It’s time for another installment of my monthly advice column, Ask Angry.

Do you want to ask the Angry GM a question? E-mail your brief question to ask.angry@angry.games. Be sure to tell me exactly what to call you in no uncertain terms.

Fguatimosim asks…

I want a called shot system for my D&D 5E game so I can have the players climbing giant enemies to stab their weak points or hitting them in the legs to knock them down, Shadow of the Colossus style. How would you do it?

This is going to be a tough one. See, two giant-a$& red flags make me want to hit the delete key and pretend I never saw this e-mail. They’re both in the first sentence. The first one’s the phrase “called shot” and the second one’s the word “system.”

I hate talking to gamers about called shots. F$&%ing hate it. Gamers are so stupid about called shots. And it drives me f$&%ing nuts.

To be honest, people in general are stupid about called shots. Most people think that stabbing or slashing or shooting anyone in a precise part of their body is trivially easy. Which is why people say stupid things like “police and security officers should be taught in deadly situations to shoot only for the knees.” And gamers — whose only experience with combat is a turn-based game where miniatures stand still in clearly defined spaces trading blows — take this to a pretty stupidly high level.

But let’s put the realism thing aside. I mean, who gives a s$&% about realism, right? Called shots also bring out all sorts of arguments about creativity and clever play and game balance. And GMs are really stupid about that s$&%. I mean, I literally watched two people have a discussion the other day about how hitting someone with a pork chop should do just as much damage as stabbing them with a shortsword. You know, because it’d encourage players to be clever and creative. Well, it certainly does encourage creativity! But it sure doesn’t involve cleverness. There’s a difference between creativity and creative problem-solving. One involves finding an actual solution to a problem. The other involves just flinging whatever you pull out of your a$& at a situation. One belongs in a game. And the other belongs on Wattpad.

But I digress.

The reason I’m bringing this s$&% up is that I’m going to say some terrible things about called shots in a moment. Things lots of gamers are going to object to. For lots of reasons. They’re going to talk about creativity and balance and the realities of deadly force combat. And they’re going to put all that s$&% in the comment section. And I need all of you — not just Fguatimosim — to ignore that s$&%. Thanks.

Speaking of s$&% I hate talking to GMs about, there’s the other red flag in that question. Systems. GMs always want systems. They always want these intricate little perfectly balanced rulesets that tell them how to handle every situation with math so they never have to use their f$&%ing brains. If you try to hand them a nice, simple couple of rules they can keep in their heads and modify on the fly, they will immediately expand those rules into fifteen-pages, abstract, mechanical monstrosities that have nothing to do with anything you said nor anything to do with what might be happening in the game’s world from the characters’ perspectives.

I mean, do you even really need a called shot system for this? Can’t your GMing brain just handle it when a player says they want to climb the 15-foot tall cyclops by the chest hair and stab it in the eye? Didn’t I just write a whole, overlong screed about how GMs are so afraid to rely on their brains that they’re completely missing the entire f$&%ing point of playing TTRPGs instead of video games? I’m pretty sure I did.

With all of that said, I’ll tell you how I handle called shots in my game. If a player in my game calls a shot — and I think the shot’s actually reasonably possible to call — they take disadvantage on the attack roll. And if the attack hits, it deals damage. Because that’s what happens when an attack hits. Unless the attack’s made with a pork chop because give me a f$&%ing break.

That’s it. That’s the entire, mechanical called shot system. A normal attack assumes a certain degree of opportunism. A combatant is trying to land the deadliest blow they can, but they’ve got to accept the reality of the situation and strike at the parts of the foe they can reliably hit. The center of mass, for example, or whichever part the foe presents while they’re dancing around you. If you try to do anything other than that, you’re intentionally decreasing your chance of success. Which mean disadvantage. Easy. Simple. No more rules necessary.

“But Angry,” I hear you asking, “given that system, there’s no reason in the rules why anyone would ever make a called shot!” Yes. You’re right. Good for you for noticing.

Look, called shots are stupid. Generally. They’re just deliberately making things hard on yourself. You’d only ever make a called shot if you had some really compelling reason to do so. If you were trying to do something other than killing the foe the most efficient way possible.

This is where the obnoxious gamers I mentioned above are ready to overcomplicate the s$&% out of my brilliant design with paragraphs upon paragraphs of supposedly carefully balanced called shot effects. “A called shot to the legs deals less damage, but slows the target,” for example. Or “a called shot to the head deals double damage.” GMs love their lists and systems.

