HIT LOCATIONS
A Retrospective On Our Old Hit Tables

For most of our gaming experience in CP2020, The BlackHammer Project has used a slightly modified version of the classic hit location table

1 head 2-3 chest 4 abdomen 5 left arm 6 right arm 7 upper left leg 8 upper right leg 9 lower left leg 10 lower right leg

This allowed for some slightly increased detail in armoring yourself - the stylish could wear shirts that exposed their midrift now, shorts and skirts became an option and knee-high boots provided armor to the lower legs (and metalgear suddenly became wearable - cool-looking boots, dude!) The other major modification to the basic rules that occured involving the random determination of hit locations using this system were for hand to hand combat. Attacks involving the fists and/or very short weapons (knives, brass knuckles, beer bottles) rolled for their hit location with a D6 - significantly increasing the chance of a head hit and eliminating leg hits. Other melee attacks (swords, clubs, etc) rolled for their hit location with a D8, still providing better hit probabilities for the tender spots than a D10 roll. This not only seemed more realistic for hand to hand combat, but it also encouraged players to get up and personal in combat to get those head hits.

Later we played with the concept of a d20 hit system to attempt to move the hit curve away from leg hits a bit (CP2013 and CP2020 hit tables, as well as the ones above, concentrate hits on the legs, 40% of all hits go there, which feels akward, and doesnt follow common sense or personal experience with projectile weapons and brawling). The final revision of this hit table (which was eventually scrapped and never really played with) looks like this. The problem with this one was trying to bring the cool modifiers from the above system for hand to hand combat over. Which is one of the reasons it got the axe (that and one time we settled down to play test it, we couldn't find a D20 anywhere...)

1-2 head 3-7 chest 8-10 abdomen 11-12 right arm 13-14 left arm 15-17 right leg 18-20 left leg

1 Left Arm Torso 2 Torso Right Arm 3 Head Torso 4 Torso Head 5 Upper Right Leg Upper Left Leg 6 Lower Left Leg Lower Right Leg 7 Right Arm Torso 8 Torso Left Arm 9 Torso Abdomen 0 Abdomen Torso

Another hit table which we've kept using until recently was the shotgun table from CP2013 (again, slightly modified), as I was still doing shotgun hits by those rules at medium and long range (with a short break using the rules from Hardwired which I am now using again, where the shot damage is determined by the number of points the attack hit by). I found this table fun, and it seems to add flavour to shotgun hits, still making them deadly, while making them less effective against armored targets (as the damage is effectively reduced by half).

We also played around with a 2d6 table to present a curved result weighted towards torso hits through the very curve of a 2D6 roll. I actually don't know why we never actually used this one, except perhaps my own laziness for never introducing it. The main problem with a weighted table like this or the Fuzion/Hero system 3d6 table, is that it doesn't include right vs left, which has to be rolled seperately, somewhat slowing down the hit location process (unless you roll 3D6, 2 white, 1 red, with the red die determining right/left).

2-3 Head 4-5 Arm 6-8 Torso 9 Abdomen 10-12 Leg

1-2 Head x2 dmg 3 Neck x1.5 dmg 4 Hand x.5 dmg 5 Lower Right Arm x1 dmg 6 Upper Right Arm x1 dmg 7 Lower Left Arm x1 dmg 8 Upper Left Arm x1 dmg 9 Right Shoulder x1 dmg 10 Left Shoulder x1 dmg 11-15 Chest x1 dmg 16-18 Stomach x1 dmg 19 Groin x1 dmg, -2 stun 20-21 Right Hip x1 dmg 22-23 Left Hip x1 dmg 24 Upper Right Leg x1 dmg 25 Upper Left Leg x1 dmg 26 Right Knee x1 dmg 27 Left Knee x1 dmg 28 Lower Right Leg x.5 dmg 29 Lower Left Leg x.5 dmg 30 Foot x.5 dmg

This table was very much a throw-together attempt that never got reviewed by my players nor did it ever make it into final consideration for game play. It was created just prior to my discovery of the Fuzion / Hero system table which we use now (as it seems to use the best-weighted bell-curve I've used yet for play). It was originally created just over a year ago to simulate a lot of the systems on-line which use a d10/d10 matrix (I feel that they might as well be using a percentage system instead of a d10/d10 matrix; the net effect is the same and it doesn't feel as clumsy). This was also my first attempt that included locations taking less or more damage than others, as well as the stun save penalty for groin hits. Also, like the curved tables, some of the hit locations would later have to have the side determined (right vs left for hand and foot shots). This could be overcome by bringing the table up to 60 locations, but then you might as well just move on to an oversized D100 table - which has been considered. In case you didn't notice, this chart uses the rare D30 to determine hit locations, pretty much damning it from it's inception to be nothing more than a curiosity. It also results in a really large table that looks quite clumsy (but when testing the various tables I've found that at least being a single die table it is less clumsy than the matrix hit tables).

Finally we've settled on the 3d6 table presented by Fuzion / Hero system. This system brings hit probabilities away from the legs and towards the centre of mass, as well as including more detailed locational stats. All we've had to change is the difficulty to aim at specific locations, as the original system's modifiers were based on the area's vulnerability instead of it's size and mobility. You can see our version of this table here.