Hit Location from Low-Tech

[Drone 5]

Originally Posted by KataH

To me, again since I am a GM, I had assume the Groin cannot be randomly attacked. I noticed you say Low-Tech so I assume only book 1 but in Low-Tech Instant armor under Option Rules page 19, there is now a sub table for the Chest or Abdomen that now allows the Groin to be hit.

You are correct, I do not have Low-Tech Instant Armor but now I see I should get that book too.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Drone 5

GURPS Basic 552 - Human Humanoid Hit Location Table
Locations Eye, Skull, Face, Groin, Neck, and Vital have Note #1
Note#1 states: An attack that misses by 1 hits the torso instead.

Thanks... despite looking right at that page within minutes of replying I just wasn't seeing it, but I do now from your help :)

This makes me wonder about something...

This should clearly apply when you intentionally target these locations and miss by 1...

But what about if you are making a wild hit, and you roll one of those locations as the random target, but then your wild hit misses by 1?

I'm thinking it would be cool to actually still let it hit the torso, because actually aiming for the torso>chest should probably be harder than aiming for whatever is available...

So if random hits can miss by 1 and still score a hit, that reflects how it should be easier to avail yourself of random targets than to specifically target the torso>chest.

I do notice that LT100 seems to have removed this note though... when it would be very relevant to armored combat, unlike stuff like wound multipliers which only matter to what gets through.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Plane

But what about if you are making a wild hit, and you roll one of those locations as the random target, but then your wild hit misses by 1?

If your wild hit misses, you don't roll to see where it landed. The "miss by 1" rule only applies when you specifically target a hit location.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Plane

But what about if you are making a wild hit, and you roll one of those locations as the random target, but then your wild hit misses by 1?
.

That would just be a miss then. A "wild swing" doesn't take negative modifiers to potentially hit a hard to hit target (neck, head). Missing by one is just missing, or cinematicly failing to bypass what ever protection may be present.

I dont roll a hit location till after there is a hit on a wild swing, mostly because I want to give low skill characters a chance to hit. This can sometimes go horribly bad for a PC because of a chain of lucky rolls, but that represents the randomness of combat to me so thats how I play it.

Really I had never thought of rolling the location before hand, it just feels more spontaneous if they do all the trying to hit then find out what happens.

[KataH]

This is great stuff everyone. I really love this forum.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

If your wild hit misses, you don't roll to see where it landed. The "miss by 1" rule only applies when you specifically target a hit location.

I can see you're right and that B400 does say to resolve BOTH the attack and defence rolls before rolling RHL...

attack with no modifier for hit location.
If you hit, and your foe fails to defend,
roll 3d on the appropriate hit location table

I think it would be a good optional rule to roll on the table first before those though. Not just for the reason I stated (make it slightly more likely to score a hit, with miss-by-1s often hitting the torso) but some additional considerations:

1) to allow the defend to perceive which body part is being targeted so as to choose whether or not to defend (ie they might not want to waste a defence if you're targetting a heavily-armored torso, especially if that torso has damage-reflection on it which could harm the attacker)

2) to calculate situational penalties which might apply to active defence rolls for certain locations (example: the optional low-line parries rule in Martial Arts, -2 if legs are target) or: situational bonuses in the case of optional rules like "Duck!" from Pyramid

3) to know what defence options exist (example: it is possible to do a no-contact parry if your hand is targeted... and possibly to do a leg parry if your leg is targeted)

These three serve as reasons why it's good to know RHL prior to doing the active defence, so if one chooses to already deviate from B400 in pushing the RHL table toll 1 step ahead, I figure no harm done in pushing it TWO steps ahead and then also being able to apply "miss by 1" rules for added chance of scoring a hit.

Originally Posted by bocephus

That would just be a miss then. A "wild swing" doesn't take negative modifiers to potentially hit a hard to hit target (neck, head).

