Called shots are a mechanic which seem to cause problems in a lot of game systems. They tend to combine poorly with abstract hit mechanics — like those found in D&D and most RPGs — since they frequently beg the question of why you wouldn’t aim for the bad guy’s head / other vital organs every single time. (The abstract hit mechanics, of course, are based on the idea that you are doing that, but that doesn’t always mean that you can or that you can succeed.) Even systems that ditch the abstract system and bake specific hit locations into their core combat mechanic will still frequently struggle with how to balance people’s desire to always aim for the most mechanically advantageous location (see choice vs. calculation).
In any case, there are a number of ways systems have found to try to deal with this issue. Here’s one that came to me in the shower that I don’t think I’ve seen before: When you declare your desire to make a called shot, there’s a percentage chance that you won’t be able to make an attack this round. Why? Because the shot you want isn’t available at the moment and you need to wait for it to line up. Think of all those movies where the sniper says, “I don’t have a shot!” Same thing applies in melee combat; if you’re specifically aiming to hit one specific location, then your focus on that will result in you missing or passing up on other opportunities to strike your foe.
You’d need to play with the exact probabilities involved depending on your system and the varied mechanical impact of the called shot. But I thought this was an interesting mechanical paradigm that a system designer or house ruler might play with.
I have used this as House rule for both World of Darkness and Dark Heresy. It worked well for both system. Dark Hersey in particular, as it already had a a baked in system for hitting specific body parts, which I used as the base to determine the percentile roll. Depending on whether or not your game system works well with different body parts having differing armor/cover this can be used to create some interesting combat scenarios.
>Because the shot you want isn’t available at the moment and you need to wait for it to line up.
I am reminded of a similar mechanic from a d20 game in the early 00s (I want to say Shadowforce Archer?), given as a prestige class ability for some kind of sniper. The character gains perfect accuracy, in that he will never miss again. Any time the dice indicate he’d miss (including miss chance but not active abilities from the target like Deflect Arrows) he simply didn’t take the shot. It was a nice piece of flavour, but it was also very useful in that you had 100% ammo efficiency, never wasted a special bullet (like a tranq dart or tracking device) and would never reveal your location with a missed shot.
This can be done quite organically in a roll-under system in which both attacker and defender roll. The one I’m thinking of is Daniel Pond’s Nameless RPG.
In such a system, there’s a difference between failing (rolling over you roll-under target number) and not succeeding well enough (rolling under your target, but not well enough to beat the other guy) in opposed checks.
A normal attack might hit when you succeed on your attack, and the opponent either fails to defend OR defends more poorly than you attacked.
A called shot, however, only works if your opponent failed to defend. If they defended successfully, even if it was a worse success than your attack, then the only openings are little ones you passed up looking for your perfect knife through the eye.
Well, rhis is just one of the options to describe a failed roll of the called shit with the corresponding penalization given by the usual rules, isn’t it?
Battletech is more wargame than RPG, but it has a similar rule. If you make a called shot you gain about a 50/50 change to hit the part targeted(6-8 on 2d6), but you can only do this if you have an advanced targeting computer and you take a big to-hit penalty (-4 on 2d6), or if the target is immobilized.
Quick heads up: This post can’t be reached from the “Thoughts of the Day” collection page because the link there links to the edit page.