#218 – Called Shots

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I'm up on top of the bluff. I have my ATL-7, sights are locked in on the Deathhead transport, and I'm aiming directly at the cockpit. What do I need for a called shot, Jacob?

Uh, really, you should be throwing your glass vial that contains thunderstorms out the window, but, uh, it depends on whether you're playing Butts or Ultimate, sir.

Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna roll and you tell me if I hit or not, I guess? Oh, I rolled an 11.

I'm sorry, sir, you are out of luck.

But wait, wait, I— in Ultimate Edition, but I have a bonus of +2 because it's a called aim shot.

Yep.

And I got a 13. Doesn't that hit?

Oh, well, it might.

So we're gonna be talking about called shot. If you have Butts Edition, You have to roll.

Well, let's define what a called shot is.

Let's define a called shot. Uh, called shot is when you're going for the eyes, boo. You are specifically picking out one spot on your target and you're aiming at that spot. And depending on which book you use, which rules you use, it is more or less difficult, kind of. If you're using Buttts Edition, on page 40, it specifically says roll above a 12 hits the target. Nothing about other penalties, nothing about bonuses. It implies it must be a natural roll, but you could argue there. And anything above a 4, so even if you don't hit your target, anything above 4 hits the main body. So with my ATL 7, it's a 3d6 times 10. It's my favorite large overpowered rifle in the entire game, I'm still doing a lot of damage.

I don't think it implies that. It simply says you roll the usual strike.

Okay.

Yeah, it doesn't say no bonuses.

So that's, that's one of the fun things about how certain things are written. It doesn't say natural.

That's true.

Doesn't say natural.

Yeah.

So maybe if I have bonuses, as long as that total's above a 12, I hit.

Okay.

If you flip over to Ultimate Edition, It changes. First of all, on page 361, there's no mention of above a 12.

Right.

There is mention of an aimed called shot, which takes 3 actions.

Yeah, so called shot doesn't have a minimum. You just have to hit.

You just, you just have to hit.

All it does to make a called shot in Ultimate Edition, it just costs 1 additional attack.

No, it's 2. Well, 1 additional action. So it takes 2 attacks.

You also have the option to aim, which costs an additional attack. So you could aim your shot for a +2 bonus.

Right.

You can call your shot to hit wherever you want, or you can aim and call your shot to get a +2 bonus and hit what you want, but it costs you 2 additional attacks.

Now, what's important to know is that with Ultimate Edition, a lot of the things you're gonna pick out are gonna have penalties listed in the description of those targets.

Well, that's in standard too.

Right, but you need to remember Remember those penalties because it makes it actually a bit more difficult.

Oh yeah.

So it's a very straightforward mechanic. Um, it's interesting in Butts Edition that it doesn't take an extra attack. It's just, I'm gonna do a called shot. And that's a little interesting. It's very clearly in Ultimate, and I'm sure somewhere in one of the books between Butts and Ultimate It probably went from 1 to 2 without Ultimate, I'm gonna guess, or at least it was in a different version. I know in Heroes Unlimited it was 2, at least in the second edition. It might have been revised. Others are— it's 2 actions. And I think it's pretty much generally established at this point that a called shot does take 2 actions.

Yeah, generally that's what it appears to be.

When would you use it?

Well, if you wanted to hit something specifically, such as bypassing an armored location, Or shooting the gun out of someone's hand. Yeah. Targeting a specific part of the power armor.

I have seen this used a lot. In my murder hobo days, we had a lot of Coalition Dead Boy armor that had no helmet. Everything else was pristine on that armor, but there was a lot of Dead Boy armors without helmets. And when we'd go to sell that armor, It was always very peculiar conversations with the fence on where the damn helmets were.

It's also useful in, um, the place I saw it happen most, most often, surprisingly enough, was in Robotech Southern Cross, where people ended up doing a lot of called shots. to deal with hostage situations.

Okay.

Yeah, and because I focused heavily on the Zentradi uprising, which falls directly between the two and goes across. So yeah, a called shot is perfect for when you don't want to hit the— you're trying to hit the head rather than the hostage potentially or something else.

The head is the usual target, but other things like sensor suites, power systems, engines, anything that you want to do if you want to just disable the enemy but not kill them. Sometimes you want prisoners.

Sometimes you want to make sure that stupid-ass triax power suit or giant robot doesn't have its missile rack anymore.

Sometimes there's a glitter boy who's driving you up the wall and you want to just blow up their damn gun.

Yeah, always.

And that's always—

And the gun is not encased in the resistant armor. Just so you know.

