Targeting specific locations, difficulty and fairness issues

[Kromm]

What you're overlooking is that generally, random hit location hurts you as often as it helps you. Yes, you certainly can win the lottery and strike a hit location that's optimally affected by your weapon of choice, despite lacking the skill or refusing the accept the penalty to hit that part with a called shot. However, you can also lose. A spear hitting the arm doesn't get its ×2 wounding modifier; a leg hit that puts a gunman on the ground makes him no less dangerous to you, as being on the ground gives him no penalty to hit (p. B551) and even lets him brace (p. B364); any limb hit wastes injury beyond that needed to cripple; a lethal skull hit in a self-defense situation could have you up on charges; any hit that happens to randomly land on a more-armored area is simply less effective; and so on. Averaged out over all kinds of weapons and combats, random hits are on the whole a wash . . . they hinder the attacker as often as they help him, and are in no way a uniformly "free" advantage.

Anecdotally, players in my campaign absolutely detest random shots because the majority of the time, enough body blows to drop someone to 0 HP is the goal. Throwing a big, potentially fight-ending shot, rolling the dice, and hearing, "Okay, you crippled his hand" . . . well, that isn't a good thing. I've never seen random hit locations consistently work out better than torso hits.