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
)