A question for folks with a better understanding of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition than I do:

I'm looking at converting the Brancalonia setting from 5e to Savage Worlds. I want to run it as a very late medieval or early modern setting, so I'm drawing a lot from the Solomon Kane and Lankhmar Savage Worlds books. As part of that, I'm working on a custom weapon and armor list, to bring out the flavor of the time period and make the stats a bit more sensible (some of the weapon stats in these SWADE expansion books are frankly baffling), and I'm running into an issue with location armor. I think I'm not understanding how it's supposed to be used.

The SWADE rules give armor by location (arms, head, legs, torso), but I don't see in the rules that you should roll location for your weapon hits. There's a called shot option, and there's a table for wound location, but that seems to be intended to be rolled after a wound is scored, which would be after the armor bonus to toughness has already been applied.

When I ran SWADE previously, I was running the Pathfinder for SWADE rules, so I was working with the standard D&D armor tiers of cloth, leather, mail, & plate. I ran it that attacks were made against torso armor, and limbs only came into play for called shots, and that worked well enough. The problem I have now is that for the period I want to evoke, almost all armor is plate, and the difference is all about coverage. The current list of armor tiers is:

--Textile only (gambeson, padded jack or buff coat)
--Cuirass and Helmet
--Almain Rivet (cuirass and helmet, with additional pauldrons and tassets)
--Reiter's Harness (Almain rivet with added arm and upper leg protection).
--Field Harness (full head-to-toe plate armor).

I don't really want to have to have to roll location on every attack roll, but I also don't want to be in a situation where a lightly equipped arquebusier has functionally the same level of armor as a heavy knight. I'm considering upgrading the toughness bonus for the more complete armor sets from 3 to 4 or 5, but I'm not sure if that will break the system. I suppose I could divide things up by armor quality, but I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's solution to the problem. I'm still a novice with SWADE, so I could just be missing the intent of the rules.

I've only played a single combined session of SW so I'm definitely not an expert by any means.  That said, I only recall seeing hit location mattering if you do a called shot for a particular body part for an additional effect as you already mentioned. Just from a quick look, there is a big penalty already baked in for shooting at something tiny like a visor slit in a helmet but I can't offer much more than that.  I suppose with it all being full plate you could also just increase the armor bonus to toughness to simulate the added protection/coverage compared with bog standard one-size-fits-all fantasy.

In SWADE hits are always against torso unless it's a called shot.
I personally think this is terribly unrealistic as the limbs are most exposed in melee.

QuoteIn SWADE hits are always against torso unless it's a called shot. I personally think this is terribly unrealistic as the limbs are most exposed in melee

Head and arms, certainly. Upper legs are usually covered by chest armor or shield, and lower legs are kind of hard to hit unless you have a reach advantage.

I guess I am reading the rules right then. I'll have to do some creative homebrewing.

In Savage Worlds, all hits default to center mass unless there's a called shot.

If you want, you could use the Deadlands hit chart.

Head: 20
Upper torso: 15-19
Arms: 11-14
Stomach: 10
Lower torso: 5-9
Legs: 1-4

Damage in SW is so abstract that exact hit locations aren't relevant most of the time.  Did you hit and do damage?  Then clearly you hit somewhere not covered by impervious armor.  Someone being a hard target should've already been baked into the difficulty to hit or the amount of toughness on the target.  If you feel that someone running around with just a helmet and a loincloth is unduly armored by the system's rules, then tweak down their toughness to whatever you feel is more appropriate for the coverage of their protection.  Adding in hit location checks strikes me as an unnecessary complication.

I would assume anyone with a brain who has a guy in front of them with torso armor and no armor on his limbs...would attack his limbs.  For SW I would remedy this by having the heavier armed knights (wealthier as well) wear layered armor on their torsos.  This will put them into a whole different category on torso hits and assuming they are mostly mounted, have no effect on mobility.

QuoteIn Savage Worlds, all hits default to center mass unless there's a called shot.
If you want, you could use the Deadlands hit chart.

Funny, your using the term "center mass" caused the probable reason why the system is the way it is to suddenly click for me. It was originally designed for guns more than melee weapons. Defaulting to a torso hit makes more sense in that context.

Hit charts are something I'd generally prefer to avoid, just to cut down on the number of rolls per attack.

QuoteDamage in SW is so abstract that exact hit locations aren't relevant most of the time.  Did you hit and do damage?  Then clearly you hit somewhere not covered by impervious armor.

That's the logic I would use for any game that doesn't use partition armor by location, and the logic I'm leaning towards importing for the armor rules for this game. If you're not going to use hit locations, I don't see why you wouldn't just do armor sets like D&D, and fold the coverage into the armor value for the set.

As an aside, trying to replicate the way weapons and armor interact in a realistic way is a design nightmare. One of the things I always want to do in my games is give people some real cost-benefit analysis to do with their equipment loadout, but it's easy to see why most games don't. 

The armor locations do add a cost-benefit analysis. I'm going to trade an accuracy penalty in the form of making a called shot for a higher chance to cause injury by hitting an unarmored location.

In reality, they don't happen that often because the called shot penalties are pretty steep for relatively little benefit. Called shots are highly situational. Although if you're looking at a setting where everyone is wearing some kind of plate armor, it's definitely worth taking a -2 to hit the arms or legs and shave off 4 points of armor.