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I really want to add location specific injuries to a game i'm designing to give another dimension to the tactics.

If someone is using a two handed heavy gun you'll wan't to shoot him in the arms to stop him being able to operate it. If he's an animal in close assault and closing the distance on your gunline you'll want to shoot him in the legs to slow him down.

The issue I'm having though is figuring out how to differentiate between the head and body injuries.

So far I have...


Body Part...........Flesh Wound.......Minor Injury................................................Severe Injury...........................................Length of Effect
Head.................No Effect.............+1 Ranged & Close Assault Difficulties..........+2Ranged & Close Assault Difficulties .........Rest of Game
Body.................No Effect.............+1 Ranged & Close Assault Difficulties..........+2Ranged & Close Assault Difficulties .........Rest of Game
Legs..................No Effect.............Can’t Run......... ...................................Restricted to Base Movement.......................Rest of Game
Arms.................No Effect.............Can’t Climb................................................Can’t operate 2handed weapons....................Rest of Game



Arms and Legs I'm pretty happy with.

Head and Body I need ideas to seperate them tactically on the battlefield.

Does anyone have some suggestions? How can a shooting someone in the body as oppose to the head benefit the shooter?

How many models are you expecting each player to field in the game? Is this a really small-scale skirmish game with around 5 a side, or something larger towards the Warmachine scale (as few as 10, as many as 30), or even bigger like 40k? I wouldn't want to track individual body part injuries for anything more than a handful of models.

Personally, I'd make a head injury just cause a straight casualty, but have the chances of hitting the target be much lower than the other body parts. That should differentiate it from body, while keeping the "BOOM HEADSHOT" factor intact (people always love rolling a critical hit and getting that headshot).

Around 10 per side. Keeping track of the injuries will be pretty simple, every location will have a small checkbox next to it on the characters reference sheet.

It'll just be a case of ticking the box.

Battletech uses locations for the damage system and a seperate chart for critical type damage.

Off the top of my head it's kind of: Roll to Hit - Roll Location - Mark Damage to Location - Roll for Effect if Critical.

Of course you can do Aimed shots at a Skill Roll. You're average shooter isn't going to be picking off arms and legs. They will aim for center mass and take their chances.

Locations are partially dependant on your setting. For example, if its shooting and both sides have good body armor, then center of mass shots may do nothing. Also, with/without armor, as magic8ball said, actual hits to a head tend to be more severe.

A flesh wound, for example, imposes no penalties to the head you state. However, consider the flesh on the head... eyes, nose, throat, ears, forehead. A flesh wound to the eye is quite a bit more severe than a flesh wound to the chest. A flesh wound to the forehead, besides causing bleeding into the eyes, can daze you as your brain gets rattled.

Also, trauma to the head has a much greater chance to cause a loss of consciousness.