Hit location miss by 1

[Quixotic Qlippoth]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Exactly. Complicated case-handling, exceptions, modifiers, degrees of success/failure, etc. are good for times when a single task is the pivot on which the adventure turns; it keeps a dramatic moment from boiling down to "just a dice roll." Combat gets a whole complex system for this reason. However, each individual roll in combat contributes to great complexity already, so simplicity is good at that level. My personal view is that combat starts in one state, ends in another state, everything in between is a black box, and it makes sense provided that the state transition is plausible given the numbers, equipment, and training on either side.

Yeah, I agree.

[Kromm]

Example: In a recent campaign write-up, I wrote this:

The plan is barely made when it's time to act. The bomb-maker's car stops just down the street, whereupon all four occupants get out and stroll toward the alleyway. As soon as they're in the lane, Wen leaps from the roof onto the man pacing down below! She lands squarely on his shoulders, sending him to the ground. Klas follows more cautiously, despite which he ends up prone in the dirt. Still, this unorthodox move distracts the newcomers so effectively that they don't hear Paul smoothly block their escape with the van, or Zhang, Lev, and Hamid leap out behind them.

Zhang uses the stun gun to drop the bomb-maker, Lev kicks one of the target's associates unconscious, and Hamid tackles another of them and starts throwing ground-and-pound. The last standing opponent draws a handgun, and by blind luck knocks the stun gun from Zhang's grasp in the process. Before the gunman can start shooting, though, Lev is on him with a knife, slashing at the wrist of his gun arm and sending him to the ground clutching his wound. Then Klas and Wen arrive, and curb-stomping ensues.

That's an after-the-fact description of a black box that encompasses about five turns of combat. The input for the black box:

Five unsuspecting targets: four together (two with concealed pistols), one some distance away. Five ambushers: three behind (one with a stun gun, one with a knife), two ahead and above.

The output:

Fine unconscious targets. Five functional ambushers, one slightly hurt, two with minor bruises.

You simply cannot get the blow-by-blow out of the recap, because I didn't give it. For instance, "The last standing opponent draws a handgun, and by blind luck knocks the stun gun from Zhang's grasp in the process" is my interpretation of "bad guy takes a Ready to pull his gun, Zhang attacks him with stun gun, and bad guy rolls a critical success on his dodge, causing Zhang to drop the stun gun." That would be boring and mechanical, though . . . in a frantic melee on a one-second timescale, I felt it would be way more dramatic to explain the disarm as resulting from the near-simultaneous draw.

Thus, if the GM decides to go by the book and have a missed shot at the ear hit the torso, it's no big deal. He just looks at what's going on and says something like, "As Arnaud lunges for Dupont's ear to make his point, Dupont spins and brings up his blade to defend . . . but raises his shoulder too much, turning Arnaud's measured warning into a deadly stab under the arm." I think that focusing on the blow-by-blow shows an obsession with mechanics over drama!

[PseudoFenton]

There's also the option of just describing a "hit" in the nearest location, but resolving it exactly as if it were a torso blow (ie, no additional wound multiplications etc) - having blows cause "grazing" or superficial wounds to that hit region makes sense for what is effectively a miss.

If you then end up with a situation where it really does matter that it was a torso hit or not (crippling effects or over the threshold for that hit locations max damage etc) you can just describe the wound starting on the nearest hit location and following through to the torso. "You stab towards his ear, but he flinches backwards, you blow grazes his face - leaving a thin line across his check, and then stabs into his upper chest."

Its easy to resolve an attack with a different description than what would conventionally be used, but doing so can really help suspend disbelieve or allow for more colourful combat scenes.

[Quixotic Qlippoth]

Yes we're starting to get into "should I or shouldn't I do funny voices when GMing for my group" type of territory-- are you good at it? do they like it? do they care? If you have the skill/talent/player trust you can make pretty much anything work as a house rule.

[MIB.6361]

Definitely not RAW, but a good alternative that might suit your needs. I used to use Killer Crosshairs in any settings where guns were a factor, but it's just as usable for melee weapons as well.

It allows you to pinpoint where you're aiming and then gives scatter results based on how much you missed the target number by.
It has rules for use with GURPS (3rd) and many other systems.

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by OldSam

For instance if you targeted at the jaw and missed by only 1, roll 1d6:
1: Completely missed the target.
2-4: Hit to the torso.
5,6: Hit to the nearest attached location. (*)

*: In this case the face. Always has to be a (bigger) location with an 'easier' or at least equal modifier.

Given that more detail is wanted:
What do you think about a small add-on like that?
Or do you even know any other existing solutions, which may be better perhaps?

[Kromm]

The problem is one of extra dice rolls. People say that they want more detail, but most of those voting are either theoretical gamers ("I would play GURPS if I had a gaming group. *sigh*") or GMs. Hands-on, regular players rarely find that extra detail is worth an extra roll. Some of the harshest, hardest-to-rebut criticisms leveled at GURPS concern the number of rolls already required in combat: attack roll (and possibly a roll for hit location), defense roll (maybe two, if the defender decides to use Acrobatic Dodge or similar) or critical hit roll, damage roll (several, if there are linked effects), one or more HT rolls for injury effects, a DX roll if there's knockback, etc. Thus, yet another roll and lookup is going to garner mixed reactions.

[Bruno]

It's likely to go over better with a group using all the currently published hit location rules, including the rolls for sub-location. This just adds some more locations with sublocations.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The problem is one of extra dice rolls. People say that they want more detail, but most of those voting are either theoretical gamers ("I would play GURPS if I had a gaming group. *sigh*") or GMs. Hands-on, regular players rarely find that extra detail is worth an extra roll. Some of the harshest, hardest-to-rebut criticisms leveled at GURPS concern the number of rolls already required in combat: attack roll (and possibly a roll for hit location), defense roll (maybe two, if the defender decides to use Acrobatic Dodge or similar) or critical hit roll, damage roll (several, if there are linked effects), one or more HT rolls for injury effects, a DX roll if there's knockback, etc. Thus, yet another roll and lookup is going to garner mixed reactions.

Make it an optional rule in a small e23 supplement, then. I'll grant you that I fall into one of your categories, namely GM, but my players are perfectly fine with extra rules, rolls and look-ups, at least as long as those remain the province of the GM to handle and they interface with the game world through descriptions of the action and the response of their characters, not game mechanics.

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by Kromm

People say that they want more detail, but most of those voting are either theoretical gamers ("I would play GURPS if I had a gaming group. *sigh*") or GMs. Hands-on, regular players rarely find that extra detail is worth an extra roll. ...

Yes, certainly right, there aren't too many players interested in that level of detail... In my group it's usually like Icelander described it, the most players like it if I'm doing the brain work myself and calculate the most modifiers for them :)

Though at times I also have some players who really are into all the details, but indeed they are a minority (and btw, fun fact: in my case the majority of this minority are physicists ;))

Originally Posted by Kromm

The problem is one of extra dice rolls.

I surely agree that many players don't need/want that, but for those of us who like more details with hit locations, I'll go further... ;)

In the specific example with the additional d6:
As an alternative it would be possible to save the extra roll by interpreting a single dice of the normal roll two times - maybe that would be a faster solution... What do you think about something like that?
e.g. let's say one dice of the normal three has a different and outstanding color and that one is counted for the "extra roll", too, in case of a miss by 1. so no extra roll is needed, but we'd have a random number (1-6) anyway.

or yet another option: if all the dice are rolled sequential one could just read the last one twice, to get that extra result for the miss...