot to the face, but I'm not only addressing what you're going for.

That said, consider what I was actually saying in the quote you made, and what I was saying on the whole in the last post or two. Why exactly should intent define results? If I unintentionally slash across someone's arm, cutting important stuff and just getting HP damage, should that not degrade their ability to swing? If I unintentionally pierce a lung, should that not do something?

Damage should be an all or nothing affair in terms of having penalties assigned to hits in my opinion. If you roll, hit a body part and crit, perhaps there should be some nifty effect. If you roll with the explicit intent to cause nifty effect and take a penalty, fine.. but there should be no odd double standard created by including Called Shots.

 

[S'mon]

The thing is, it's kinda hard to visualise a called arrow to the eye that won't also really hurt or kill the target. +10 damage doesn't really count as "really hurting" when you've got 100 hp or more.

I'm sure it would really hurt, but (IMO) 100 hp+ characters are supermen, able to keep on fighting despite wounds that would kill any normal person - this is why CON affects hit point totals. & blinding per se won't normally kill someone, even in the real world - it's generally thought King Harold was only wounded by that arrow in his eye, for instance. Maybe they're just temporarily blinded - eg the eyeball wasn't burst, just damaged. I do think it'd be unfair not to let a PC _try_ to blind a cyclops, and have some chance of success.

 

[Tsyr]

As per the SRD, "Hit points represent a character's luck, health, and basic physical condition." Slashing someone for a fraction of their hitpoints can be interpreted as whittling away at their luck as well as actually contacting their skin or armor with your weapon.

The spirit AND letter of the rules states that people aren't necessarily damaged with every swing, but instead withstand and ignore the consequences of being injured based on HP.

And I can't stomach this view for oh so many reasons. Why do heal spells heal your luck? Why does being extra-tough (con) make you more lucky? Why does the heal skill heal your luck? Why does massive luck-removal (Massive damage rule) kill you? Why does being burned with a flame eat your luck away instead of burning you? Why do abilities that damage you as part of their activation do take your luck away? And I can go on and on with examples of situations that must do physical damage would seem to be eating away your luck and skill if one bought into the "HP is luck and skill" arguement.

 

[LuYangShih]

Shouldn't hitpoints be more of a representative of your physical stamina, not your ability to take damage? I do not think you are actually severely wounded until you drop below 1 hitpoint. Hitpoints are how adept you are at avoiding fatal or maiming wounds, which is why the fighting characters have higher hitpoints. This also would explain why characters still operate at 100% killing capacity until they are dropped.

 

[Tsyr]

Shouldn't hitpoints be more of a representative of your physical stamina, not your ability to take damage? I do not think you are actually severely wounded until you drop below 1 hitpoint. Hitpoints are how adept you are at avoiding fatal or maiming wounds, which is why the fighting characters have higher hitpoints. This also would explain why characters still operate at 100% killing capacity until they are dropped.

Again, this doesn't parse with certain elements of the system.

For example, if I submerge you in a bath of acid that does 1 point of damage per round, how does your physical stamina help you? Yet you will still have (HP+10) rounds until you die.

 

[clark411]

I was under the impression that being submerged completely in acid deals 20d6 per round... unless that's only Lava.

Either way, any hazard that deals 1 damage with complete submersion and hence keeps someone alive for rounds and rounds reflects the weakness of the substance more than anything else. The character would be lucky it wasn't serious acid .^_^ A heroic figure would be more likely to drown in that sort of thing, holding their breath for X rounds, then they'd fail a fortitude save and be auto dropped to a dying state.

Usually though, 20d6 damage is enough to say "Luck? Piffle, take my average of 70 damage and make a massive damage save!" to most who fall in it.

That said, I have on occasion found myself asking (as a cleric) how people's luck was holding out, as well as "well, I managed to push your intestines back in" with a heal check or a Cure Minor Wounds "ping."

 

[WizarDru]

And it's arguments like this, IMHO, that lead to the fact that D&D is, by necessity, an abstract combat system. Abstract does not translate into 'simple', quite the opposite.

1. Considered apart from concrete existence: an abstract concept.
2. Not applied or practical; theoretical. See Synonyms at theoretical.
3. Difficult to understand; abstruse: abstract philosophical problems.
4. Thought of or stated without reference to a specific instance: abstract words like truth and justice.

Whether this is to your taste or not is another question entirely. Clearly, Tsyr doesn't prefer this approach, while clark411 does. The question I'm wondering about is this: what benefit does adding Called Shots add to the game? And then: Will the benefit be enough for the added complexity and potential abuses it provides?

Trying to think too hard about the specifics of D&D combat results in large numbers of potential inconsistencies that would require an ever increasing level of detail to deal with. GURPS provides greater detail in this respect, but was built from the ground up to deal with it....and there are still realism and verisimilitude issues that you could identify.

If we view hitpoints as a pure representation of damage, you come up with wonky situations. A character beats up some kobolds, and now can literally take twice as much physical abuse as before. A month later, he's taking ten times as much. This is why poisons and similar effects attack ability scores instead of hp...because a 10th level fighter isn't likely to have a relatively much higher CON than his 1st level compatriot, while their hit points will be radically different. The mention of things like acid, lava and other sources highlight this inconsistency...and nothing short of reworking the whole hp system will change it. If you prefer a wound/vitality system, that's fine...but standard D&D hps don't work that way.

Called shots sounds, to me at least, like a case of a fighter wanting to eat his cake and have it, too. He wants to be the most powerful fighter possible, but he also wants to be more specific. I think that some of those issues could be addressed quite handily by the alternate fighter classes presented in Dragon magazine. Multiclassing into rogue would get some other options, as well. The ideas listed above, such as granting +5 damage for -10 to hit? My archers would jump at the chance. When you're hitting AC 50s routinely, you can afford it...and that +5 damage would make an already powerful character virtually unstoppable. Granted, this benefits lower level characters less than higher level characters, but the idea remains.

 

[S'mon]

The ideas listed above, such as granting +5 damage for -10 to hit? My archers would jump at the chance. When you're hitting AC 50s routinely, you can afford it...and that +5 damage would make an already powerful character virtually unstoppable.

Which is why I said "with a roll of 1-10 always missing", of course.
That way it's a clearly sub-optimal choice in 99% of encounters, but there might be a time when the chance to do an extra 5 damage could make all the difference.

 

[WizarDru]

Which is why I said "with a roll of 1-10 always missing", of course.
That way it's a clearly sub-optimal choice in 99% of encounters, but there might be a time when the chance to do an extra 5 damage could make all the difference.

Which is fine, if you're comfortable with that. For myself, I wouldn't want to start inventing new non-standard mechanics in that way. It strikes me as creating a patch to cover over a big hole created with a new house-rule. That crosses the cost/benefit ratio I mentioned above, for me. That, and the fact that even with a 1-10 failing automatically, it still proves much more beneficial than you think, particulary when dealing with creatures whose DR exceeds the archer's outlay of damage. It's the interconnection of such rules additions that create a slippery slope I wouldn't want to deal with.