Well, that's okay.

Meaning lasers hurt it just, just fine. Yeah. Called shots are something that I try and get more people to use. The called shot and the aimed shot. I mean, Rift's characters have so many attacks that I honestly, I think that if they take the time to use something like called shots and aimed shots, they can make combat go much quicker.

Oh, I absolutely agree. Uh, and, and one of the things that it's a little bit of metagame, but I was not really kidding on a lot of the games I've run, the players for salvage just in the game, they're like, if we sit there and riddle the main body, Well, there's nothing to salvage. There's nothing to sell. Right. And so the players would become headhunters, you know, and they like, okay, uh, other taking out big powerful weapons, super, you know, the greatest example. Well, I mean, yeah, Luke used the Force, but hitting that for the exhaust port was a called shot. Right. That's—

Nice, nice Mountaineer you got there. Would be a shame if something happened to one of the tires.

Right.

And your armor problem is super resolved by rotating the target you shoot off. So the first one, you take the head, the next one, you take the arm, the next one, you take the leg and so on. So then you basically will have X minus 1 complete suits and just one pile of parts to rotate between them.

One of the classic shots, even in the intro to Robotech, Is all the called shots to the head or to the eye of the Invid or the Zentradi or whatever, right? Um, it may take you an extra action, but if that extra action means that you take down the opponent that much more quickly, do it.

And especially with the Invid, technically that was a called shot on the pilot compartment.

Right. They're done.

Always kill the meat inside the can first.

I want to say on a lot of them, it was like at least a -4. It might've been like a -6.

It's not an easy shot, but yeah, it depends because Uh, if I recall correctly, some versions of— they introduced the penalty, uh, to hit certain things later.

Oh, okay.

As Robotech went along.

Yeah.

I know at least in Rift's Ultimate Edition, there are suits of armor that are listed as like, these are all the hit locations. The head is particularly small target and hard to hit. So -2 with a called shot or -8 with a called shot or something like that.

And you know what, a -2 or a -4, if you're You've, you've built your character to shoot with a rifle. It's not a big deal. It really isn't.

Those bonuses are difficult to come by, but once you get them, you can totally trick yourself out to just be called shot, called shot, called shot.

Especially between the edition's change of you don't have to get above a 12, you just have to get a hit.

Yep.

Then yeah, away you go.

Yep. Uh, yeah, also just to point out That this— we are talking specifically about called shots. Trick shots from New West and a couple other, uh, the games, completely different animal. Uh, you're gonna have to look up the rules for them and figure out— eventually we'll circle back and figure out how they play together.

Yeah.

But, um, realize that those are 2 separate set of rules that we are not making any statements regarding how they interact at this point.

So something I wanted to add to this, we're talking about— so first off, called shots are only mentioned in the ranged combat section. Technically, it's not a hand-to-hand option. It's up to your GM whether or not they want to apply the same rule. I don't see a reason for it, or I don't see a reason to deny it. You want to specifically target somebody's eyes or something? I don't see why not. That, that, that's classic.

That's Fine.

But sticking with the ranged attacks, we're talking called shots, we're talking maximizing bonuses here, getting all those things so you can take the head out, you know, getting the aimed shot, boost that, boost that attack roll, get the sniper skill, which increases that. Get, get a weapon that has an aimed strike bonus so that when you choose to aim, you don't just get a +2, you get a +2 and the weapon's aim bonus. You can stack that bonus up. I would like to point out On page 346, the description of long-ranged attack or ranged attack. An attack done at a distance using a long-range weapon, magic, or power. Provided the attacker is not seen, the defender automatically loses initiative and may not dodge the first attack that melee round from a long-range attack. So if you really want to maximize that called shot sniper, it's so easy. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, they can't even dodge. Nope.

And it's all up to their armor if they can take it. And that's of course when I'd roll like, you know, 1, 1 on my 4 points of damage on my .46 rifle.

Yeah. But I think that counts as a sneak attack, doesn't it?

It could.

What if they're facing their other direction? That's a critical strike from behind. Yeah.

I mean, it totally could.

Yeah.

Called Shot is a good option. It's right there. It's in the core rules. Page 361 of the Rifts Ultimate Edition is a page that I repeatedly tell people to bookmark because it has all of them very simply laid out in a nice chart of your options. I wish more people would use this instead of just spamming attack over and over again. It saves time. It ensures you're going to do a significant amount of damage to your target and it can speed combat up.

Yeah.

It's one of the advanced combat or special combat moves that I see a lot of players use. Oh, a lot of players will use it.

