DMG pg 27 Variant Rule: Damage to specific areas

[starburns]

I'm a DM and have been for a while now, and my players are always trying to attack specific parts of people, and I have had trouble allowing people to specifically attack someones head, neck, etc. And then I come across this variant rule that makes that seem like a legal course of action, and my players would definitely like that. My biggest question though is whether or not there is a significant change in AC if you are specifically targeting and arm as opposed to just trying to hit the enemy. Or what about targeting an eye as opposed to an arm?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[holywhippet]

That rule is mostly there so that you, as DM, can declare an attack has hit a specific body part rather than a PC making a "called shot".

If you want to allow it there are some third party books which include such rules. Otherwise I'd add an AC penalty based on the size of the body part being attacked. So an eye would be have a size category of fine adding +8 to the AC of the attack. The problem is what happens if the called shot missed but the attack rolls high enough to hit normally. In that case I'd start stepping back to each body part in turn to see what they could have hit. The head for example would merely be diminutive with a +4 bonus to AC so if the roll was high enough it would have hit them there instead of the eye.