Topic: Attacking specific parts of the body

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

Actually, imobilizing someone is more akin to wrestling than subdual.

As for called shots, several years of medieval fencing told me that you strike where you can, not where you plan to. From there, I decided never to design a rule for called shots.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

Anyway, if you just want to catch your enemy, isn't that what subdual attacks/crits are for?

   *Nodding in agreement*

Yes. I quite agree too. However IIRC that requires another skill, not just trying to hit the enemy in the leg with a normal blow. Personally, I let the players choose to use the subdual crits without a skill using thier normal weapon skill but at -20. Like you I can't see the point in using a different rule/skill for every concievable situation that could be covered by something that already exists.

I also agree that ignoring criticals for everywhere else *but* where the attacker is aiming for works as well, but does preclude the effect that the defender is making defensive attempts whilst fighting, and a strike elsewhere is likely to happen and if it does may still cause unintentional critical damage to another location.

The suggestion I made does not increase the chance of automatic kills, rather than increases the percentage chance that a specified area is hit purely with regard to the criticals discription. This does not increase the magnitude of the injury caused by the critical, but changes it to a pre-specified location rather than that of the one in the critical discription. Any advantage to be gained by aiming to an unarmoured area is actually already generated by the table results themselves.

e.g. Some critical results differencate damage caused when greaves/helmet are worn. Its ONLY in those occasions where any real difference may occur in the critcal result based upon the location of the hit.

If a player notices that the opponent isn't wearing greaves or a helmet is wishes to take advantage of that fact, then the table already provides that information. It's up to the GM to interpret the results of the critical based on the intention of the player.

Let's say the Opponent wears greaves, but no helmet: the critical discription is "Strike to the Leg" and specified with leg greaves +5h, parry 3, -10 injury. (without leg greaves, +3 hits, stun/no parry, -25 injury.

with a hit to the head that would simply be changed to "Strike to the Head" and "with helmet +5h, parry 3, -10 injury. (without Helmet, +3 hits, stun/no parry, -25 injury.)".

[GrumpyOldFart]

As for called shots, several years of medieval fencing told me that you strike where you can, not where you plan to.

Exactly. Where you hit isn't solely up to you. If you got the shot you planned on, somehow or another you suckered your opponent into giving you the opening for it. Which is not to say that it can't be done, only that the skill of doing it is based at least as firmly in psychology as in weapon technique.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

As for called shots, several years of medieval fencing told me that you strike where you can, not where you plan to.

Exactly. Where you hit isn't solely up to you. If you got the shot you planned on, somehow or another you suckered your opponent into giving you the opening for it. Which is not to say that it can't be done, only that the skill of doing it is based at least as firmly in psychology as in weapon technique.

Right. You can do this quite easily with weekend warriors, but any man with reasonable skill will be far more of a problem. I don’t think the RM combat system as is can mirror this, and I am not sure it is even interesting to mirror the dynamics of actual fighting. However, there is certainly a way to make things more diverse with wrestling, disarming, swashbuckling and such skills.

[GrumpyOldFart]

I don’t think the RM combat system as is can mirror this, and I am not sure it is even interesting to mirror the dynamics of actual fighting.

I don't know if it can or not, but if it attempts to I think it needs to be a skill vs. skill layout based on how the fighter thinks rather than how he moves, for the above reason. Somehow you have to sucker him into giving you that shot.

Making it skill vs. skill means you can make it so that a low level spellcaster, being the thinker type, may do better than a low level fighter, but the fighter will quickly gain skill in it where the caster will not. Thus if you (you=generic med-high level fighter type) close to melee, you can probably call shots on the casters and the newbies who don't know anything, but not on the experienced fighters. And you're in for a rude surprise if there's a really expert fighter in the bunch, as he'll start calling shots on you, because you don't have enough skill to stop him.

[rdanhenry]

Anyway, if you just want to catch your enemy, isn't that what subdual attacks/crits are for?

   *Nodding in agreement*

Yes. I quite agree too. However IIRC that requires another skill, not just trying to hit the enemy in the leg with a normal blow. Personally, I let the players choose to use the subdual crits without a skill using thier normal weapon skill but at -20. Like you I can't see the point in using a different rule/skill for every concievable situation that could be covered by something that already exists.

The more you take away the combat skills and just turn it into OB with a penalty, the more you make the Fighter irrelevant at higher levels. Everyone ends up with OB, but the combat specialist can augment that with flexibility in combat.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

I don’t think the RM combat system as is can mirror this, and I am not sure it is even interesting to mirror the dynamics of actual fighting.

I don't know if it can or not, but if it attempts to I think it needs to be a skill vs. skill layout based on how the fighter thinks rather than how he moves, for the above reason. Somehow you have to sucker him into giving you that shot.

