When doing hand to hand combat do you have to roll for hit location?

Well, yes and no. It's the same as any other combat. If the attack is successful, invert the attack roll to get the hit location. If you roll a 19 and it is a success, then you hit location 91, the left leg, the same as shooting, lobbing things, etc.

As a house rule it would be appropriatte to make called shots to the body or limbs easier than in ranged combat. As in close combat hitting limbs is a normal part of getting your blows blocked or misdirected and the body at close combat ranges is hard to protect efficiently and easy to hit.

Conversly the head, hands, and feet would probably be a harder called shot as extremes are more easily protected with people seeing their vulnerabilities more pointedly.

JamieBHook said:

I agree about the limbs, but I'm not sure about this. My experience has been that with slashing weapons, arms and legs are easy to hit, the body is hard - you have to get past the limbs and the opponent's blade to hit it! Admittedly, this is based on LARP weapons, so perhaps not that readily translatable into real weapons.

Any actual melee experts here?

I've done a fair share of fighting with metal weapons, using techniques from several historical cultures and some more recently developed techniques. I've never considered fighting a sport, so I usually ponder the most effective ways to win in a proper fight. The basic rule is: I live = I win, so make the other person stop trying to kill you. A winning blow needs not at all be a killing blow. Breaking an important bone, slashing the right sinew or just numbing the weaponhand is usually a good way to win. On medieval battlefields it was pretty unusual that people died during the fight. Most died later from fevers, rotting wounds, blood poisoning and similar. Mostly I have been fighting with swords. A bit japanese type, but mostly historical european with focus on the longsword/bastardsword. But I have experience from shield+sword, shield+axe, Sword + dagger/targ, rapier, lots of knife and daggers, spear, 2h-axe, greatswords such as zweihanders and Claymores, staff, bokken, flail (don't try that at home kids) and many more. Some fighting in formation and a lot in duels.

Arms: When I get a winning blow on me, it is often on the arms, because they are always nearer my opponent than anything else. And it takes pretty little effort to guide a parry so your weapon hits your opponents arm, rather than her weapon. You will stop her attack just as effectively, and you have just won the fight.

Body + Head: I rarely get winning blows in the head or on the body, because guarding them is easy and prioritizig them for defence comes very naturally to us, and anyone that wants to attack those parts needs to stretch out longer and thus leave herself open for counterattacks. Generally I take hits in the head or body because I was finted or lured out into an attack and then frakked up the response. It can also happen because of unorthodox, tricky, chansy or seldom used setup techiques, such as grappling, takedowns, skillfully mastered weaponlocks and a few other.

Legs are hard to hit because of their mobility, and the parts you want to hit is quite a bit from you shoulders, so you will need to stretch out and thus risk counterattacks and parries to your arms.

If i were to make a houserule for melee hit allocation, I'd run it something like this.

Standard hit chance:

01-25: Left arm

26-50: Right arm

50-65: Left leg

66-80: Right leg

81-90: Body

91-90: Head

Cost to aim: head -30, body -30, arms -10, legs -20. And talents apply as normal.

Add to this something that lets the targeted character try to change the allocation, like a parry with +20 that will not negate the attack, but rather place it on an arm if it hits. This is in practice something that is really easy to do, look at all the "defensive wounds" that victims of knife-assaults have on their underarms.

Hope this helps a bit