And here's the thing. You'll get a player who's like, okay, yeah, I want to shoot him in the head. And you're going, okay, that's a called shot. And it's going to take an extra attack. Oh, I don't want to spend that extra attack. Sorry. I'm just going to shoot. Trust me, dude.

It's worth it.

It's worth it.

Because if you've ever looked at the armor descriptions, There's a reason why they tell you how much armor is on the heads and arms and eyes of a lot of this stuff. Like, there's a reason for this. And this is the reason.

That simple assault rifle can blow the arm off of a Plastic Man. Okay.

Right, right, right.

Just gotta aim it.

You can take a suit of power armor or a suit of robot armor and make it combat ineffective For way less damage when you take out the observation window and the, uh, reinforced pilot's compartment.

Oh God, shoot the window out and then chuck a grenade through there.

Yeah, work with a buddy. You know, someone has a grenade launcher, you have a sniper rifle, you both, for 4 actions, you take down the 1,000 MDC suit of power armor, right? Or robot armor, like Done. And then you, then you get a squeegee and a mop and you clean it out and sell it.

They cannot shoot you if they cannot use their hand.

Yeah, that's right.

I would also like to propose a house rule. This is something that we have used a long time in Rifts as the— this is on the other end of the equation, which is the defender, unless the attack is called, gets to decide where they get hit. We've been using that for a long time. It just allows players to kind of maximize where they take their damage. Uh, it creates more survivable player characters.

They throw their arm up, take the hit on their arm one time and another arm. That's a, that's a cool house rule.

Yeah. Very simple.

Yeah.

I would say that that does depend a little bit on which Palladium game you're playing because some of them very Definitively state that shots against especially mecha are to the body, to the body.

Yeah.

And there's special maneuvers you can pull to sacrifice your arms to protect that.

But, you know, but in general, yeah, it's a cool house rule.

I would, for mecha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For mecha, I'd be a little bit more, if there's no like maneuvers for it, then I would stick with that. But if like, you know, Coalition, you're in Coalition, growing armor and someone's shooting at you and you're like, oh shit, my arm's almost gone. I'm going to turn and take it to the butt or something. I don't know. I added that extra NBC pattern back there.

Now, the one thing I will say is point out, uh, besides the butt shots, uh—

You've seen The Great Outdoors?

Yes, yes, I've seen The Great Outdoors twice. Now he's bald on both ends. Uh, one thing I will say that it points out in the book is that called shots need to be with a Single-action type weapon.

Yeah, you can't do a burst.

Right. Now, there are a couple of pulse-fire weapons that specifically state you can make called shots and aimed shots with them. Those were introduced later, but in general, it's a single-shot type weapon. You're not gonna be making this with your, your equivalent of a MAC-6 or, um, an M60, right? Yeah, it's not a full burst thing. Which does put some balance or borders around what you can do, but it's still well within useful for this. Um, some weapons people claim you can't make a called shot. Again, the same dwarf that I was talking about. Yeah, plasma cannons with called shots, really, really nasty and scary. Uh, single shot, single shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to the head. Again, cauterizes the wound. Now you got to get the body out, but—

Sorry, can't make a called shot. With a boom gun.

No, not technically. You cannot do that.

It is a burst.

It is technically a burst weapon. That's a whole other conversation about how railguns work, but no, technically the boom gun is a burst weapon. Do we have anything else?

I think that covers the topic pretty succinctly.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much everyone for listening to us. We enjoy making these as much as you enjoy listening to them. And we hope to do more.

Yeah, please join us on Discord if you have any other situations in which you apply custom called shot rules. If you have a preference to either edition, tell us why. If you— and if you have any other of these options that you want to see us dive into and talk more about, maybe, you know, get more people into using because you're like, why does nobody do this? Let us know. We'll talk about it. It'll be fun.

While you're doing that, contemplate going over to our Redbubble store, getting yourself some Glitter Boys merchandise. Uh, you know, it's the summertime. Maybe you need a new t-shirt. Maybe you need a new blanket for when you're out having your picnic party.

The blankets are nice.

The blankets are nice.

Yeah.

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So yeah.

Haven't been written yet.

Yeah. I'm down to a handful of world books I don't have and a bunch of rifters.

Does any of us need, uh, does any of us have a copy of Lemuria?

I do.

I have several.

Oh, okay, cool.

I do. I think I might even have a hardback copy.

I think I do too. Anyway, thank you everyone.

Yeah, we'll catch you next time.

Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades. by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies, and it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

Thank you.

Have a good one.

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