[TheOneRonin]

Originally Posted by Toptomcat

And puts them at -4 to hit you in the next turn from shock. We're already assuming that the knife-armed assailant is outmatched in skill, so this tanks their skill from 'has trouble hitting you' to 'has no real chance of hitting you'. This gives you another turn to hit them at substantially reduced risk.

True. That shock penalty will really ruin the Bad Guy's day.

If you get a weapon-hand, weapon-arm, or leg hit, you don't care about the HT roll any more: the fight's done. If you roll a neck hit, average damage puts your opponent at zero HP, and they must now roll HT vs. both knockdown/stun and, in every subsequent turn, unconciousness. If you get a nonweapon arm hit it's pretty much the same as a torso hit, so you aren't any worse off from the default.

If you get a nonweapon hand hit...then, yes, your gamble has failed and you're slightly worse off than if you'd just hit them in the torso for no penalty. While they still have to roll vs. HT for knockdown/stun, their shock penalty will be -3 rather than -4, since you can inflict at most 3 HP of damage to someone with 10 HP to cripple the hand.

This is the worst case, and it happens 2.3% of the time.

So 62% chance of a better-than-torso/fight-ending shot, 35.7% chance of a torso-equivalent/nearly fight-ending shot, and 2.3% of a worse than torso-equivalent/possibly fight-ending shot on a hit, compared to a 100% chance of a better-than-torso/fight-ending shot for the TA to the leg. On a hit.

I'm not sure if this is in any of the books, but if the bad guy is facing in such a manner where he cannot parry your kick with his knife, then I wouldn't let you hit his weapon hand, weapon arm, or right leg, whether targeted deliberately or rolled randomly. I'm not sure how that will screw up the distribution, but those targets should be out of play.

And that probably favors rolling randomly even more. It's just tough for me to visualize throwing a punch or a kick at a random target, but I suppose that is just real life intruding. You need a LOT of narrative grace (or a lot of suspension of disbelief) to explain how a front-snap kick or an uppercut hits an opponent's foot.

Thing is, an assailant with Knife 10-14 will have a retreating parry right in the middle of the bell curve- the 9-11 range. This is where a single point of Deceptive Attack makes a fairly sizable difference in parry rates.

The Knife-12 guy actually has a pretty lousy chance to parry a kick. Base Parry is 8 (Knives are -1 Parry), or 9 if he retreats. If you are in his side hex, then he is at 6 (7 retreating), or whatever his Brawling/Boxing/Karate parry is, -2 more. He'll have to use his unarmed Parry if you are on the side that doesn't have the knife.

I think at that point, the -1 to parry from DA will make a difference about 5% of the time.

I suppose I can see why someone would make your gamble, trading a modestly higher chance to end a single fight-ending hit for a rather substantial increase in the chance of being parried. But the shock penalties for even a lesser hit will be really significant to a low-skilled combatant, and getting an unarmed attack parried with a blade is dangerous.

I get it, it's just hard to wrap my head around.

Do a lot of posters on these forums actually choose to roll for random hit location for melee attacks?

For ranged weapons it makes a lot more sense to me. But melee attacks? Not so much.