Having every attack be a called shot?

[Mok]

After reading the Called Shot rules in UC what struck me as an interesting approach is to go a step further and make every attack be a called shot. There is no "normal" attack, but instead whenever you make any attack you have to choose where you are aiming and applyiing the appropriate modifier.

If you used the called shot rules as is this would basically shift the base AC in the game to 8 as everything would be -2 to hit to begin with.

Thoughts?

[SlamEvil]

I think this wouldn't work simply because there are times in combat where you wouldn't have the time to necessarily swing that precisely at a certain area. Also, I can see that leading to a lot of obnoxious "BOOM! Headshot!" jokes

[Mok]

SlamEvil wrote:

I think this wouldn't work simply because there are times in combat where you wouldn't have the time to necessarily swing that precisely at a certain area. Also, I can see that leading to a lot of obnoxious "BOOM! Headshot!" jokes

I guess from my own experience in playing boffering type games like Dagorhir and Darkon, in reality any competent fighting is done as a called shot. You don't just wildly swing at each other, but rather are aiming to hit various body parts. So in terms of "realism" having every attack be a called shot makes a lot of sense from my experience.

In terms of every shot being a head shot, that would be part of what someone can do, if they want a -10 to every roll. If you have high enough of a bonus you could go that route, much the way Liam Neeson in Taken basically just kept doing karate chops to people's necks throughout the whole film. However, baring some way of getting your to-hit roll incredibly high, you'd need a lot of luck to spam headshots.

[SlimGauge]

I did Dagorhir long, long ago. When you're NOT doing a called shot, you're not just wildly swinging away, but you're taking the best opportunity your opponent gives you (if any) against whatever hit location he happens to expose.

[cranewings]

I've always thought that called shots should apply both a strike and an AC penalty to the person performing them. In pathfinder, characters are always trying to get a great kill shot in. When you strike and crit or happen to roll enough damage to kill the person, that means you were successful. When you hit but do little damage, it means the best you could get was a nick.

Called shots are arbitrarily taking a shot at something that isn't available to hit. That's hard and it's dangerous.

The problem with called shots at every attack is that there is no reason to pick one over the other. I guess it would be cool if the players were into describing every block and parry. The GM could describe exactly where the enemy was after his attack and the player could make a called shot based on what sounded open and possible. Really though, that's just normal descriptive fighting. You roll damage and find out if it was good enough to do what you were going for.