Called shots

How do you run "called shots" (i.e., specifying where you intend to hit your target hoping for a mechanical advantage) correctly in a traditional fantasy game?
Running Warrior, Rogue & Mage if anyone is wondering

System? Some have mechanics for it, some don't.

If the system has rules for them, I use those. If the system doesn't already have rules for called shots(or has them explicitly as optional rules, not part of the core*), it's almost certainly a bad idea to try and add them so I either don't or propose that we change systems.

*doesn't apply to GURPS where pretty much EVERYTHING is an optional rule anyway.

Depends on the effect the player is trying to achieve.

If it's just "kill him faster" sorry, you are already doing the fastest you can.

If it's something else like disabling a limb, blinding someone, etc. then you have an effect to go with.

We're using the system "Warrior, Rogue & Mage", rules-light OSR type stuff. no mechanics for called shots but would like to add, and I feel like the classic -2 to-hit doesn't cut it.

The player tells the gm what they'd like to do. The gm ponders a bit, then tells them if they can try or if succeding would have no effect at all. They discuss what kind of actions would be required for such a thing to happen, and if they reach a consensus the player character tries to follow through with the plan.
Depending on the situation, such a thing would be easier or harder to do, with varying degrees of success and effectiveness following the gm's whims

Basically you wing it and hope you both have enough common sense to not fuck too much with game balance

trying for the latter, but should it be as easy as hitting them outright?

Isn't the combat system just rolling your "warrior"?

If it's that rules light, adding called shots doesn't seem like a good idea. Assume you "warrior" well enough that your character uses the strategy that he feels is most optimal for him.

Of course not. When saying "I hit them", you character is engaging in combat and looking for any opportunity to strike their foe, be it on a leg that is slightly less armored than the other, on the wrist that's been left exposed after a lunge or maybe just a good old blow to their ribcage that, while well armored, always hurts enough to make it worth. When calling hits you are sacrificing EVERY OTHER OPPORTUNITY for the chance of hitting them where you want.
It doesn't always have to be a penalty to your attack roll, sometimes it can be "You need to move in a certain way to control your opponent, giving you trouble if they're not alone" or "They tend to keep their shield arm close to them, so you'll have to close the distance between you if you want to bypass it, making it easier for them to hit you as well"

As i said, common sense

okay cool, thanks for the advice!

-2 or -4 to-hit penalty for the called shot.

Has anyone ever seen a system that does called shots well ?

By done well, I mean players have to think about if they should do a called shot or a regular attack. Not systems where called shots are never worth using, or systems where they are so good that they are better than regular attacks any time they are an option.

GURPS.

Fallout 2.

Called shots should definitely be balanced so that they are rarely worth it, like, only if an enemy has a particular weakness of some sort.

Going the other way, when you can always say, headshot for -Y accuracy, but +X damage is just pointless math busywork to optimize damage, that you are best off assuming your character already does anyway.

Of course, that's only for HP systems.

I thought you basically always called shot in GURPS, if available.

Nah. Default/torso shots are often enough, or you can count on a lucky random hit location roll.

>Called shots should definitely be balanced so that they are rarely worth it, like, only if an enemy has a particular weakness of some sort.
They certainly shouldn't be the best option all the time(or even most of the time) unless you specialize them, but I wouldn't go THAT far. The real problem, as you say, is that all too often headshots are just a faster way of killing an enemy, if you can make them with any reliability.

I really liked the improvised action effect table from D&D 4e, and would just roll called shots into that (you just don't really need that table unless you got a really good opportunity because characters have enough unique ways to apply status effects anyway).

ORE has all attacks smoothly attacking specific hit locations anyway, and then gives players a few ways to manipulate their dice pool.

