Aimed Shots and Crippling Injuries

An aimed shot is your way of telling the game that you want more than just damage — you want a specific outcome: blind a gunner, deny a dangerous action, cripple a target’s mobility, or gamble for a critical effect. The price for that choice is a lower chance to hit. Let’s break down how this works in the current version and exactly what crippling injuries lead to.

Why aim at a body part

A regular attack lands “wherever it lands” and simply deals damage. An aimed attack directs the blow at a chosen body part — and each zone delivers its own result on a successful critical hit. But accuracy comes at a cost: the harder the zone, the more your shot’s reliability drops.

Hit penalty by zone

The chosen zone is subtracted from your chance to hit:

• Eyes — −70 (the hardest target);
• Head — −50;
• Arm (left/right) — −40;
• Leg (left/right) — −30;
• Groin — −25;
• Torso — −20;
• No aiming — 0.

The logic is simple: the torso is the almost-safe choice, arms and legs are trickier, and the head and eyes carry the biggest risk of a miss in exchange for the strongest effect. Matching abilities can reduce this penalty (one for the general penalty, and a separate one for the eyes).

A zone doesn’t guarantee the effect

This is the key point that trips up newcomers. The chosen zone does not make the effect automatic. First the attack has to pass the whole chain: hit check → the target’s evasion → critical roll. Only on a successful critical hit does the zone trigger at full strength. Without a crit, an aimed shot remains ordinary damage and pressure — it isn’t required to instantly break a limb or inflict a special injury.

What a critical hit on a zone gives you

On a critical hit, the zone determines the result:

• No aiming — damage ×2.
• Torso — damage ×3.
• Groin — damage ×4.
• Head — damage ×10 (a huge multiplier, but hitting it is hard).
• Eyes — no bonus multiplier; instead they inflict the damaged eyes injury (a pop-up EYE tag).
• Arms and legs — also no damage multiplier: they set the corresponding limb-crippling flag (the ARM / LEG tags).

In other words, the head and torso are about big damage, while the eyes and limbs are about lasting consequences rather than a one-off bonus. Some creatures are simply built so that they don’t lose limbs — they don’t suffer arm, leg, or eye injuries.

Eyes need the right angle

A shot at the eyes counts as “eyes” only if the shooter is standing directly in front of the target (along its line of sight). If the angle is wrong, an eye shot is automatically downgraded to the head. That’s why trying to blind someone makes sense only from certain positions.

Consequences of crippling injuries

Injuries are the “price of victory”: a fight doesn’t end with the loss of health, and a single successful crippling injury can change the entire rest of a run. In the current system, injuries work like this:

• Damaged eyes (or blinding): view distance drops to 20% of normal, and the character can’t aim at all — all their attacks go through without a zone choice.
• Damaged arms: one damaged arm with a two-handed weapon reduces attack reliability by −25. On top of that, with the right ability unlocked you can knock the weapon out of the target’s hands with a “disarm” move: the item in the active slot drops to the ground (a DROP tag).
• Damaged legs: each damaged leg cuts movement speed in half — both on the local map and on the global map. Two damaged legs slow you down fourfold, ruining your ability to keep your distance and retreat.

Limb- and eye-crippling flags persist (this is not a temporary window) and are cleared when the character respawns. Temporary states, on the other hand — blinding (about 10 seconds) and loss of mobility — are danger windows that pass on their own.

Aimed moves with abilities

With the right abilities unlocked, aimed shots gain extra options that don’t require a crit:

• Crippling Shot to an arm/leg sets the limb injury without needing a critical hit.
• Blinding to the eyes starts a blindness timer on the target.
• Disarm drops the weapon from the target’s active hand to the ground.
• Execution: a shot to the head or eyes of a low-health target turns a qualifying shot into a guaranteed critical armor-piercing hit. An EXEC icon lights up over targets within the execution window (35% or less of visible health).

So that such moves can’t be looped, players get a short immunity window after an aimed blinding or disarm — you won’t be able to re-blind or disarm them again right away.

When to aim and when not to

Aiming works best as a deliberate choice, not a habit of always going for the hardest zone. A torso shot is more boring but more reliable. Trying to hit an arm, a leg, or the eyes can swing an encounter — an enemy gunner is easier to neutralize than to kill, and a slowed target won’t run away or flank you — but the cost of a miss is higher. Aim where you understand why you’re risking your chance to hit.