[Jimp]

I'm interesting in using a system where you can damage specific limbs to try and break them or damage them.

I'm thinking of something like increased AC for aiming at a specific area and DR for that part depending on armor, though this seems shabby. As for bone breaking DCs I'll use the ones that Raven used for his Elfen Lied insipred spell
Since you can cut off body parts with this method I also need to divide total hit points between the different areas of the body. This doesn't mean that someone on -10HP is in tiny pieces on the ground though. Cutting off limbs affects Total HP. Regenerating the limb restores the amount lost from your total HP. Attacking someone without aiming at a specific body part damages their overall HP total, not being particular about where the wounds are.
Lets say you have 40 HP and out of that your arms are worth 6HP each. Somone chops off your arm and now your total hp is down to 34. You go to a cleric and he regenerates your arm. You total HP is back up to 40 HP now. You then go into battle and your opponant attack without being specific about where he hits, dealing 20 HP of damage. You still have your max of 40 HP though, since he didn't cut off any major particular body parts.
As for breaking body parts, I'll write up a penalty table. Something like -10 to every action that involves extensive use of that body part. I'll allow an endurance check = half break DC (1d20+con bonus+bonuses from feats) to take a -5 penalty only. Broken bones can be healed with magic healing = total hp of the body part or by rest and successive Heal checks.
For example, your arm is worth 6 HP out of your total. You break it after a fall. You now take -10 to all checks requiring extensive use of your arm, such as swinging a sword or climbing a wall. You succed an endurance check against half your arm's break DC so you only take a -5 penalty. You go to a cleric and get a Cure spell cast on your arm. The Cure rolls to heal 8 HP, which is enough to = your arm's HP and heal your broken bone.

Still need to develop it a bit more, but that's the general concept.

Any comments, suggestions, flaws, improvements?

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Personally, I would begin by setting percentages for each part of the body. To begin with, we need to realize that you can survive having all of your limbs aputated, provided the wounds are cauterized. Thus, the sum percentage of all limbs cannot be 100%. I would say, personally, that the total percentage for the limbs would be around 60% (for all 4). Now, if you just get a limb hacked off, you will almost certainly go into shock and immediately begin bleeding uncontrollabely, though not quite as badly as depicted in Kill Bill vol. 1. So, I would also tack on that if you have a limb severed, it bleeds profusely, causing an additional X damage per round, depending on which limb was removed. This blood loss would need to be cumulative with other forms of bleeding wound damage.

Now, for the gritty bits. I would say that loosing a leg would cause more damage than losing an arm, thus, I would put both legs combined at 36% (18% each) and both arms at 24% (12% each). I wouldn't treat this as reducing the maximum number of hit points, but rather the amount of damage to a specific limb required to sever it in a single blow (or through a number of hacking blows). I would say that each leg causes 2 points per round of bleeding damage and each arm causes 1 point per round of bleeding damage. A successful Heal check (DC 15) can stop this bleeding.

Now for determining the AC bonus for limbs, I would subtract the target's size modifier from its total AC and then determine the size modifier of the limb targeted and add that to it. A leg is one size category smaller than the creature and an arm is two size categories smaller than the creature. Thus, given a standard human with Dex 10 wearing full plate (AC 18) would have limbs with the following AC bonuses: Leg AC 19 (+1 Small size, +8 full plate), Arm AC 20 (+2 Tiny size, +8 full plate).

That's my take on it.

[Jimp]

I agree with the bleeding damage. I'll add in that they are shaken until 2 rounds after the bleeding is stopped. Also, if you have a severed limb and are in the area of effect of a fire spell suh as Fireball you wound is cauterised and the bleeding stops.
AC bonus for the limbs sounds good. Shield bonuses should apply only to what the shield can cover. A buckler or small shield would grant a bonus to the arm it's on, but not the legs or other arm. A large shield would grant a bonus to the arm it's on and the leg of that side, but not to the other arm or leg. Tower shields work like large shield, though when they provide total cover they protect all the limbs too.

[Ssri-Tel-Quessir Hitokiri]

My only problem with what you are doing is that it seems that the entire process could become so flooded with extras that combat slows down significatly. Not to mention, each character would have to keep track of quite a bit of extra information that is entirely conditional. This turns the game into more "roll-play" as opposed to "roleplay." (Bet you guys haven't heard that one in a while)

If you want to see what another game system does, look at Cyberpunk. They have a locational hit table and describe the idea of massive damage to a limb.

[Jimp]

I know it causes alot of extra technicalities that could be avoided, but my players often ask to make shots on arms or legs so I thought I'd make make a rule to work it out.
I don't have the Cyberpunk book but i'll look into it.

[Oneiros]

I'd definitely recommend taking a look at Malhavoc Press' Book of Iron Might or Iron Heroes. (Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of those pages for additional info.)

Both are written by the same author, and include rules for "stunts", which cover called shots, dirty tricks, acrobatic manuvers, ect. Basically, for both systems, the player says something like "I try to cut across his forehead so he gets blood in his eyes", or "I backflip off the wall to attack him from above." The DM then decides which of a given set of outcomes this will result in, and assigns an attack penalty or calls for a skill check. All of this is given in tables, so it's not as arbitrary as it seems. The flavor given by the player is what really counts.

