Hit Location for AD&D combat

[AxeMental]

Many years ago after getting a little bored with standard game play we took Top Secrets hit system and chart and used it in our 1E games. If you remember the body was broken up into regions (arms, legs, mid section, head, etc.). If you hit your oponent you roled randomly which section of their body was dammaged, and the more skilled you were the more you could move it into the direction of a more critical area. Also, when an arm or leg was hit, it was unusable if enough dammage was done to it.
We followed this system by giving the ability to control the hit by one body section for every advance in the DMG tables. We assigned HP to each body part, and had a rule that if the head or trunk was hit it did more damage (double damage perhaps). This only lasted I think 2 or 3 games.
Anyway, was wondering if anyone ever played this way or know of a FRPG that uses such a specific system. It was time consuming, didn't follow the concept of the game, but was kind of fun.

[foster1941]

RuneQuest has a hit location system. 1d20 is rolled and compared to 1 of 2 tables to determine location -- 1 table for melee combat that skews towards arms & legs, another for missile combat that is based on relative size of the locations. Each location has separate armor rating (armor in RQ reduces damage rather than making it harder to hit) and hp (based on a faction of total hp -- each arm has .25 of total hp, each leg .33, etc. -- the totals of all locations add up to much more than the character's overall hp). Each hit does damage to both the specific location and the character's overall hp total. When overall hp reach 0 the character is dead. When a location reaches 0 various effects happen, based on location -- an arm reaching 0 means the character drops whatever that arm is holding and can't use it, a leg reaching 0 means the character drops prone and can only continue to fight from the ground, head hitting 0 means the character drops unconscious, etc. (there are even worse effects if a location drops to negative hp equal to its original positive value (i.e. an arm with 4 hp dropping to -4 or below) -- a limb is severed/maimed, etc.).

Of course this sort of combat has a completely different feel from AD&D, but we enjoyed it and never found it too slow (though RQ combats tended to be both less frequent and involve fewer participants than in AD&D -- you'd typically only get into 1 or 2 fights per session, and those would tend to consist of 3 or 4 PCs against a like number of bad guys, not 5 PCs + 4 henchmen vs. 20 gnolls, or whatever).

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay also has a hit location system, but I honestly don't remember a thing about it except that the location hit was determined via the same d% roll as the "to hit" roll, reading the numbers in reverse -- thus if you rolled a 38 to hit, that hit location 83. I always thought that was a clever way to save an extra die-roll.

[BonesMcCoy]

I've been meaning to pick up a version of RQ of ebay. Which version would you recommend? Also, do you know anything about Dragon Quest? I want to buy a version of that too. One of these days.

[foster1941]

RQ1 is hard to find and offers nothing that isn't done better in RQ2 so there's no need to even consider that (though of course I have a copy 'cause I'm a fanatic ).

RQ2 is the most popular version, both at the time and in popular memory. Most people would probably tell you this is the version to seek out. It's somewhat hard to find/expensive, and came as a stand-alone book, a hardcover book, and a boxed set, all with identical contents (except the boxed set included an extra separately-bound adventure, dice, etc.).

RQ3 is the first version I played and is my favorite version of the rules, but it's more complicated than RQ2 in a number of ways (some of them justified, some of them not) and is also a 'generic fantasy' game whereas RQ1 & 2 were tied very closely to the world of Glorantha (which some people considered a positive change but many more considered a negative). This is by far the easiest/cheapest version to find. There are several different versions but what you want is the Deluxe Edition, either the boxed set or the perfectbound book (the contents are pretty much identical -- the boxed set is 5 separate booklets and comes with dice and a (worthless) poster-map of 'Fantasy Europe;' the perfectbound book is all-in-one and includes a page or two of official errata that probably wouldn't be included with the boxed set).

See also this thread where I went into a lot more detail and provided cover pics for as many different editions/printings as I could find.

[foster1941]

Oh yeah, Dragonquest. I just got a copy of this a few months back, from Sieg of DF. I can see why it was popular in its day, but there's nothing about it that makes me have any particular desire to play it. It was released by SPI, makers of really complicated board-wargames, and has some of that feel -- the rules are very well-organized and cross-referenced (every rule is numbered), but is also very dry to read and at least IMO too arcanely complex. I'd be interested in hearing more from anybody who actually played it back in its day (c. 1980-82).

There was also a Dragonquest 3rd edition released around 1987 by TSR (after TSR had acquired SPI), but by pretty much all accounts that was unmitigated crap. If you're going to get this at all you want one of the SPI editions (my copy's 2nd edition, don't know what (if any) differences there are between this and 1st ed).

[northrundicandus]

There's also OD&D Blackmoor's hit location system.

[BonesMcCoy]

Thanks Foster.

[AxeMental]

How did the players in these different games keep up with the damage done to each body part. Thats like 6 different areas to keep up with right?

Was there a map of the body on each players sheet (similar to top secret) or a chart for HPs perhaps?

[blackprinceomuncie]

AxeMental said:

How did the players in these different games keep up with the damage done to each body part. Thats like 6 different areas to keep up with right?

Was there a map of the body on each players sheet (similar to top secret) or a chart for HPs perhaps?

In Warhammer characters have an overall Wounds total and do not track Wounds for each individual body part. You determine hit location for standard hits only so that you can apply the correct amount of armor protection to the damage taken. Once a character's Wounds total reaches 0, all further hits require him to roll on the critical hit chart. In this case, there is a different critical chart for each area of the body, depending on which area is struck.

The standard Warhammer character sheet has a small man-figure drawn on it with places for recording the amount of armor points applicable to each section of the body.

[foster1941]

Yeah, the pre-printed RQ character sheets (and pre-printed character sheets were pretty much required for RQ -- the rulebook included an 'official' sheet but we ended up devising our own (including spots for all our assorted house-rules)) had a 'map' of the body with spaces to record AP and HP for each location. Then each time the character is hit you mark the damage on the appropriate location and on the total HP tally. When using modules or books of pre-printed statblocks (which were offered for sale for RQ and were actually useful, because creating NPC and monster statblocks was a time-consuming hassle) there'd be a list of each location with AP and HP and usually some whitespace in the margin to record damage. When not using 'full' statblocks (averaged values or just 'winging it') I'd mark location damage for monsters and NPCs on pieces of scrap paper: "bandit #1: left leg -2" etc. Because RQ HP totals are generally much lower than D&D -- an average character has ~12 HP total, and thus most locations have 3-5 HP -- keeping track of damage wasn't usually too cumbersome. Typically 2 hits to the same location (after armor) would be enough to drop that location to 0 or below.

[AxeMental]

Sounds like a pretty cool system. Was their a minus for using off hand? Also, how was spell casting effected (I imagine if one of your arms was taken out your spell casting ability would be reduced)?