Question posed by CD Projekt Red

It's a simple question that the game developers asked of their community and just about everyone and is more or less: "You fire your gun at a human enemy 10 levels higher than you - headshot."

What happens?

As I've discussed before there are level based games and non-level based games, so this question is presuming a level based game mechanic.  Within level based games there are those that either grant  Hit Points at a level up or require serious investment in stats, abilities, powers, etc. to get more of them or otherwise acquire pieces that can act as some sort of armor (DR, DT, Ablative) to protect the Hit Points you have.  What this question brings up in the first instance is the concept of 'Area Hits' and this requires a look at Hit Points (HP).  Pushing back the time envelope to the days of paper and pencil gaming, the concept of Area Hits came into being after some dissatisfaction with the way HPs were utilized in most RPGs way back when in the early 1970's.

RPGs used HPs as a generalized indicator of how much damage a Player Character (PC), Non-Player Character (NPC), monster or fortification could take before it was killed or destroyed.  In level based games PCs and NPCs had HPs based on their class and level, while monsters had differing amounts of HPs based on what they were and how tough they were (as a general rule).  Fortifications, installations and the like tended to have some form of HPs that required either very high level attacks or siege equipment to damage.  There were also critical hits or 'double damage' hits that could either incapacitate a being in some way, or do far more damage to them based on the specialized form of attack scenario involved.  Beyond that were armor piercing attacks that could negate half or more of the armor resistance in a DR or DT system, or reduce the effectiveness of Ablative Armor by that amount when considering incoming damage which means it took that damage and ablated it, but didn't take twice the damage as this was finding a way to negate effectiveness of Ablative Armor against a certain attack.  Critical hits could stun, knock someone back, blind them, disable a limb, sever a limb (depending on severity of the critical based on weapon type and skill levels) or even decapitate.  What you couldn't do was AIM an attack to do that sort of damage: it was a critical hit based on random chance moderated by skill level, weapon and armor types, and even savings throws added in for fun.

Basically some of the first systems utilized HPs in a way that was understood but rarely talked about in that all those HPs aren't necessarily to a body but to combat effectiveness which included evasion, dodging, and some level of exhaustion.  In level based systems this meant how well the PC, NPC or monster could avoid taking damage and that most of the damage taken was slowly wearing someone down during the course of combat so that they lost HPs and the rare 'critical hit' was actually getting through to the opponent's actual body.  What that meant is the HPs a PC or NPC has from levels are layered on top of their first level of HPs, though very few people ever ran campaigns that had those two separated due to the amount of record keeping involved.  Regaining HPs was classically just resting for a period of time to recover from combat, using spells or potions and then continuing on the journey.  In general the headshot wasn't something in the early days of RPGs and in most subsequent games, either.  Without a good aiming mechanic the idea of being able to hit a particular part of a target, known as an Area Hit, was out of the question.

By the late 1970's and early 1980's this started to change as new sub-genres got added into the RPG fold: science fiction, military, post-apocalypse, horror and mixtures of same.  In particular the military and post-apocalypse games started to address this as pistols and rifles can be used to target body parts, thus Area Hits became a factor based on the game system used.  What this meant was that body armor, which had also been generalized to applying to the whole body, now had to be segmented into areas they covered.  With that segmentation of coverage also came the segmentation of HPs which then had to be balanced against applied damage.  Each game that utilized the Area Hits system would also utilized either a generalized 'hit anywhere on target and get a proportionate role to see where the hit landed' for damage or direct aim with penalties against a specific body part (usually limbs and head, with Center of Mass shots being the randomized application but weighted to the torso).

With segmenting HPs came the proportion of HPs and their distribution which each system would arrange in their own fashion.  Typically the torso had the largest share of HPs and this could range between 35% to 75% of overall HPs.  As an example if each leg gets 10% of overall HPs, that accounts for 20% of the HPs, and if each arm gets 7.5% that is another 15%, then give 5% to the head which totals up to 40% and 60% goes to the torso.  Rounding up is allowed just to simplify things, thus a character with 100 HPs has: 10 HP per leg, 8 HP per arm, 5 HP for the head and (taking off one point for rounding up on the arms) 58 HP for the torso.  Now if your average .22lr round fired out of a pistol does single 6-sided die of damage (or 1d6 in the parlance of dice used for RPGs), then there is a chance that a head shot will instantly kill a person with 100 HPs in a 2 in 6 chance.  Now it is possible to say that at 0 HP to the head the person is rendered unconscious and put in a 'bleeding out' state, perhaps draining the damage amount per round from the torso or remaining HPs to represent blood loss.