But what if, when I hit the foe in the legs, I wasn’t trying to slow him down? What if I was trying to knock him to the ground? Or what if I was hitting him in the leg because I heard about his trick knee and wanted to cripple him? What if I wasn’t trying to deal damage with that blow to the head, what if I was just trying to knock the dude out?

See, what those lists do is ruin all the fun creativity that comes from called shots. First, I don’t believe there’s any good reason to change up the damage based on the hit location. Arms, legs, and heads get hit all the time. Any normal blow can land anywhere. And a blow anywhere can graze a target or it can cripple a target. That’s what the damage roll’s for. You can graze a leg and do one point of damage or you can stab a leg so deep you cut the femoral artery and the person starts bleeding out. You can stab someone in the eye, but catch their superciliary arch, which deflects your blade upward as the person pulls back away from the blow and just ends up giving them a one-point cut along the brow ridge. Or you can land a critical hit, and stick your blade through their eye, into their hindbrain, and out through the back of their skull.

I’m not saying there’s not arguments for changing up the damage for called shots. Any idiot can put together that argument. Trust me. I’ve talked to a lot of idiots about this. What I’m saying is that there’s also an argument for not changing up the damage. And that argument wins because it’s the one that streamlines the system and prevents pages of extra rules no one can ever f$&%ing remember.

As for special effects though? And why would people ever make called shots? Well, that’s up to the players to figure out. See, I don’t need a list of called shot effects because, when a player declares an action, I can just handle that action. When a player has a compelling reason to make a called shot, such as totally blinding a one-eyed creature, I can sure as hell decide whether that’s possible. So, when a player says “I want to put my crossbow bolt through the wyvern’s wing joint and ground it” or “I want to stab the beholder in the big, central eye to disable its anti-magic field” or whatever, my brain can handle that. Maybe it’s just because I have the sort of genius brain that can understand all the poop and fart jokes in Rick and Morty, but I can actually say, “yeah, that’s the sort of thing that could work… roll your attack with disadvantage for the called shot.” And after I see what kind of damage they do, I can say, “well, you just grazed the wyvern; it’s unstable in the air and attacks against it will have advantage until the start of its next turn.” Or I can say, “wow, that’s a good hit. You injured its wing joint. It can’t gain height and it’s going to take disadvantage on all attacks while it’s in the air until its next rest.” Or I can say, “nice crit. You crippled its wing. It crashes to the ground, taking 15 falling damage. It’s prone and it definitely can’t fly anymore.”

In short, I listen to what the player was trying to accomplish and I look at the damage roll, and then I…

…wing it.

Sorry.

And that’s not all my amazing brain can do. My brain can also — wait ‘till you f$&%ing hear this — my brain can also adjust stats on the fly. So, if the heavily armored knight takes her helmet off for some stupid reason, and one of the PCs tries to brain her, I can treat her unprotected gourd as an unarmored target. Which probably balances out the disadvantage. And if a PC dive-rolls under the frilled spinadillo and stabs it in its underbelly, I’ll ignore some of its natural armor.

Called shots are situational. They should be situational. Generally, they’re the wrong choice. But in the right situation and as part of the right clever plan, they can be very effective. The average player will rarely make a called shot because they take brainpower to use right. And that’s how it should be.

And that’s why the rules should be really, really simple. Like two sentences, tops.

When making a weapon attack, a character can make a called shot at a specific part of a larger target by taking disadvantage on the attack roll. Based on the player’s stated intention and the damage roll, adjudicate the effect with your brain.

See, the problem with situational rules is that they rarely come up. And that means that they don’t stick in people’s heads. Everyone remembers the rules of ability checks, attack rolls, damage, and even general spellcasting because that s$&%’s always happening. Everyone struggles with the grappling rules because they just don’t practice using them enough.

Situational stuff, by the way, is precisely the reason the GM was invented as a game mechanic. The GM is there because the rules couldn’t ever handle every possibility imaginable. So, the creators added a human brain.

Quite frankly, the whole “take disadvantage and then explain the trick you want to pull” rule for called shots can also now encompass tripping, disarming, sundering, dealing non-lethal damage, knockouts, crippling, pinning someone’s cloak to a wall with a bow, or just about anything else. It’s a general “I want to do something with this attack other than just deal damage efficiently.”

