Taking the Hit

Ages ago, Johannes mentioned something about wanting an option in D&D for a character to voluntarily take a hit in order to get some bonus. For instance, he might do so to draw his opponent's weapon out of the way, or to protect the party wizard, or whatever.

The problem with allowing this is the core system is that the abstract nature of damage and hit points in D&D doesn't really make allowance for such actions, in the same way that it doesn't allow for specific injuries.

(Case in point: the PCs capture an enemy warrior. They tie said warrior up, and interrogate him. Then, as punishment for his crimes, they decide to cut off his hands. How does the system adjudicate this? It doesn't, and with a good reason: it would really suck if that happened to a PC, and anything allowable for a PC has to be allowable for an NPC. That's a weakness in the system, though, since the action is certainly a reasonable thing to want to try.)

Anyway, in terms of the taking the hit question, there are two problems. Firstly, if the warrior wishes to take the hit in place of the wizard, he might reasonably expect his armour to have some impact on the success of the blow. This, if allowed, causes a huge problem - the warriors in the group can then cluster around the wizard, rendering him immune to damage. This isn't so much a problem when tried by PCs; it's a major problem when the NPC wizard hires a bunch of peasants to stand around in full plate and take attacks for him.

The second problem is one of hit points. Let's assume that the character basically wants to allow his opponent to stab him, to thus get the opponent's weapon out of the way (as was done in the Wheel of Time, and as is a really stupid thing to do in combat, but anyway). Alas, even if the 10th level Fighter takes an automatic hit as a result of this, he probably has a hundred hit points, and can just shrug it off.

So, here's what I would suggest: If a character wishes to voluntarily take a hit, that character automatically foregoes the benefits of his armour class. In fact, the character automatically takes damage from the attack as though he has taken a critical hit from the attack. Sneak attack damage applies to this attack as well, if applicable.

Two more vicious variants are possible: after the character takes the hit, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage taken), or die (essentially, giving a free coup de grace to his opponent). Alternately, the character takes a normal (non-critical) hit. Sneak attack damage does NOT apply. However, the damage done applies to the character's Constitution, rather than his hit points.

Truth be told, I don't like the notion of a character voluntarily taking a hit any more than I like the notion of characters taking called shots to specific body parts, or facing the possibility of permanent injuries. But, if I were implementing this sort of thing, that is how I would do it.