B400 has random hits ignore hit location modifiers, though other penalties presumably still apply (ie posture, if they did defensive feint, are moving fast, far away, etc)

Originally Posted by bocephus

I dont roll a hit location till after there is a hit on a wild swing, mostly because I want to give low skill characters a chance to hit.

My idea of rolling it first and applying the miss-by-1 rules would actually give a higher chance for low-skill characters to hit.

Originally Posted by bocephus

Really I had never thought of rolling the location before hand, it just feels more spontaneous if they do all the trying to hit then find out what happens.

They definitely still need to commit to the try (make the attack) before rolling, I'm talking about something less extreme than the "roll each turn to see which body part presents itself" idea I've seen before.

For example, this proposal is not "Combat Openings" from 2012:

Originally Posted by Kromm

Optionally, on each turn before you attack your opponent, roll on the Hit Location Table (p. B552).

Probably where that's very important is when choosing whether to thrust or swing and some body parts faring worse against certain attack types. I'm still saying that you'd have to commit to a certain attack (thrust or swing) before knowing which body part you're hitting, just that if you got the head/neck/vitals on the table, a miss by 1 would still hit the torso, giving higher-than-if-I-just-targeted-chest chances of a hit when intentionally using RHL attacks.

The difference from the initial '88 concept at http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Rolepla...Locations.html is instead of "determine what part of the body was hit" instead it's more like "will be hit, unless the attack misses or is defended against".

It's definitely crunch-clutter (potentially wasting rolls on misses) so one way to simplify it would be to only roll on it if you missed by 1, since rolling on a miss of 2+ would be pointless.

One place where I can also see it being valuable is for weirdos with larger hit locations, like MA115's "Born Biter".

If you roll strike before RHL first then "Apply the same bonus to rolls to hit their jaw or nose" can't be applied, but if we roll RHL first then you could at least apply this bonus when the nose is randomly rolled on the table. MA137 has this when you roll a 1 on a die from attacks that NOT impale/pierce/TBburn (those 3 are skull instead) and MA115 says any level of BB changes that to a 1 or 2...

Weirdly I can't find any way of randomly rolling a hit to the jaw though =/ Would it seem too off if a roll of a 6 on either face or neck resulted in that? Or 5-6 in case of Born Biter? Figured I'd start at the top since 1 (or 1-2) is taken by established results.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by bocephus

I dont roll a hit location till after there is a hit on a wild swing, mostly because I want to give low skill characters a chance to hit. This can sometimes go horribly bad for a PC because of a chain of lucky rolls, but that represents the randomness of combat to me so thats how I play it.

Really I had never thought of rolling the location before hand, it just feels more spontaneous if they do all the trying to hit then find out what happens.

The low-skill character wouldn't have a penalty to hit because of a randomly rolled hit location.

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

The low-skill character wouldn't have a penalty to hit because of a randomly rolled hit location.

Yes I really should have said "encourage low skill player to try". I didn't mean it would increase their ability to hit, just that there was a chance to get an exceptional hit. (whats good for the PCs is also good for the NPCs though)

I must shamefully admit that I didnt realize that rolling the location after success was RAW, it just made sense to me, which is doubly awesome after finding out how badly I have been misapplying levels of social stigma (learned in another thread).

[Plane]

Originally Posted by bocephus

I didnt realize that rolling the location after success was RAW,
it just made sense to me

RAW you don't just have to wait until after the to-hit roll, but also after the resolution of the active defence roll...

It really screws up the defender's advantage (whether or not to bother with limited defensive capability if a now-risk location is targeted) plus screws up optional rules like low-line parries where which body part you defend affects your parrying skill.

So I expect there would already be motive to deviate from RAW in when to roll that (at least sandwiching RHL between the hit/defence rolls) in which case, going a step further (rolling it on a miss-by-1 to see if it targets a place allowing a torso hit) gives some small benefit to attacks-of-opportunity over torso/chest targeting.