None of this is to say that I don’t sometimes create situations knowing full well a called shot’s possible. And that it’s probably the best way to handle the situation. Yes, I sometimes purposely build the possibility of specific called shots into my monster stats. Sometimes, my stat blocks will say things like, “and if a character cuts off the manscorpion’s tail, it can’t use its stinger attack.” And just because I want the players to figure that s$&% out for themselves, that doesn’t mean I don’t telegraph it during play either. I definitely do. But it’s, again, situational. Basically, if I have a specific monster with a specific kind of attack and a specific bodily part that screams “weak point,” I make sure I’m ready for that s$&% during play.

Not only that but I also purposely make monsters that are hard to beat using normal means. And when I say “hard to beat,” I don’t mean they have a high armor class or lots of hit points. I mean they f$%& with the players’ normal tactics or abilities.

Take that manscorpion I just mentioned. In addition to the weapons he’s holding in his beefy man-arms, he’s also got a long scorpion tail. And I want the players to feel like that tail’s a game-changer. First, I let the manscorpion make a free attack with his tail whenever anyone enters a space adjacent to him. That’s in addition to normal opportunity attacks. Second, the manscorpion gets a bonus attack each round with his tail.

Of course, the dirty little secret here is that two weapon attacks and a bonus tail attack is no different than a multiattack option that allows the same. And you can use the monster building math to balance out the damage output. And even include the freebie tail opportunity attack too. Though I’ll tell you below why I probably wouldn’t balance out the damage output.

The reason to make these things bonus attacks though is that when you — as a GM — declare that the monster is making bonus attacks, it feels like the monster’s doing something other monsters can’t do. Maybe like the monster’s even cheating a little. And that’s the trick to getting players to think and play creatively.

See, lots of GMs complain to me that their players never get creative. And they’re desperate to fix the problem. Which is why that pork chop damage conversation even happened. But most GMs don’t understand how to actually fix the problem. Giving players more options doesn’t make them more creative. Desperation breeds creativity.

Since I’m wandering way off topic already, I’ll give you the secret of getting your players to play creatively. And also to use consumables more, since that’s also a thing GMs complain about. The secret is to think like a murderer. Or at least like someone trying to get away with murder. The secret is to think about the players’ motive, means, and opportunity.

The motive’s the players’ reason for changing up their tactics. For being creative. What you have to remember is that playing creative is hard and it’s risky. It’s really easy and it’s pretty safe to just use whatever basic options are written down on your character sheet. The game’s balanced so if you just press the buttons on your character sheet, you’re going to win pretty much every time. Creative play is a lot riskier. And it’s also a lot harder to come up with your own ideas than to just use the pre-programmed ones.

Once upon a time, creative play was the only style of play because there was no such thing as game balance and there were no options on the character sheet.

The manscorpion gets bonus attacks whenever you approach it. Or when you try to move near it. Or when you stand anywhere near it. If you’re a melee combatant, you’re screwed trying to fight the thing.

More generally, whenever a monster breaks the rules or has a dangerous ability or impedes the players’ ordinary modes of play, there’s a motive for creative play.

I’ll do opportunity next. A situation presents an opportunity for creative play when there’s something the players can interact with that could change the situation. The manscorpion’s bonus attacks and poison and extended reach are connected very specifically to its tail. A long, slender appendage that sticks way off its body. Now, that’s not a very strong opportunity. I’ll talk about that in a moment. But it is an opportunity. It’s a specific element of the encounter that’s causing the players’ woes.

When the players actually have the power to do something about the problem, that’s the means. When you’re fighting an ice dragon, for example, the fact that it’s made of ice presents the opportunity. Because fire melts ice. And the burning hands spell or +1 flametongue longsword on your character sheet? That’s the means. In the manscorpion’s case, the means is the existence of the called shot rule.

Actually using this approach to create situations to which most players will respond creatively is an art, though. It’s something you have to get good at. If you make everything too obvious — like the ice dragon plus fire spell situation — the players aren’t being creative. They’re just pushing buttons. It takes no brain power to exploit a weakness built into the game that everyone knows about when you have the means to exploit it already built into your avatar. That’s half the reason why those called shot effect lists ruin called shots. Because they pre-program the results. The other half of the reason is they’re way too limited. My game has an infinite list of called shot effects. Your list has maybe a dozen. Because my brain.

At the same time, though, the players have to recognize the opportunity and figure out how to exploit it. The less obvious the opportunity and the means of exploiting it, the less likely any given player will figure out a solution in time. And the harder it is to exploit the situation, the stronger the motive needed to push players to try to exploit it.

It’s a tough balancing act. And I think of it in terms of trying to find the right settings for each of the knobs: motive, means, and opportunity.

