I'm not seeing anything resembling hit location anymore. That will definately speed up the mechanic (or the same if...). Although I liked the detail of being able to tailor some of that equipment we typically used/use the "hit me anywhere" rule until we got to criticals..at which point ONE chart would have sufficed under the old rules.

jh

There are no Numerical dice, so I have no idea how you would randomise something like that.

It's possible that one of the chart-like cards the game ships with takes called shots into account. One hammer is the Torso, two hammers is the Head, etc.

There are no numerical dice, but there are critical hits, you can score even in the first hit.
As much, as hit table is not needed for all hits, critical hit location can make a differece.

In example:
-someone hit in the leg, moves slower, dodges with a modifier, and can't run from battle (someone needs to carry him)
-hit in the arm, can lead to weapon, or shield to be dropped down to the ground, and modifier to hit, manual skills, climbing etc.
-hit in the head, can stun someone, or flood his eyes with blood concealing vision, and making shooting, and spotting harder

Too many possibilities to just not include it in any way.

Sunatet said:

Critical Hits should be there and in better role. I like to believe also, that there is not Ulric Fury, but actual Critical Hit - Would make came more realistic and even deadly (altough not all Critical Hits need to so deadly). And same time Hit Location is defined.

But if you score Critical, what actually defines then hit location? One could think that atleast one d10 should be there for that...

I mean you can easily invent from minor criticals to deadly criticals to every hit location. Head and body can have many times more different Critical types ranking from simple blood on the eyes and minor stun to lost ear/eye/nose to broken skull.

We use aims and even more precise hit location tables from GURPS on our games. I just realised that you propably cant do that for 3rd ed.

Hit locations gives you easy start for storytelling. They give you something to start with.

I agree with you jackdays. Hope there will be hit locations.
But in case there will not be included, I can live with something simplified like normal hits are just hits no matter, where they hit, crtical hits have their hit location written in their description, and since they are probably on cards you can easily randomise them by just drawing random card.
I'm not a big fan of the above, but I can live with it.
Anyway, I hope that there will be hit locations, and some more types of wounds than just normal/critical.
No hit locations at all, will be a big minus for this game (and I'm not convinced to it yet).

Every wound card has two sides, one just showing a standard wound symbol, and the other, detailing the critical hit caused if that particular strike happens to be one.

FUN!

E

ejacobs said:

I imagine this system also includes some variant of hit location - it sounds like the critical hits are far less deadly, and so many will probably be 'leg wound' or 'shattered shoulder' etc. that will have real impact on the gameplay.

Emirikol said:

I think normal wounds will represent general bumps, fatigue and bruises and critical hits will take hit location into consideration at which point the armor will be important to decide the nastiness of the critical.

I have been also thinking how they are going to consider the parrying and dodging mechanics (if they keep them) now that they have pool of dice. I would favour an approach that used also a pool of dice for the defender. Successes rolled by the defender would counter successes rolled by the attacker and, thanks to the pool of dice, you could easily determine whether the defense successes came from dodging, parrying, armor or pure luck.

Of course, this would add some extra complexity but gives more tactical richness and more precise combat results that help tell the story. No longer would attacks be a 0(no hit) or 100 (hit) affair. You could have attacks half-parried, half-dodged, etc...

I think I'll probably try to homerule this if defense in 3rd edition is "static" (i.e., difficult to influence with the defender's tactical decisions); I always liked systems where you could adjust your defense results not only with equipment and would find a pity not to use the possibilities of dice pool for achieving this...Also, we already added an extra roll in 2nd edition for Dodging or Parrying, so it would not add a lot more time to the combat.

cogollo said:

Well, we know there is a dodge card, though we don't know exactly what it does (in the picture the text is obscured by two other cards).