Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Does the DMG cover ways to deal with a player that wants to target a particular part of an opponents body or something carried (say attempting to cut off the stinging tail of a giant scorpian or firing an arrow at a potion held in the hand of an opposing target)?
I could have sworn I read something about this (hell we may have even discussed this before here sometime ago), but can't seem to find it now. Thanks in advance.

No, there are no such rules. Some people try to extrapolate the helmet rules into "called-shot" rules, but this misses the point of the helmet rules.

The only called shots are those that are "built in" to monster descriptions. If you want to use called shots generally, you need to come up with a random hit location table as well ("How come no one ever gets hit in the arm unless I aimed it that way?").

No explicit rules, but obviously the game master can always assign a percentage chance for any action.

I posted this over at DF many years ago . . .

In AD&D, there are basically three ways to target a specific body part:

1) Positioning -- Take the carrion crawler for example. Whether a character is attacking the AC 3 head or the AC 7 body depends entirely upon whether the character is in front of the monster or if he is attacking from the sides/rear.

2) Random Chance -- The beholder description in the MM provides an example. Basically this represents how frequently the monster exposes different parts of its body to attack during melee (see also the helmet rule in the DMG). PCs cannot choose which part they are attacking.

3) Special Knowledge -- This applies when the PCs are facing a monster that has a special vulnerable spot (like the bullette) that can be attacked, but the kicker is that the players have to discover this vulnerable spot (and possibly also get into the right possition as per #1) before they can specifically attack it. This is a way to reward players for creativity or for gathering info about a monster before the encounter. As long as the PC knows of the vulnerable spot and is in possition to attack it, then he usually can.

Note that attacking specific body parts only applies when the attack is either 1) against a different AC than the rest of the body, OR 2) the attack results is something other than simple h.p. loss. For example, attacking one of the eyes of a beholder could prevent it from using that eye. In all other cases where the AC is the same for the entire creature and the attack is for no other purpose than to attempt to kill (h.p. loss), "called-shots" are moot.

Thanks for posting that Lord Cias.

Considered this question might imply a separate thread, but I think it is probably more appropriate placed here.

Lord Cias wrote:

2) Random Chance -- The beholder description in the MM provides an example. Basically this represents how frequently the monster exposes different parts of its body to attack during melee (see also the helmet rule in the DMG). PCs cannot choose which part they are attacking.

Extrapolating from the helmet rule as Cias suggests, and as I have come to understand this ruling, one attack dice out of six implies the possibilty of a random blow an exposed area, and assuming the party who is facing the beholder is aware of the danger posed by the eye stalks, one may rule that one in two attack dice against the beholder is delivered at the the eye stalks.

However, the eye stalks themselves comprise only 10% of the beholders body, or 1/10 of the body, according to the MMI. Extrapolating from the one in six attack dice, a random blow delivered to the eye stalks would be one in ten attack dice (10% of surface area of beholder), making an intended blow one in five attack dice (that is, a 50% increase in the opportunity to strike a telling blow)? My knowledge and use of probabilities is sometimes a little deficient, does the the math seem to follow or have I confused something here?

sepulchre wrote: Extrapolating from the helmet rule as Cias suggests, and as I have come to understand this ruling, one attack dice out of six implies the possibility of a random blow an exposed area, and assuming the party who is facing the beholder is aware of the danger posed by the eye stalks, one may rule that one in two attack dice against the beholder is delivered at the the eye stalks.

However, the eye stalks themselves comprise only 10% of the beholders body, or 1/10 of the body, according to the MMI. Extrapolating from the one in six attack dice, a random blow delivered to the eye stalks would be one in ten attack dice (10% of surface area of beholder), making an intended blow one in five attack dice (that is, a 50% increase in the opportunity to strike a telling blow)? My knowledge and use of probabilities is sometimes a little deficient, does the the math seem to follow or have I confused something here?

Well, I think you have also to think about the percentage of body mass that the head makes up on a human being, as well as the awareness on the part of the individual that he has a vulnerability that must be defended against. With that in mind, a probability of 1-in-2 seems to reflect a good deal more than simple availability of the target by percentage, so I would generally agree with the proposition that characters targeting the eye stalks of a beholder have a 1-in-2 chance of aiming a blow in that location.

Matthew wrote:

With that in mind, a probability of 1-in-2 seems to reflect a good deal more than simple availability of the target by percentage

I had interpreted him to be implying something specific to the beholder description that was to be integrated with the helmet rules. So your take on Cias's example of 'random chance' is just to provide a monster example that would fit with the helmet rules?

sepulchre wrote: I had interpreted him to be implying something specific to the beholder description that was to be integrated with the helmet rules. So your take on Cias's example of 'random chance' is just to provide a monster example that would fit with the helmet rules?

Well, sort of. For random and uncoordinated attacks 1-in-10 against a beholder is reasonable, as is 1-in-6 against an (otherwise) intelligent human or near-human foe without a helmet. Once characters are specifically targeting extremities, then the probabilities become difficult to judge, but 1-in-2 would be reasonable in either case, I think, given the structure of a beholder (hard to keep those eye stalks out of reach).

Surprised the beholder wasn't addressed in some module. Did the beholder ever appear in any?

AxeMental wrote:Surprised the beholder wasn't addressed in some module. Did the beholder ever appear in any?

In the Gygax era only as a wandering monster in D2. Of course in the 2E era beholders were almost as mandatory as drow.