So for instance, to do a called shot what the player does is set aside one die from their dicepool and set that to the number corresponding to the hit location they want to target, then they roll the rest of their dice pool to see if they get any other dice that match it (because dubs/trips/etc are "successes") - similarly, there's magic and tilts and stuff that then allows them to say change the number of a single die in their dicepool up or down, but obviously at the cost of using up "resources" (like mana) or having other consequences (like having to make a sanity check or decreasing defensive bonuses)

>When saying "I hit them", you character is engaging in combat and looking for any opportunity to strike their foe, be it on a leg that is slightly less armored than the other, on the wrist that's been left exposed after a lunge or maybe just a good old blow to their ribcage that, while well armored, always hurts enough to make it worth
This is technically true, but the problem of involving called shots is that it raises the question of why hitting the enemy normally doesn't have these bonus effects. The answer, of course, is because the system isn't designed or balanced around them.
Dark Heresy, for example, does have a called shot system. But it also has a system to determine where you hit after every attack. So you can attack someone, determine that you hit them in the arm and, say, hurt them enough to make them drop their weapon. Or you can make a called shot and aim for their head, lessening your chance to hit but guaranteeing a hit to the head.
D&D, on the other hand, doesn't have any system for discerning where each strike lands, which means there's no mechanics for it and called shots feel out of place because the system isn't designed to incorporate specific limb damage.

Forgo the x2 on a crit for called shot bonus ie
>hit eyes for blindness arm for disarm leg for slowing stopping
Alternitavly use your full turn to gain advantage/disadvantage roll 2 die use the lower for the called shot the larger for actually hitting
>roll a 16 and a 14 if the ac is 15 you hit the target, miss the call

Man, honestly I wouldn't make those "called shots" but "status effects", so essentially "called shots" that do status effects ontop of damage would be equivalent to 4e style At-Will or Per-Battle abilities limited to certain classes e.g. the wizard should not be doing "aimed shots" but the gunslinger/sniper PC should be doing it as a spell-like-ability.

You'd then have the status effects as an early level thing with no bonus damage, and then add bonus damage or improvements in the status effect as part of their class progression.

Called shots shouldn't scale damage Any more than the class already allows. It should be about hurting more not damaging more otherwise why not use it instead of your basic attack every turn, and id leave it open for any attack making an attack roll melee or spell attack included. Make it powerful enough that players want to use it to aid in battle without just "you hit harder"

I was thinking more like how shadowrun: Hong Kong had you gain "disarm" and similar "called-shot" type effects as you put more points into hand-to-hand, so you get "leg wound" "arm wound" "disarm" "head shot" "nut shot" as class level feats for martials.

You also want to add damage to all of those because the types of characters you'd give those as class feats to are fairly DPS-y, so any choice that means not doing damage is one that essentially extends the fight for no real purpose.

>I thought you basically always called shot in GURPS, if available.

I think that's RIFTS, where called shots often allowed you to side step MDC

>penalty on your attack roll, but extra damage and/or crippling if you hit
>neck hits only decapitate if they do enough damage to kill; you can't bypass someone's HP by cutting their head off

I'm not talking about using it as a feat, im saying anyone that rolls to attack from the fighters long sword to the wizards ranged touch spell.

This. Without hit location and effect subsystem called shots are dull. Or you can rule that called shots to head, arms, legs are stun, disarm, drop special attacks respectively.

This is assuming that you believe mechanics in a book > GM's call.
You want to make a called shot? Cool, what are you trying to do with it? Alright, *involve these mechanics* and on success, you do the thing you are trying to do, within reason.

So how do we fix this?

/thread

What a bad answer. Way to make the already long as fuck battles three times longer.

You need to mechanize this shit. Should take no more than 5 seconds for both the GM and the player involved.

about as long as it takes for the GM to make it up on the fly.

I'm running 5E, and while it hasn't come up yet, I'm curious how I can work it in if the players decide they want to.

Right now I see two obvious methods:
>ask what they hit on critical, but also offer to forgo damage in exchange for a narrative effect
I'm cool with this, partly because we already do the "so what happened" thing, but I think it deprives players of control in a desperate situation, i. e. when they really need it.

>impose disadvantage or an attack if multiple are available in exchange for a narrative effect (subject to saving throw if appropriate)
This may be giving them too much control and generally trying to codify a relatively rare edge case (between D&D's reliance on HP and distinct abilities, I don't think it'll fit) and making the occasion less special and cool.