The motive knob’s the most important one. As I said, players aren’t inclined to be creative and the game says “that’s just fine, don’t tax your little player brain. I got you.” Meanwhile, GMs are afraid to tweak the motive knob because it basically amounts to screwing the players enough that they have to get creative. And if they don’t get creative — or can’t find a creative solution — they’re probably f$&%ed. The characters might lose a lot of resources. They might have to run. They might die.

Retreating, by the way, is precisely the sort of tactic that fits this motive, means, and opportunity model really well. So are called shots. And hitting people with pork chops. Players don’t retreat, first of all, because they rarely feel threatened enough to retreat. Because the game has trained them to expect that every encounter is totally winnable. Even in a crunch. And they don’t retreat, second of all, because the game doesn’t really offer them any reasonable chance of actually getting away.

Now, danger’s the easiest way to tweak the motivation knob. But it’s not the only way. Changing the goal also works. When the players want to take an enemy alive instead of killing it efficiently, for example, they’ve got to get creative. Or they would if f$&%ing D&D 5E didn’t just say, “you know what, you can just decide to not kill when you stab people; no, no, don’t take a penalty or nothing; don’t even sweat it, bro.” So, when the players are in town and a fight breaks out in the inn where the antagonists aren’t evil and the players don’t want to commit actual murder, they don’t have to do anything different. They can just pull out their weapons and stab non-lethally.

The opportunity knob, meanwhile, is all about presentation. It’s about calling attention to the thing in the situation that the players can interact with. Some opportunities are obvious. Some less so. Especially when the game’s mechanics don’t make them obvious. See, D&D has become this game of specific rules and exceptions-based mechanics. This means it’s trained players and GMs to think that if something’s not specifically mentioned, then it doesn’t exist. Thus, calling attention to an opportunity can be really hard. And most GMs are afraid of being too obvious, so they end up being too subtle.

In that module I just published, The Fall of Silverpine Watch, I advised GMs to repeat anything they wanted the players to notice at least three times. If it’s important, say it thrice. That’s what it takes to get the players to hear it once. I’m a very repetitive GM. I say the same things in the same words over and over. If I were running a fight with that manscorpion, I’d mention his long, slender, whip-like tail stretching ten feet from his body at least three times. In the first f$&%ing round. And I’d use the same words each time. Long. Stretched. Slender. The tail would practically scream, “look at me hanging way out here just waiting to be cut off.” And to increase the motive, I’d make it look really dangerous too. It’d be barbed. Blood red. Dripping with black venom. It’d be incredibly painful when the poison took effect. Hell, it’d sound like the players were fighting a scorpion tail and his sidekick, a manscorpion.

The setting on the means knob is entirely about how many pieces the players have to put together to exploit the opportunity. With the ice dragon, the means knob is set pretty low for any player with some fire magic. But the knob’s turned a bit higher for players who have some vials of lantern oil on their person. The thing is, though, that the means knob is where all the sense of accomplishment really lives. As I said above, if the means are “press X to exploit opportunity,” there’s no creativity and most players won’t feel terribly accomplished.

That’s why I handle called shots the way I do. Because I want to challenge the players. I don’t just want an exercise in creativity, I want a game of creative problem-solving. Consequently, I tend to focus on the motive knob, occasionally turn up the opportunity knob, and mostly rely on the players to figure out the means. Sometimes, I’ll create a situation that’s got a high motive for creative problem solving without knowing, myself, how the players might solve the problem.

My job is to create problems and give the players an incentive to solve them. I let them create the solutions. Of course, if the stakes are high, I at least make sure there’s an easy out. Not an easy win, mind you, but an easy out. An escape route. A chance to surrender. A way to forfeit.

Speaking of focusing on the motive knob, I want to go back to that balance thing. Remember how I said I could totally keep the manscorpion’s damage output balanced by the rules even if I used bonus actions and free reactions instead of opportunity attacks and multiattacks. Well, I could do that. But I probably wouldn’t. Depends on what I was trying to pull off.

See, there’s a difference between “this is a normal fight but you can make it easier by being creatively clever” and “this is a fight that’ll really wreck you unless you make it easier by being creatively clever.” And beyond that, there’s “this is a fight you probably can’t win unless you make it easier by being creatively clever.” If you want true, creative problem solving, you have to be willing to push past the “normal, but easy if handled smart” to the “dangerous or f$&%ing deadly unless handled smart” territory.