While there is little respect for the .22lr as a combat round, it must be understood that a head shot from a pistol using .22lr can kill someone in a single hit to the head by going through soft tissue to the brain or by forms of internal bleeding that will put pressure on the brain leading to death in a short term.  This is a first instance of how Area Hits started to work in RPGs but had incredibly complex mechanics as each body part suffered a penalty for aiming at it based on overall percentage of area represented in a typical silhouette for targeting.  The head is a relatively small target compared to the overall body, so that targeting the head suffered some severe minuses when targeting.

All of this is still in the paper and pencil era of gaming utilizing a round-based system for segmenting combat based on other factors.  Still the concept of firing on the run meant it was penalized but would also restrict opponent's movement from cover unless they wanted to take a savings throw against the suppression fire.  Saving an action and letting an opponent move to get an opportunity shot was also something that could be done, and when done from cover and either prone or in a firing stance, it meant bonuses to aiming.  Toss in skill, sight or scope adjustments and whatever else the system would feature and a good first hit at replicating combat came into being for RPGs.

Thus the question from CDPR gains an added level to it as they are asking if Area Hits are a thing, and if they are what are the consequences?

Now to the other part of the headshot equation which is armor.  What is poorly understood about  head armor, is that it must leave some capacity for an individual to use their primary senses of sight and hearing.  Early examples of historical head armor typically either were on just the crown of the head and didn't try to address the neck and other parts of the face.  Later forms (and this is seen in Bronze Age pieces) would go much further down, feature ear openings and even a piece over the nose or nose and cheeks.  These pieces would not fare well against primary strikes from an opponent with a sword or an arrow in a well placed strike against the head.  It might be somewhat useful against sling stones and be effective at warding of glancing blows that had been deflected either by skill or a shield (or the opponent just barely hitting while dodging an attack). 

Later eras would try to protect nearly everything and leave slits of various forms for eye openings, but then individuals would suffer penalties in situational awareness when there was more than a single opponent in front or near them.  While not a bad thing for mounted combat, in dismounted combat this sort of restriction to sight and hearing could have fatal consequences.  Still battlefields were messy scrums and protecting against errant blows and glancing blows was still desired.  These later helmets can and did offer protection against main attacks from many types of weapons, which is why they were used and that also explains the wide varieties of styles of them which tried to address the type of combat they were made for.

For a time in the era of firearms, head armor became ornamental or absent, right up to the point when shrapnel was introduced by explosive cannon balls, grenades and mines.  WWI started with no real head armor by any side, but the number of men dying or incapacitated due to concussion and shrapnel soon brought back head armor to thwart that.  Some of the best coverage offered protection from the rear and even was formed to have rain drip out to the sides or further away from the neck while protecting the neck.  In the modern era this function hasn't changed much save to move to laminates replacing metal. A helmet's main function is still that for lessening concussion, deflecting or absorbing shrapnel and generally protecting the head from the environment.  A rifle shot will penetrate it, and even a close range pistol shot will do so to most helmets since it is hard to build up enough protection via layers to absorb the kinetic energy of the projectile to cause it to fragment without transmitting that exact, same energy to the head and thus the brain.

So if hitting an individual with that same .22lr for 1d6 of damage and a helmet has a DT  3, then there is a no chance for either bleed out shot or instant kill, but a 50/50 chance of doing damage if the shot hits the helmet.  Shots that hit but not in the helmet have the prior percentages and damage applied.  Also note that this is now sliding into the real world and brings into question game dynamics when associated with real world events.  Are there instances where helmets have actually stopped major damage?  Yes.  There are also instances where individuals have survived headshots by having a round pass through their helmet, through their skull, through their brain, exit out the rear of the skull and punch through the helmet.  Are these instances damned rare?  Yup.  Should you rely on luck to hope that this is what will happen if you are wearing such stuff?  Probably not.

Part of the major problem with segmented body armor in modern games is that the HPs are not also segmented and allow for real world damage to take place.  Take a game like Fallout 4 where you can target a head in VATS with a heavy damage output weapon, say a Gauss Rifle that has been fully upgraded, and each hit is applied to the entire number of HPs of the individual instead of blowing their head clear off.  With fully upgraded skills to back up such a weapon, its overall damage output is in the 500 to 600 range of damage.  If an opponent has, say, 1200 HP (a higher level Deathclaw, say) and only 10% were in the head that would mean they have 120 HP in the head.  Now you won't be doing full damage unless you are lucky or score a critical hit and in either case the opponent does have some DR so that is factored in. But even at 20% damage applied to a max 600 damage output weapon should yield a one hit kill as that is also a load of kinetic damage applied to the braincase.  At lower ranges a double barrel shotgun blast to a relatively low level opponent will not kill them after using both barrels at point blank range.  Thus the enemies in Fallout 4 are damage sponges meant to take many, many rounds even to the most critical part of their body and keep on coming.  Basically area hits only matter against opponents that can lose a limb or a head and die, typically ghouls though they have spongy heads, and some forms of robot that can adjust to missing limbs.

