So while playing Kingmaker, my group encountered two giant frogs. The half-orc Paladin decided that they were just frogs, no worry, and stripped to go swimming. Long story short, he ended up grappled from 15 feet away by one of the frogs. The party decides that the easiest thing to do is cut the frogs tongue to free the Paladin. So my question is this: How do you go about cutting off a body part. And how does that effect the creature?
In the game, we had thought it would make sense that you could cut off the tongue and used a rule from Hackmaster where limbs such as fingers have 1/10th the hp of the monsters total. After this I was worried that this would set a dangerous prescient for attacking any creatures that can grapple from a distance. So for the time we agreed not to attack the frog's tongue. Anyone have any ideas?
Actually, limb severing is one of the play options Ryan Costello worked extensively on in Strategists & Tacticians. His method seems to be pretty solid and while there are feats to mske you better at it, anyone can attempt it, like most Combat Manuvers.
In one of the PGRPG modules this was covered.
Thanks Thazar. While that really helps and is pretty useful overall. I'm also looking for and over idea of how combat rules with reach work. If a character prepares an action to attack anything that comes within 5ft of him, and a monsters (let's use Shambling Mound this time) attacks from 10ft away, can that character attack the limb that is attacking him?
I would say yes if they are attacking with natural weapons. That is the main reason for readying an action and is commonly used for people being attacked by creatures with Spring Attack, Ride by Attack, or Fly by Attack.
In the same instance if the attacker was using a reach weapon, you could try and sunder I guess. But with the base rules any damage would affect the creature as a whole and not a specific limb. For better or worse that is a feature of abstract HP's of classic D&D and Pathfinder.
Hackmaster did have great rules for targeting specific body parts... and you gotta love the 1D10,000 critical hit charts! LOL. But they also had advanced rules for healing organ and limb damage apart from the classic CLW and such.
While I have not read it yet, I did hear about THIS. on the podcast Know Direction. It may have the crunch you are looking for.
Thanks again Thazar, I'll have to check it out and the bug you more if I still have ideas. :D
Early in playing 3.0 our group came up with a called shot rule, where by you could hit a limb or even the head of an opponent by taking their AC and applying a size modifier for the limb involved. So for example, hitting someone's leg might be a -1 AC (small target). Hitting their head would be -2 (tiny). From there you could require damage equal to the creature's Constitution, and allow a fort check to represent the creature's general toughness to avoid a debilitating condition (after all, it's fairly difficult to cut through all that muscle and bone). The 3.5 DM's guide had some basic guidelines for losing limbs, eyes, other stuff.