LogFAQs > #974060308

It's not a video game (it's a tabletop RPG), and it's not strictly critical hits, but the original rules for TimeLords ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelords_(role-playing_game) ) divided the body up into different sections, and calculated damage based on different factors and damage types.

So in other words, a called vibrosword shot to the neck has the potential to insta-kill any enemy, while it would be nearly impossible to kill someone by hitting them in the toe with a hammer. The game didn't calculate character health via HP or other point-based systems, but required you to keep track of limb damage and how much of what sort of damage you were doing to any specific body part in order to actually kill someone.

It tracked different damage types based on type (ballistic, slashing, piercing, blunt, explosive, etc) and amount. Based on that you'd calculate whether or not the damage should be applied as "bruising" or "lethal". Then you applied it to about six different target regions (each leg, each arm, torso, head). If a given area took a specific amount of damage, you'd suffer from impairments, and if you took enough it might be fatal (max damage to a limb mainly just sends you into shock and you'll lose the limb, max damage to the head or torso kills).

This was complicated even further by the fact that different types of armor could soak different types of damage in different ways. And armor might cover some areas and not others (so a chestplate would protect your torso but not your arms, legs, or head).

AND there was special damage that counted for the whole body - which didn't add damage to each area equally, but counted as a completely separate measure of damage.

Basically, you pretty much needed a doctorate to play TimeLords. Which was a shame, because it had a great setting (which is why I always used to scrap the rules entirely and just ran the game using different systems).