In BoIM, most of the effects are temporary, lasting only a few rounds, but a critical can cause the result to last minutes (effectively the whole battle), or even become permanent. BoIM is more geared toward a standard D20 game, where Iron Heroes is it's own complete Player's Handbook (though bits and pieces are easy enough to swipe.)

You might also look at Torn Asunder by Bastion Press, but that's more geared toward Critical Hits, and I don't know if they address Called Shots.

Lastly, in the old 2E days, I let my admiration of the grittiness of the GURPS system spill over into DnD, and used their Hit Location chart for Criticals and Called Shots. For a random Critical, roll 3d6 to determine location: 9, 10 and 11 were "Torso", so that was the most likely result, with 18 being something like "brain pan". For Called Shots,we simply used the penalties To Hit listed for the GURPS system.

Limbs could take 1/2 Con damage or they became crippled, with the system detailing the results. Hand and Feet became crippled on damage over 1/3 Con damage. Of course, this was 2E, when To Hit bonuses and damage totals were much lower.

One important note - this system allowed a save after combat to determine if the injury was temporary (going away on it's own) or permanent (requiring Healing Magic.)

Rather than assigning Hit Point Totals to each body area, why not use something like a variant of the Unearthed Arcana's Injury System? Determine general effects for hits to the arms, legs or head for the Injury and Disabled levels, and go from there. My suggestions:

Arm: -1 attack penalty per Injury (-1 AC penalty if Shield Arm). A Disabled Arm means that limb can't be used in an attack, though the target may switch to his off hand, getting a -4 attack, and possibly having to forego use of a shield.

Leg: -1 AC per Injury, and -1 on skills checks requiring movement (Balance, Jump, Move Silently.) A Disabled leg results in 1/2 movement; both legs, target can only crawl.

Head: -1 attack, AC and on all skill checks per Injury. Disabled means the target becomes unconscious. However, due to the natural tendency to protect the head, target receives a +2 on checks to avoid the injury, and the Called Shot penalty is higher as well.

I personally would also changed the Fort save to a CON check, and maybe lower the DC: 5 + 1 per five points of damage, maybe?

Hope that's enough suggestions for ya

[Egoslayer1]

I like your math on the AC's , seems sound. Also, the called shot would be a -4 on top of all that, making it pretty hard to target an arm or a leg. We use a custom critical hit system, so we would simply assign the adjusted AC, and if they hit, we use a fixed location for the critical and generate it normally, though you could have a % of total HP at which it becomes unusable.

Another option might be to have whatever # of HP you want to assign for a limb, and that it the point at which the limb is useless, but not severed/destroyed, kindof like being below 0HP, then you need to do it's HP again to sever/destroy, or bring the limb to a flat 10 below 0?

i.e. in the previous example, Bob the warrior has 25HP, so each arm has 12% = 3hp to render the arm useless. His opponent keeps targetting his sword arm mercilessly, landing a solid blow with a club doing 4HP (bludgeoning) to the arm, rendering it broken and temporarily useless. If he does another 9HP to that same arm (bringing the arm to -10), the arm would be destroyed. Not severed, just so battered and broken that it could never heal properly without the help of magic.

If the same thing happened with a slashing weapon it would be severed. Peircing, you'll have to get creative on a case by case basis.

I really like the feel of this. Thinking on the game impact out loud...at lower levels this will really tear the players up. At high level it will be nearly meaningless as they will have the means to repair it easily, though it could take someone out for a fight. Bear in mind as well, tactical players will start targetting the giants arms since they will be able to remove thier ability to throw rocks a lot faster then they can do enough damage to kill the giant. hmmm

ES
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Raven Bloodmoon, on Jun 16 2006, 09:38 PM, said:

Personally, I would begin by setting percentages for each part of the body. To begin with, we need to realize that you can survive having all of your limbs aputated, provided the wounds are cauterized. Thus, the sum percentage of all limbs cannot be 100%. I would say, personally, that the total percentage for the limbs would be around 60% (for all 4). Now, if you just get a limb hacked off, you will almost certainly go into shock and immediately begin bleeding uncontrollabely, though not quite as badly as depicted in Kill Bill vol. 1. So, I would also tack on that if you have a limb severed, it bleeds profusely, causing an additional X damage per round, depending on which limb was removed. This blood loss would need to be cumulative with other forms of bleeding wound damage.

Now, for the gritty bits. I would say that loosing a leg would cause more damage than losing an arm, thus, I would put both legs combined at 36% (18% each) and both arms at 24% (12% each). I wouldn't treat this as reducing the maximum number of hit points, but rather the amount of damage to a specific limb required to sever it in a single blow (or through a number of hacking blows). I would say that each leg causes 2 points per round of bleeding damage and each arm causes 1 point per round of bleeding damage. A successful Heal check (DC 15) can stop this bleeding.

Now for determining the AC bonus for limbs, I would subtract the target's size modifier from its total AC and then determine the size modifier of the limb targeted and add that to it. A leg is one size category smaller than the creature and an arm is two size categories smaller than the creature. Thus, given a standard human with Dex 10 wearing full plate (AC 18) would have limbs with the following AC bonuses: Leg AC 19 (+1 Small size, +8 full plate), Arm AC 20 (+2 Tiny size, +8 full plate).

That's my take on it.