Targeting specific locations, difficulty and fairness issues

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Beowulfenator

Question number 1. What's the point of aiming for the torso? Consider a lightly armored target: DR2 on torso and groin, DR1 on limbs and unarmored head. Why would anyone try to hit the guy's torso (let's say with a saber - cutting attack)? There's a pretty high (i'd say about 80%) chance a random hit would land elsewhere, and would produce much better results. The limbs are less armored, and a collapsed combatant with a crippled leg is pretty much out of combat. A crippled arm as well, especially right arm. The head and face are even better damage-wise. And all that without the pesky to-hit penalty!

Well, in general, most of my players want to choose where they are aiming. And, yes, you are right in that it is not always to the torso with a cutting weapon. They'll aim for limbs that lack armour, for necks and for faces, yep.

Random hit location is not so good when you can do massive damage, though, and are facing a foe who might continue to fight after losing a limb (troll, undead, etc.). A hit to a limb is capped at HP/2+1, so if you would otherwise have done 12x1.5=18, it's a bit of a let down to be capped at 6 because you hit an arm instead of the torso.

Originally Posted by Beowulfenator

Question number 2. Is it so hard to hit the head versus hitting arms? I've heard an opinion from a fencer that hitting the head is not harder than hitting the shoulder, and certainly easier than hitting a hand. Yet the skull is at -7 to hit.

Well, the head, as opposed to the skull, is -5. And the arms are made considerably easier to hit by the fact that in a normal combat, they are usually extended to attack one or interposed in front of the attack.

Other than that, one could suspect this oddity of being related to game balance. The penalties to hit the various hit locations were assigned a long time ago and they are a combination of various factors, including size, how much it moves around, how difficult it is to defend, etc. There's a fudge factor involved too and it's not impossible that the skull and head got higher numbers than otherwise because a hit there is often fight ending.