The answer to the question on headshots is: what type of game are you trying to run?

Is it a power fantasy system?  Then, no, the headshot won't kill and you will have spongy enemies.

Are area hits being implemented?  If no then a critical hit system may be implemented to offer a 'lucky' incapacitating or one hit kill shot, but it is all luck.

If area hits are being implemented then are you also implementing segmented damage per area of the body being considered?  If no then see the prior answer.  If yes then in all likelihood a shot from even a relatively low power projectile can kill someone.  Anyone who scoffs at .22lr shots to the head has yet to volunteer to take one and demonstrate the effects of a relatively high velocity but low applied force projectile to their own head across a small surface area.  Why?  Because you would be committing a form of suicide and most people just aren't up for that.  This isn't even in Dirty Harry territory with a .44Mag, just a simple plinking pistol used mostly to shoot tin cans, bottles and varmints of the rodentia variety.

And in level based games, if only a small percentage of HPs are in the head, then a guy 10 levels higher still won't have many HPs in the head, and the actual number garnered per level is important at that point as a game balance issue.  The fragility of the head, however, is paramount in considering damage applied to it as the brain and major sensory organs for sight, hearing, smell and taste are all centralized in the head.  Further the head has openings for nerve bundles from these senses to go into the brain.  Those playing contact sports can attest to the problems of long term damage to the brain, like in boxing where the damage can be enough to knock an individual unconscious, but even barring that the long term number of impacts to the head will have an effect on reasoning and cognition.  An Area Hits system with segmented armor and segmented HPs then is offering a level of 'realism' for 'immersion', and if you want that to be present in the game then a headshot can and indeed should be lethal.  This is circumstantial as such shots rely on type of force applied (piercing, blunt, kinetic projectile, etc.) and the specific type of effect such damage applies.  A headshot with a sword not mitigated by armor can still have negative effects on an individual.  A blunt trauma instrument like a lead pipe may do enough to knock someone out, but also have a chance for internal bleeding. Specialized attacks that are not thwarted by armor typically have a different game mechanic applied to them and are a separate consideration based on the game type with an example being certain mental or disorienting attacks via mystical, magical or technological means.

Should a well placed .22lr shot take out someone 10 levels higher?  There is no simple answer to that as it presumes a level based system with accruing HPs over time.  This is a problem CDPR has had in the Witcher 3 where all those HPs require better combat gear in the way of armor and weapons as the opponents are outputting more damage, as well.  To keep from making a game a scavenger hunt, why not disconnect HPs from levels, and keep levels to things like acquiring skills that can enhance use of weapons but doesn't change the actual physics of the weapons themselves?  Getting a better chance to hit, a faster reload or even being able to control one's emotions to steady their hands and concentrate are sure great things to have when using a firearm or any weapon, come to think about it.  If base HPs are relatively static that means that weapons and armor can also be made static, though the use of them can become very ingenious.  If this sort of thing is implemented then segmented HPs will allow for even low level individuals to take out higher level ones.  That is how Samuel Colt was able to make men equal, and that weapon is still just as lethal today as when it was first designed.  That goes for all arms since no matter how tough people get, they still have the same physiology and physics applied to them as when the weapon was designed.  Physiological differences for things like cyborgs or robots require game mechanics and game balancing, yet the eye must be kept on the physical world for what these changes will actually do: no benefit is accrued without some form of drawback to it.

I don't know exactly what CD Projekt Red is going to do in the way or 'realism' or 'immersion' but if you want something that has a relatively accurate mirror in real life with its consequences, then the entire set of combat mechanics or elements must revolve around what actually happens when a headshot is landed.  Not all blows are lethal and blows meant to stun, like those in boxing, would require an integrated stunning mechanic that factors in recovery and training, while those utilizing physical projectiles would do far less stunning damage and more immediate damage for impairment and possibly sudden death.  A more static HP system and a grounded base of equipment with weapons means not having to search for marginally better equipment to continue going after marginally more spongy foes and puts the ball in the court of RPG game play and mechanics that don't rely on scavenger hunts.  More meaningful quests and less searching for what are minor upgrades means more role playing and tougher decisions, and that requires a very deep set of stories, individuals, society, groups, factions and their reactions to everything that a player is known to be doing.  Move ingenuity on the part of the player to the forefront and create a stable combat set of elements that play well to role playing while not distracting from the actual stories unfolding, which means fewer busy-work quests to just be a little better in combat and concentrate on all that other stuff that makes role playing games unique.