Oh, I’m not saying I’d make my manscorpion totally unbalanced. He’d be perfectly balanced — assuming his tail had been cut off. Until then, he’s a f$&%ing nightmare.

And that brings me back to the impetus for your question, Fguatimosim. If I were making a game about fighting giant colossuses, I’d probably work in the “dangerous or deadly unless you play smart” end of the pool. A simple set of called shot rules is enough to create a means for players to exploit. But you also need to push that motive up.

What I’d personally want is some sort of damage scaling system. D&D should have one of those anyway. Something twice as tall as a person is roughly four times as strong and eight times as heavy. That s$%& won’t just hit hard, that s$&%’s dealing damage on a whole other level. But D&D doesn’t handle damage scaling well at all. And I, frankly, want damage to scale past the point of balance. Especially given things like siege weapons and ships and buildings all use the same rules for hit points and damage as people.

Here’s how I’d handle it. Whenever a weapon attack’s source — normally the source is the creature making the weapon attack, but in the case of free-standing weapons that operate under their own mechanical power like trebuchets and catapults and mechanical traps, the source is the weapon itself — whenever a weapon attack’s source is more than one size category different from the target, the sizes of all the attack’s damage dice are increased or decreased for each size category of difference. Yeah, the wording’s clumsy. If I were writing a rulebook here instead of answering an e-mail, I’d polish that more.

Basically, if a medium-size creature or a medium-size siege weapon or a medium-size trap was attacking a small-, medium-, or large-size creature, everything’s normal. But if the medium-size creature’s attacking a huge creature, all the dice they roll for damage — all the dice — are scaled down one size. If they’re attacking a gargantuan creature, the dice are scaled down two sizes. And if they’re squishing something tiny, all the dice are scaled up one size.

Now, that’s a pretty simple rule by itself. In unbalances the game rules just enough to making fighting colossuses scary, but not crazy deadly. Moreover, though, it’s an imbalance the players can see. Whenever they’re told to scale down their dice and whenever the GM says, “and because the colossus is huge, I have to scale its damage dice up,” they are reminded that the rules are getting as broken as their characters will be unless they come up with a smart plan.

And that’s why you don’t just build the increased damage into the monster’s stats or give them resistance or whatever. Remember, it’s all about presentation.

“But Angry,” I hear you asking, “by a strict reading of those rules, won’t halflings and other small PC races suffer when fighting large-size creatures?” Yes. You’re right. Good for you for noticing.

And with that, you have the three components of a good Shadow of the Colossus D&D game where, if the players want to kill something the size of a cathedral, they’d sure as hell better be smart about it.

First, you’ve got the called shot system that allows a character to make a called shot against any part of a target by taking disadvantage on the attack roll. That general rule alone, with nothing else attached and no other special effect, is all it takes to give players the means to exploit the colossuses’ weaknesses. Well, the start of the means. They’ve still got to figure s$&% out. And you can write in the specific effects on a per-colossus basis or just ad hoc them as you see fit.

Second, you’ve got the damage scaling rule that makes fighting anything too much bigger than you a dangerous prospect. Colossusses dish out more damage in an unbalanced, rule-breaking way. And they suffer less damage too.

However, I would add an exception to the called shot rule based on the scaling rule. That is if a creature is so small your damage is scaled up, called shots are impossible. And if a creature is so large that your damage is scaled down, called shots don’t impose disadvantage. You can hopefully see both the logic and how this interacts with the means and motive knobs.

Third, you have your own f$&%ing brain. That’ll let you call attention to opportunities during encounters, or to build opportunities into your encounters and monster stats. Single, huge eyes for example, or wings, or skinny legs, or bronze plugs in the heels, or glowing red weak points to stab for massive damage. Your brain will also let you adjust stats on the fly or give specific stats to specific weak points. You can specify different ACs, for example, or different vulnerabilities or resistances. Hell, just making a weak point vulnerable to all forms of damage to counteract the scaling effect is probably enough. But you can also specify or adjudicate effects that might happen on really good hits. And you can complicate this s$&% with damage thresholds for specific bodily parts if you must.

The point is the system itself is really simple. It’s built on two simple rules anyone can keep in their head and that provide a basic motive and means for creative play. The rest of the system is about using those rules and your own brain to design and specific encounters and specific monsters. You know, the part of building games that’s actually f$&%ing fun.

I hope that’s enough of a system for you. If not, well, I’m sure you can find ways to unnecessarily overcomplicate the whole thing. You are a gamer, after all.