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Letting Players Split the Damage by Hit Location


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Would it be any negative inplications in letting my players split their total damage in diferent hit locations?Let me give an example:

With a sword, a warrior attacks his enemy. The sword wil cause at least 3 damage (1d8+1+db (1d4)). Rolling 9 damage, he slashes his enemy in three sucessive fast blows, cutting gis arm, leg, and abdomen, causing 3 damage to each.

My purpose with this is to allow more fredom on how combat is narrated, instead of the borring (in my opinion) one hit per round.

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It should be Ok.

I suppose it depends on what you want to achieve through this.

Is it something that anyone can do, or restricted to people who know the technique?

 

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1 minute ago, soltakss said:

It should be Ok.

I suppose it depends on what you want to achieve through this.

Is it something that anyone can do, or restricted to people who know the technique?

 

Anyone could do it. It isn't a technique, just the option to give a unique and precise strong blow on one hit location (giving full damage to it), or divide the attack in various fast and less powerfull hits to various diferent body parts. I think this gives more realism and dynanism to combat. 

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I think this would work (it's not "broken")... but I urge you not to do it!

Note that, in general, it's much less effective to split the damage this way.  All the damage to one spot leads to bigger, more-dramatic (and more-likely disabling) injuries.

Taking out a hit-location is only "disabling" in the core -- head, chest, abdomen.  A limb may VASTLY decrease combat ability -- though not necessarily for a combat spellcaster, etc -- but it's also an interesting result (as someone backs away, parrying desperately with their "off" hand... etc, etc, etc...) .

To my mind, these different results -- KO via headshot, disabled via gut or chest (but not unconscious), an arm or leg that can't do its job -- are the elements of dynamism & realism in combat.  Reducing the per-location damage by splitting it between locations, aiming for "death-of-a-thousand-cuts" effect, seems likely to produce the opposite of what you want to achieve!

OTOH, it may let players strategically choose to spread damage to an almost-disabled location, and disable it, even if it's not the rolled location.

Consider repercussions carefully, though -- extra die-rolls for extra hit-locations?  Players agonizing over allocating HP's of damage to different opponent hit-locations (n.b. KO'ing the head is an obvious choice!)?  Etc...  These take more time at the table, slowing down each round of combat.

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9 hours ago, g33k said:

I think this would work (it's not "broken")... but I urge you not to do it!

Note that, in general, it's much less effective to split the damage this way.  All the damage to one spot leads to bigger, more-dramatic (and more-likely disabling) injuries.

Taking out a hit-location is only "disabling" in the core -- head, chest, abdomen.  A limb may VASTLY decrease combat ability -- though not necessarily for a combat spellcaster, etc -- but it's also an interesting result (as someone backs away, parrying desperately with their "off" hand... etc, etc, etc...) .

To my mind, these different results -- KO via headshot, disabled via gut or chest (but not unconscious), an arm or leg that can't do its job -- are the elements of dynamism & realism in combat.  Reducing the per-location damage by splitting it between locations, aiming for "death-of-a-thousand-cuts" effect, seems likely to produce the opposite of what you want to achieve!

OTOH, it may let players strategically choose to spread damage to an almost-disabled location, and disable it, even if it's not the rolled location.

Consider repercussions carefully, though -- extra die-rolls for extra hit-locations?  Players agonizing over allocating HP's of damage to different opponent hit-locations (n.b. KO'ing the head is an obvious choice!)?  Etc...  These take more time at the table, slowing down each round of combat.

It's a good point. I will put more thought on it.

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