Severing a limb

[TheWarBlade]

Severing a limb

Feat: Maimer
Requirements: Any evil, Improved Sunder, Str 19

You must hit your intended target with a critical roll and confirm it. Then you must decide to deal damage or sever a limb. Pick the limb you wish to cut off. Then you must sunder your targets armour and then sunder the limb you wish to sever in the same roll. You do not get extra damage for your critical

Bones go to have hardness 5 and 5 right now. Flesh is weak!


Example:
The blackguard attacks Histan, causing a critical. He then decides to remove his right arm in which he holds his sword. The blackguard beats the opposed attack roll. Histan wears normal scale mail with hardness 10 and 20 HP. So to sever the limb the blackguard would have to cause 40 points of damage.

A mage needs at least one hand to cast spells and loosing ones sword arm or shield arm would be pretty bad. I made Evil an requirement because well it is pretty evil to target and cut off a limb. Legs, must make balance check or fall prone. I am not including the option to cut off a head. Vorpal is there for a reason. Thoughts?

[Jothki]

How does healing affect someone with a severed limb? Will it reconstruct the limb? If not, this feat would be a massive can of worms that you really don't want to be opening in a D&D game.

[Flying Elephant]

I don't exactly see removal of limbs as evil. All you are doing is disabling the target instead of merely hacking at their body.

[Holocron Coder]

In agreement with Flying Elephant, look at all the limbs Jedi hack off ;) I know it's not DnD, but shows it can't be evil.

(Loss of a limb > dead) for the person being attacked.

[Iron_Mouse]

Ability requirements for feats are never even. Make that str 17 or 19.

[TheWarBlade]

Ok nevermind the evil but what about the mechanics and all...is it good?

[LCR]

It's pretty worthless in my opinion. It's easier to just kill your opponent and while you can use the feat to disable someone, you can't willingly decide to do so, because you'd have to score a critical before attempting to cut off a leg.

[ZeroNumerous]

Look at a crit-build and say it's worthless.

Oh, hey! Five rounds into combat and you're already bleeding pretty badly and missing all four limbs!

[Bryn]

And!? It's just a flesh wound![/obligatory Monty Python reference] :p

Sorry about that.

[karmuno]

While I like the idea of cutting off limbs, I don't think introducing a feat is the best way to do it (not to mention the whole evil thing, but that's already been tackled). This implies that a character, at some point, suddenly gains the ability to cut off someone's arm. A better way to handle it would be to introduce a critical hit table, or assign hp to individual body parts (I have experimented with both and gotten mixed results).

Not to mention the feat seems really overpowered. If the feat were to remain, I think the user should have to target an opponents body part BEFORE the roll. He'd get some sort of penalty, but if he hits and rolls enough damage, he severs the limb (with huge penalties, this may allow the feat to be applied to the head). And you should include a note that this doesn't work with bashing or piercing weapons, unless you use yours differently than me...

[Umarth]

How does healing affect someone with a severed limb? Will it reconstruct the limb? If not, this feat would be a massive can of worms that you really don't want to be opening in a D&D game.

I agree with Jothki. I think you open up to many problems with a feat like this. Cutting off limbs would require a large number of new rules to be introduced.

[Attilargh]

How large? There already is a spell that regenerates lost body parts.

Personally, I don't like the feat. It's complicated, I can't recall the rules of sundering armour, and there is a simpler, more elegant way of solving the matter in D20 Star Wars. (If the roll to confirm a critical is also a threat, a random limb is lost at a randomly-determined joint.)

[TheWarBlade]

Thanks for the input guys. Yeah if anything a remove limb option should be on a critical table or something. I think I will put it into my NPC feat bin that would be a nice villian someone to remember, someone who cuts off an arm.

[Matthew]

Introducing this sort of lethality into a game of D&D is *very* dangerous and goes against the nature of the game (i.e. you don't suffer any repurcussions from losing Hit Points until you reach 0). Not to mention, having a limb taken off is likely to end an individual's life in the 'real world'. Consider having this Feat only work when a Character is reduced to 0 or less Hit Points. Also, as currently written, this could be done with an Arrow or Mace or equally unlikely weapon.