I hauled out my seldom-used copy of RuneQuest 3rd last night, the Avalon Hill one.  I do ths now and again -- grab a game I haven't poked at in a while and mess with it, get re-acquainted.

So today at work I rolled up the obligatory Hawt Runaway Elf Noble who seeks Adventure.  Completed, I pitted her in battle against a giant ant.

You know...once she hit the ant in the leg, it was pretty much over.  An impale (maximum damage) to said leg knocked the critter down, at which point it was at -20% to hit her back, and she was at +30% to hit it back.  My hawt elf served it one more cup of pointy rapier hurt, and I came over to post.

I seem to recall that, when first I got the game, I saw this happen a lot in test combats: hit to the leg, run out the leg's HP, knock the guy down, OWN HIM.  

Am I doin' it wrong?

It's been a while but that sounds right.  Fairly realistic for a biped - a serious leg wound effectively ends a fight, between the blood loss and the lack of mobility.

I don't think you're doing it wrong, that just sounds like the way the RQ cookie crumbles. It just sounds sensibly gritty that getting a leg mangled would seriously cramp your swashbuckling.

Is that the type of combat that the game wants you to have? That is the bigger question.

Yep, that sounds just about right.  It underscores the significant difference between a hit location system and simple abstract hit points.  Particularly in RQ (well, at least editions 1-3, not sure about MRQ), hit points don't change with time and experience unless your morphology changes significantly, so they represent your body's structural integrity.  Taking any kind of hit has a seriously discouraging effect on one's ability and willingness to see a fight through to the finish.

!i!

And, on another note, that sounds very similar to the way fights often worked out in the boffer LARP I used to participate in.  "Leg 'em and leave 'em, we've got an archer for mop-up."

Of course, I wonder at the ability to cripple a six legged ant by mangling only one leg, but MRQ follows the standard deployment of hit points as previous runequest rules, so yeah, a leg mangling hit probably ends the fight... more or less

Yeah, I saw that, as a GM, I would consider the loss of the ant's single leg to be less than incapacitating.  

I'm actually OK with the grittiness; I think it's neat, if not necessarily conducive to high theatrics.  Still, how hard is it to say "Assume that all strikes are to center of mass, and that hit locations are only a factor if you're targeting them and you're willing to eat the penalty, sucka."

Yes, my house rules would have the word "sucka" in them.  Also "turkey", "jive", "motard" and "beans", if beans are necessary.

Huh.  Okay!  Well, awesome.  Thanks, turkeys!

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Still, how hard is it to say "Assume that all strikes are to center of mass, and that hit locations are only a factor if you're targeting them and you're willing to eat the penalty, sucka."

I'm not so certain of that.  Sure, ideally, you go in for the kill (throat and/or major organs), but I suspect that in a real to-the-death fight you hit whatever target makes itself convenient in hopes of discouraging your opponent from coming after your vital bits.  As Tony was suggesting, go for the legs and worry about the details later.  Lop off a couple of your opponent's fingers from his weapon hand by accident and you've given yourself some room to breathe.  In my mind, the random hit location table is supposed to suggest what part of your target was actually most convenient to hit in a general exchange of blows.

I know there have been more detailed hit location charts for other games that favor hits to the weapon-arm and foreward leg, take shield coverage and facing into account, etc., though I'm not convinced they really add to the game.

And you're welcome, motard.

!i!

Beans, I say... beans to the both of you... to the entire thread...

Hell, why stop there! BEANS to the entire INTERNET!

BEEEAAAAANNNNNNSSSS!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaI'm not so certain of that.  Sure, ideally, you go in for the kill (throat and/or major organs), but I suspect that in a real to-the-death fight you hit whatever target makes itself convenient in hopes of discouraging your opponent from coming after your vital bits.

Yeah, I agree with this. If you have a system where the only way to hit a certain part of the body is to aim for it, and aimed shots either hit the target or miss entirely, you get a weird effect. It sort of implies that the reason someone got hit in the arm during a fight is because his opponent was aiming for the arm again and again. (Since, if the arm was worth aiming for on round X, why not aim at it on round X-1? And so forth back to round 1.) Whereas I'm sure that the reason for hits occurring in different places in reality is due to a combination of "dispersion" (just like with guns) and the "flow" of combat. So to represent that stuff accurately you either need a randomization system like RQ, or a method of actually representing the positional situation from moment to moment, so you can determine what kind of strikes make sense and will hit what areas.

Interestingly Harnmaster uses a system similar to RQ but has much lower chances of hitting limbs vs. torso. It also allows one to aim high or low, thus skewing the hit location table. To represent aimed shots in such a system I'd consider adding an option to take a penalty to hit at a tradeoff which gives a greater overall chancing of hitting the targetted location.

Anyone know of a system that gives the target control over the hit location? Blocking to take shots to the arm, luring to take shots to the leg, etc.?

Iguess I meant "DAMAGE to specific hit locations isn't a factor unless blah, blah, blah."  As in, unless you're aiming for the leg, you're not gonna chop it out from underneath your target.

That's a jive of a different sort.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Iguess I meant "DAMAGE to specific hit locations isn't a factor unless blah, blah, blah."  As in, unless you're aiming for the leg, you're not gonna chop it out from underneath your target.

This kind of raises the issue of RQ hit points, where a character possesses a total number of hit points, and each hit location has a proportionate number of hit points, but -- and here's the point that I've never been able to wrap my head around -- the sum of all hit points from all hit locations does not equal the character's personal hit point total.

Can anyone explain that to me?  It's an issue that I've always hand-waived away and gotten on with the game.

!i!

Sure, it represents the idea that a person can be knocked down by "general damage" even if none of it has a special effect. So you might be hurt in each leg, but not enough to actually disable either limb, and then take another hit to the chest. That hit still wouldn't be enough to knock you down if you were fresh, but since you already have the cumulative wear (pain, bleeding) from the leg injuries, it knocks you out. Same would be true even if it took a couple wounds to the chest to take you over the overall HP threshold.

Ah.  D'uh.

Now, the one part that I always did get was that exceeding the hit points of any single location essentially signaled the loss of use of that hit location (if not the actual physical loss of that body part).

This all makes sense.  Thanks.

!i!