Hello,

I'm interested in playing Dark Heresy and I am currently looking into the rules and have a question:

Does hitting a particular location have any effect other than the listed critical damage effects? I can't really find any rules about this.

Personally I would houserule something like the following:

Body hit: normal damage

Leg hit: half damage, target must succeed on a test (probably agility or strength) or fall prone.

Arm hit: half damage, target must succeed on a test (probably agility or strength) or drop any item held in the affected arm.

Head hit: double damage.

The damage modifiers may be too extreme, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Thanks for reading.

There aren't any rules I'm aware of, but armor covers different body parts frequently, often leaving limbs or heads exposed. but your house rules see problems.

Does it double/halve before or after Armor and Toughness reduction? If before, than headshots become instantly fatal from any weapon and limb shots become worthless, if after then it's better, but the limb shot bonuses become huge and annoying.

All your rules would do is give a huge buff to anyone who can take deadeye shot/sure strike.

But as it stands, the only real purpose of making called shots is avoiding armor, correct?

I was looking for a way to make location-specific hits more significant and also to provide a way for ranged attackers to reliably apply debuffs.

To tweak the damage adjustments (replacing the damage multipliers):

Head: do not apply toughness bonus to damage reduction.

limbs: double toughness bonus for purpose of damage reduction.

The main purpose of called shots is avoiding cover .

And criticals on some locations are more lethal that others.

But as it stands, the only real purpose of making called shots is avoiding armor, correct?

I was looking for a way to make location-specific hits more significant and also to provide a way for ranged attackers to reliably apply debuffs.

To tweak the damage adjustments (replacing the damage multipliers):

Head: do not apply toughness bonus to damage reduction.

limbs: double toughness bonus for purpose of damage reduction.

Halving or doubling damage, or no toughness/double toughness are huge bonuses or penalties.

I think game players hugely exaggerate the lethality of hits to the head ("oh no! my ear was clipped!") and hugely underestimate the lethality of hits to the limbs ("hello severed femoral artery!"), but that's another story.

Alright, thanks for the feedback. I'll just keep it vanilla.