Strike-specific hit table

[Apollonian]

I'm not usually one for extra detail in GURPS, but I thought I'd play against type for once.

Has anyone put together a set of hit tables corresponding to strike angle and type? I'm imagining something where the attacker declares, e.g, an overhead seeing and then rolls to see where they hit - head, shoulder, and arm hits would be much more likely than torso hits, and foot or lower leg hits would be impossible.

[Plane]

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing SOMEWHERE about replacing leg with arm when attacked from above, still searching though...

[Dustin]

My usual solution when angle or exposure suggests that certain random locations should be privileged, is to roll twice and take the most reasonable result.

RuneQuest 3 used separate tables for melee vs missile hits, which I found interesting. Melee exposed the limbs and head more, and missile exposed the torso more, which had a definite effect on armor choices.

[kdtipa]

I haven't seen anyone try to make a chart for that, but it makes sense to limit where they hit to what is exposed from whatever angle the attack is coming from. If you imagine an overhead swing only possibly hitting arms, shoulders, and head, my inclination is to pick the easiest target to hit from among them, and apply that penalty... treating it as the default like the torso would normally be.

If you choose to use a random hit location, I'm thinking you might need to invent charts, but one possible quick method could be rolling randomly to see which of the targets is chosen, and then applying its penalty to hit to the attack roll, so that the lucky target of the head is still harder to hit than the arm. I'm thinking I wouldn't use random hit location.

The more I think about it, the more I think: Lowest penalty is the default target, and to hit the other options, you still have to make the called shot. Always include the penalty.

[RyanW]

If the hit location table was arranged more consistently top to bottom, you could get somewhat reasonable results by rolling 4d6 and drop the highest/lowest. As it is, that makes attacks from above more likely to hit the right arm or leg, and attacks from below more likely to hit the left.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

I'm imagining something where the attacker declares,
e.g, an overhead seeing
and then rolls to see where they hit -
head, shoulder, and arm hits would be much more likely than torso hits,
and foot or lower leg hits would be impossible.

I had checked B400's summary of "random hit location" before but hadn't even noticed what I was looking for was right in front of me, at the bottom:

If a random attack comes from directly above,
treat “feet” as “hands”
and “legs” as “arms.”

This doesn't appear to reduce the chances of torso hits... but I would say if you did roll a torso hit and then were rolling for torso sub-locations that perhaps it would make sense to replace groin with face/skull.

In the spirit of the above rule, for attacks not "directly" above (but still attacking from a higher angle) it would probably make sense to gradually replace feet/legs results with hands/arms results until it's a 100% conversion, but the question is at what "break points" you would make those chances.

Some amount of the reverse should probably also be true, even though this isn't technically a rule...

If a random attack comes from directly below,
treat "hands" as "feet"
and "arms" as "legs"

Does that seem reasonable? Maybe not? I'm not really sure because since arms tent to jut out more than legs do (shoulders are wider than pelvises, you rest your hands outside of your thighs) I don't think it legs would provide the same kind of cover for the arms as arms/head/torso do for the legs. You could probably still see the arms jutting out looking at a standing guy from directly below better than you could see the legs jutting out looking at a standing guy from directly above.

The above concern about smaller locations also applies: groin should probably replace face/skull on the table when attacking from directly below a standing guy.

Posture is of course, another problem with B400's rule: random attacks from directly above should totally still be able to hit the legs/feet of a lying or crawling target. Pretty sure B400's "directly above random attack rule" as I'll call it (DARAR) assumes a standing target

[Anaraxes]

I'd impose a modest hit location penalty to use a special table with a biased or limited range of possible hit locations. It's like choosing a hit location not quite as specific as the single-target choice in the existing rules, but also not quite as random and opportunistic as the full table.

Probably a sanity check on the balance for the penalty would be to weight the existing single-target penalties by their probability of appearance on the special table. That would at least keep the munchkins from designing attacks like:
3-10 Skull
11-16: Eyes
17: Vitals
18: Torso

I'll roll for a random location at -0, 'cause it's random!