How would you handle this?

[nakedonmyfoldin]

I have a few hypothetical situations that I am curious about:

If a description of a monster/creature reveals a weakness in it's armor,
ex) the bad guy is wearing a breastplate made of admantium and studded with diamonds.
obviously, the player is going to have a hard time cutting this hypothetical armor, so they make a decision like any real adventurer would.
"ok, I'm going to try to stab his heart by jabbing my blade into the unshielded underarm area."
How is this played by the DM? I would guess that maybe you would require a knowledge/spot check to notice this weakness, but it doesn't take an astute observer or a Rhodes scholar to know that breastplate is weak outside of the breast area. Do you give the player a bonus for playing smart and not blindly hacking away at a guy in an impregnable shell? Or do you assume that his player is always looking for weak spots in the armor, so hitting the bad guy or getting a critical would imply that the player managed to get his blade into the underarm region?

Second scenario, a player is fighting a regular old bad guy, maybe its an ogre. Armed with a dagger, the player declares
"I'd like to make a stabbing attempt at the ogre's eye".
Would something like this be a regular attack? Or would it warrant some kind of penalty? If they missed with the penalty, would they still hit the ogre? Would a successful hit result in partial blindness?

Thanks for the help guys. I'm sure this has been answered before, but I imagine if I have this question, someone else does too.

[Troacctid]

If a description of a monster/creature reveals a weakness in it's armor,
ex) the bad guy is wearing a breastplate made of admantium and studded with diamonds.
obviously, the player is going to have a hard time cutting this hypothetical armor, so they make a decision like any real adventurer would.
"ok, I'm going to try to stab his heart by jabbing my blade into the unshielded underarm area."
How is this played by the DM? I would guess that maybe you would require a knowledge/spot check to notice this weakness, but it doesn't take an astute observer or a Rhodes scholar to know that breastplate is weak outside of the breast area. Do you give the player a bonus for playing smart and not blindly hacking away at a guy in an impregnable shell? Or do you assume that his player is always looking for weak spots in the armor, so hitting the bad guy or getting a critical would imply that the player managed to get his blade into the underarm region?
The second one. If the player's attacks are glancing off the armor, they're missing. So what else is a hit supposed to represent, besides striking at an area that's not as well protected? Magically punching through the armor somehow without damaging it?


Second scenario, a player is fighting a regular old bad guy, maybe its an ogre. Armed with a dagger, the player declares
"I'd like to make a stabbing attempt at the ogre's eye".
Would something like this be a regular attack? Or would it warrant some kind of penalty? If they missed with the penalty, would they still hit the ogre? Would a successful hit result in partial blindness?
D&D doesn't have rules for called shots, so normally you can't do this, but there are variant rules that you could use, like this one from Pathfinder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots).

[EisenKreutzer]

The first scenario I would solve like your second option. The way I do it, characters in a fight are constantly moving, jabbing and poking at each other, and the attacks you get each round represents how many opportunities for real hits present themselves. The higher your BAB, the better a fighter you are, and thus you get more such opportunities.

As for the second one, thats one of the many reasons I converted to Pathfinder.

[nakedonmyfoldin]

The second one. If the player's attacks are glancing off the armor, they're missing. So what else is a hit supposed to represent, besides striking at an area that's not as well protected? Magically punching through the armor somehow without damaging it?


D&D doesn't have rules for called shots, so normally you can't do this, but there are variant rules that you could use, like this one from Pathfinder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots).


Gotcha, i'll have to adapt these pathfinder rules to my games, but it makes a lot of sense, thanks guys.

[atemu1234]

I use a lot of PF and 3e material in my games, it shouldn't be hard.

[jiriku]

Aiming for the particular part of a critter in any way is represented by precision damage and critical hits, and character is assumed to have struck a vulnerable location every time he inflicts precision damage or scores a critical. Called shot tables (like the Pathfinder table) are fun for some groups, but they don't fit extremely well in D&D because many, many monsters have weird body types that makes these tables hard to use, and 30+% of monsters are immune to precision damage and thus immune to called shots. In fact, the only creatures that are guaranteed to be vulnerable and to have a body type compatible with the table are... the PCs! Thus, these kinds of tables tend to disfavor PCs, especially martial melee characters since they tend to get hit a lot more often than other types of characters. For these reasons, you should use them with caution.

[EisenKreutzer]

Aiming for the particular part of a critter in any way is represented by precision damage and critical hits, and character is assumed to have struck a vulnerable location every time he inflicts precision damage or scores a critical. Called shot tables (like the Pathfinder table) are fun for some groups, but they don't fit extremely well in D&D because many, many monsters have weird body types that makes these tables hard to use, and 30+% of monsters are immune to precision damage and thus immune to called shots. In fact, the only creatures that are guaranteed to be vulnerable and to have a body type compatible with the table are... the PCs! Thus, these kinds of tables tend to disfavor PCs, especially martial melee characters since they tend to get hit a lot more often than other types of characters. For these reasons, you should use them with caution.

Many, many enemies and NPCs in published adventures and homebrew settings are human or humanoid though, so that skews your percentages a bit.

[Pan151]

You houldn't be doing anything different if you know a creature has a weak spot. Aiming for a weak spot is what your character is supposed to be doing automatically. That is what attack rolls are for - a failed attack means you failed to stab at a vulnerable spot, a succesful attack means that you did hit a vulnerable spot, and a critical hit means you hit a particularly weak spot.

Apart from that, particular knowledge of weak spots is handled by stuff like Knowledge Devotion and Favoured Enemy.

[Sir Garanok]

That's what critical hits are,you never aim the armor or shield of the opponent.

Called shot can't happen unless you want a variant,maybe a sundering attempt.

Maybe not the best option,but a lot of "groin fighting" is avoided that way.

[DonKalypso]

The problem with saying "They are aiming for the weak points automatically" is that that conceptualization kinda only works for piercing weapons that are largely only capable of damaging a "Weak point" on a heavily armored foe.

The other two types of damage, slashing and bludgeoning, are kinda the same to an armored foe, concussive force. Knock the wind out of your foe enough and he'll go down. That's why HP is an abstraction of your general fighting shape, and not a literal representation of how much blood is left in you, otherwise blood dopers would be the greatest fighters ever.

Using called shot rules for when your player specifies he's purposefully aiming for a small target is acceptable, as otherwise most of his strikes will be against the foe's torso as it's the easiest target to hit and the reason the BBEG's wearing an adamantine breastplate and not an adamantine leotard. Though now I want to see an adamantine ballerina.

[Gwendol]

Well, even the ogre is unlikely to stand still and let the fighter take a stab at its eyes. It will weave, stretch (out of reach) or do whatever it can to avoid getting hurt. I'm not fond of called shots as they just add another layer of rules to combat, which should be quick and as straight forward as possible. The abstraction of the attack roll and armor class already covers this, with critical hits describing the effect of striking a particularly vulnerable spot.

[atemu1234]

Well, even the ogre is unlikely to stand still and let the fighter take a stab at its eyes. It will weave, stretch (out of reach) or do whatever it can to avoid getting hurt. I'm not fond of called shots as they just add another layer of rules to combat, which should be quick and as straight forward as possible. The abstraction of the attack roll and armor class already covers this, with critical hits describing the effect of striking a particularly vulnerable spot.

The system presented in that link actually does mention that things defend themselves, that's why it's harder by far to hit something specific rather than just anything.

[Gwendol]

Sure, but it's still another set of rules to apply in combat.

[atemu1234]

Sure, but it's still another set of rules to apply in combat.

Hey, still simpler than grappling.:smallbiggrin:

[Gwendol]

Ha! Yeah, well a lot of things are.