Games by Particular Feature

[Karen Lynn]

Hallo, playgrounders!

Ever wish there was a particular feature or rule set in your game?

Let's work together on this! We all know the d6, d10, d20, and dicepool mechanics. We all have an understanding of situational modifiers.

What I'm looking for: Games that deal with damage and hit locations.

It seems most games just deal with a hit point bar nowadays. I'm looking for games that have hit locations. Whether it's effects based on hit location and a pool for hit points, or a system that splits total hp amongst locations.

Any knowledge here? Let's make this a Q&A thread. See how it goes.

[hiryuu]

Wild Talents/Ore does this to great effect. For those who don't know, success is based on pools of d10s, ten maximum. You roll, you look for matches. Height determines the speed, widths (number of matches) determines level of success. For dealing damage, the body is busted up into a chart of numbers 1-10. Did you roll four 5's on that attack roll? That's four wounds to the chest. Two 10s? A headshot. And a dead guy.

Deadlands Classic used a hit chart, too. Each part could take five wounds. Head, torso, both legs, both arms. You lost an arm or a leg no big, you'll bleed to death soon enough. You lose a head or a torso it's bye-bye (you lose the head and your chances of coming back as a demon zombie also go away). Everyone has a "size," which for humans is 6, you attack, Marshal tells you where you shot a guy, and you roll damage, divide total damage by the enemy's size, that's how many wounds you did. If you were in melee you got +2 to the hit location chart table, and the chart starts at legs and goes up to head - you're more likely to hit the arms, torso, and head if you're in melee.

[Karen Lynn]

... I was not expecting as thorough an answer so quickly. Thank you.

Edit: Okay, so Wild Talents is the game/system, whereas ORE(One Roll Engine) is the core mechanic.

That's actually rather neat. Gonna be looking more into that.

[Segev]

Mekton Zeta, like many giant robot games, has hit locations with their own individual "kills" (hit points) per location. This is only for the giant robots; weapons are so deadly that humans have exaclty 1 "kill." If they're hit with a kill of damage, they're killed.

(This is a simplification; there are rules for human-scale non-lethal combat. They're just...not often used, in my experience playing the game.)

[Dhavaer]

Inquisitor uses hit locations, with each location having its own damage track.

[Karen Lynn]

Thanks, you two. I'll have to look into those as well.

[shizukanashi]

Older games Mechwarrior and TSRs TopSecret are some that I still play today that use Hit locations. There are House rules for D6 and D20 games.

[Arbane]

What I'm looking for: Games that deal with damage and hit locations.

RuneQuest springs to mind immediately. On a successful hit, you roll on a hit-location table, and each location takes damage separately. It's a pretty deadly system - no matter how experienced a hero is, an axe to the skull will really ruin their day.

GURPS uses hit locations (as one of its many optional rules), but rather than tracking damage separately, damage that actually hits a vital spot gets multiplied. An arrow through the arm is survivable. An arrow through the head, less so.