Well, to be honest, it has more to do with body awareness and the ability to feel pressure through the weapon (what we call « sentiment du fer Â» (iron’s feeling)) than thought. When blades move at more than 200 km/h, you don’t think, you react. And the less you think, the better you react. You just spend countless hours training and learning how to fight in order to be effective. It IS a matter of skill far more than thought.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

RDHENRY: That's fine if that sort of skill is used to augment that sort of attempt, rather than rule that the skill replaces the OB generated by the weapon skill. I'm not saying that those sort of skills can't exist, rather than that there should be an option to attempt them without a specific skill. 

Also, using a "subdue" skill to allow anyone to attempt to subdue (or state a preferance to favour an area of the target to concentrate on in melee), and only that skill, costs a lot in DP, to get anyway near the OB to effectively do anything with it.

Whereas, if the skill is used as a SM performed to "enhance" the original ob by specifically negating all or part of a penalty applied to change a normal attack to a different form makes more sense to me.. this way it can apply to all attacks made with any weapon the character uses without imposing further restrictions on the skill development.

The "irrelevancy" of the Fighter of a fighter at high levels isn't going to be helped by having to spend a heap of additional DP to achieve the ability to use a single tactic that is rarely used.. the fighter should be able to attempt a lot more with his weapon skill than simply just hit things and parry. The trick is balancing the penalties for attempting them against the reward.

Allowing this sort of approach favours the arms classes, because thier OB will be higher and cheaper to develop to start with, other classes simply won't have the DP to develop the weapons oB to the same degree.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Well, to be honest, it has more to do with body awareness and the ability to feel pressure through the weapon (what we call « sentiment du fer » (iron’s feeling)) than thought. When blades move at more than 200 km/h, you don’t think, you react. And the less you think, the better you react.

True, if you are thinking about what you are doing you are far too slow, and you're meat on the table, you're a corpse that just hasn't stopped moving yet. But you can't say that close quarters tactics doesn't play a part, and a big one. A lot of the purpose of training your body to the point of "muscle memory" is to free your mind to devote attention to situational awareness and tactics. Something as simple as moving no more than necessary, so that 3 minutes from now he's tired and you aren't. So far as I can tell (not being one myself), in the really expert fighters the observational skills are honed to the point where within 3 minutes they'll know precisely how to sucker you into giving them the shot they want, as they'll have figured out nearly all of your strengths and weaknesses by then.

[pastaav]

The problem with called shots is that the defender would need to be pretty zombie like to not make a called parry. If the wizard is using the wand of ultimate destruction to great effect he knows the enemy would love to make him unable to use the wand. Why should he not be allowed to make a called parry to cancel the effect of the called shot? Introducing called shots break the abstraction of RM combat and you get into eternal discussions about if the defender understand the danger or not.

As for the matter of attacking somebody without wanting to kill him the combat system include the rule that you can limit the degree of the critical you score. It is not perfect since you can always be unlucky, but this allows the attacker to be careful with his attacks and reduce the likelihood he get an instant death result.

If the enemy does not know about the weakness, a zombie, character wearing a cursed item or some kind of mindless construct I allow the players succeed with a "called shot" towards the weak point if they get a critical result that is high enough (your critical will affect the cursed bracelet if you get a critical and the critical roll is higher than 75), but that require the defender to be really unaware of the weakness.

[GrumpyOldFart]

The problem with called shots is that the defender would need to be pretty zombie like to not make a called parry.

Exactly. In one form or another, it's a skill vs. skill. If the skill of getting the defender to leave the spot open that you want is the same as the defender's skill of not going for it, the one with the higher skill gets to adjust the result to his advantage.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

However, in applying any sort of penalty to the "called shot" attempt, you are already effectively giving the defender a significant advantage since thier parry applies to all strikes regardless of the object of the attackers attention. I suspect that it is harder to effectively parry against some areas of the body than others.. and a lot of that is dependent upon what the two combatants are armed with.

So we've done the subject of what the difficulties might be. But not exactly what the advantages are of making a called shot are in the first place and why players might be desperate to use them. This is what I believe is actually what concerns a lot of people here.

Would you define the result of the called shot an enhanced chance at causing instant death/incapacitation or simply a change in the wording of the critical discription (as I would rule). The two are not the same from a point of play balance.



 

[GrumpyOldFart]

A fist sized chunk carved out of the face is quite a different hardship from a fist sized chunk carved out of the thigh.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

A fist sized chunk carved out of the face is quite a different hardship from a fist sized chunk carved out of the thigh.

