Re: Hit Location Penalties
Hands are assumed to be out in front, fighting. If you sit on them, stick them in pockets, etc., they might be struck at -8 or worse -- like a hand behind a shield (see note [6] on p. B552).
Heads get an extra penalty for being well-protected in most fighting stances and subject to what amounts to semi-random movement as the owner looks around in battle. If you put a head in a clamp, have it stuck through a tight opening, etc., it might be struck at a bonus.
Neither has much to do with game balance. Given the skull's extra DR, the relatively high effectiveness of cheap head armor, etc., the head isn't the fight-ending target that one might at first think it is . . . while the hand might well be that, given that crippling a weapon hand both disarms the target and gives him a major wound. If game balance were the issue, things would be the other way around.
|