 

Yes, but if the magnitude of the result on the critical tables isn't changed, where you hit doesn't matter. Penalties are fairly generic... i.e. a -20 penalty affects everything regardless of where you hit. It's the higher results that may cause problems, and in those cases I'd say that penalty applied wieghs the benifit. A Leg being severed is generally as fatal as a hit on the head.

[Vector Z]

Why should he not be allowed to make a called parry to cancel the effect of the called shot?

An excellent point, one which I wish I'd come up with a long time ago

So just to expand on that a bit, what do you get when a called shot meets a called parry? To me, it seems like ordinary combat! The attacker goes for a vital spot, the defender notices/anticipates this and defends appropriately. To me, trying to call everything is just unnecessarily trying to pry open the black box that is a combat round.

Yeah the more I think about it, the more I think the easiest, fairest, most balanced way to do called shots, is by merely omitting criticals from non-called areas. A few examples to illustrate:

If the intent of the called shot is to quickly dispatch an opponent, is this not the same objective as ordinary combat? So if they can't get that head shot, wouldn't it be smart to take whatever they can get to weaken their opponent? I would think skilled combatants would realize this and take appropriate action. An unskilled combatant might not realize this and stay fixated on their initial target area, thus reducing their effectiveness. It's all in the black box at this point, because this is really just ordinary combat.

The other example is where the attacker actually does not want to kill, but maybe really wants to hit an arm or a leg to slow the target down or whatever. In this situation it would make sense to merely omit crits from non-targetted areas, as the attacker is "being careful".

I don't need to tell you that this won't work for every situation, but I think it's a good rule of thumb. And besides, it's worth it to note that the characters, who are fighting on a regular basis, might know a little more about combat and the value of called shots than their players. I would leave it to the experts and allow them to determine their approach (i.e. roll dice and add skill )

[Grinnen Baeritt]

I'd rather have a rule that allows for focusing attacks.... which ends in an occasional change in critical discription rather than a complete negation of possibility.

I agree that RM combat is an abstract, in that during a round a lot of things can happen, and that includes doing damage in an area that the combatant wasn't expecting to hit (probably because the defender moved to parry an area he thinks is weak). So completely ignoring critical results of the areas not targetted is perhaps a little too simple and unrealistic.

Part of the fun of RM is the randomness and variety of combat and the detail of the effects thereof. I think that, for the most part, called shots or focussed attacks are just an option, one that the players make and that the GM interprets, that need only to be included on the rarest of occasions.

[Vector Z]

I'd rather have a rule that allows for focusing attacks....

Then don't forget to also make a rule for focusing defense

So completely ignoring critical results of the areas not targetted is perhaps a little too simple and unrealistic.

I think we just might not see eye-to-eye on this one. To me, it is realistic that if the attacker is hell-bent on hitting an arm, excluding non-arm results makes a lot more sense than coming up with an arbitrary penalty to apply, then moving the crit around or changing it's verbage. If they're not hell-bent on hitting an arm, then it's ordinary combat, and they'll make the best hit they can.

Part of the fun of RM is the randomness and variety of combat and the detail of the effects thereof. I think that, for the most part, called shots or focussed attacks are just an option, one that the players make and that the GM interprets, that need only to be included on the rarest of occasions.

Agreed

[Grinnen Baeritt]

The rule for focused defense already exists... it's called parrying. .

You want to focus your defense you devote more OB to parrying. Basically it's exactly the same as suffering a penalty to OB when making a called shot, except the defender is committing OB to defense rather than offence. (Or in the case of called shots, taking a penalty to increase the chances of hitting a specific area).

Though since parrying is simply OB devoted to defense, and it doesn't have to specify certain locations, it is already applied evenly across the board without penalty regardless of the area of the body under attack. (Though they do have to specifiy a split when facing multiple opponents).

I'd be quite happy for the defending character to make a combat awareness SM to counter.. perhaps doubling the penalty applied to the attacker.

[Vector Z]

The rule for focused defense already exists... it's called parrying. .

That's not focused, just increased, and that's ordinary combat

A focused defense would be more like the defender saying "I want to especially protect my arm from attacks", or head, or whatever, and then having a separate system for addressing that particular situation.

I'd be quite happy for the defending character to make a combat awareness SM to counter.. perhaps doubling the penalty applied to the attacker.

I think a Combat Awareness SM is a respectable approach to handling any unusual combat situations

[RandalThor]

This situation is exactly why I think that the whole "as skill to cover everything" approach doesn't work in games: we won't stop adding more and more just to do one thing. It just becomes rolls stacked on rolls stacked on rolls until it takes a dozen rolls to accomplish a task; taking way too long to accomplish anything.

This is why I prefer to go with a more free-form approach than uber-detailed rules and skills.