(Darrin) I fail to see how going for the groin makes one a dick. We all know that most things have vulnerable areas and when you want to bring something down fast, the best way is to target those vulnerabilities. A kick in the junk is often a good way to incapacitate a human male without killing them. So please explain how wanting to end a fight quickly = dickage.

I’m definitely making a gross generalization here, but we’re coming at it from different perspectives. There are lots of perfectly valid reasons why a player might want to have their PC smack someone in the nuts, and yours — to end the fight quickly — is one of them.

If you’ve never run into this as a red flag, so much the better. I haven’t enjoyed any of the con events where it’s served as a red flag, but that’s just my experience. At its heart, this is a social issue that just happens to involve mechanics.

(Rocket Lettice) Kudos to Martin for posting a topic that allows us to refer to genitalia figuratively and repeatedly.

I had fun with this one myself. I swear fairly frequently in real life, but I don’t often have much call to do it in TT posts. The occasional exception is refreshing.

I guess I have just never had the problem of a player using any specific maneuver to be a jerk. Any time I have had a player attempt any sort of called shot, it has been appropriate and the player was quite willing to deal with a reasonable penalty to pull off the maneuver.

Let’s recap: Nuts. Dick. Nards. Tool. Nads. Greatclub. Groin. Junk. Jimmy. Paladin. Worm. Marbles. Twig and Two Berries.

I know some of those weren’t really phallic references, but they looked so good on the list…

As noted it makes a good red flag to check if the player is roll playing or roleplaying.

I try to avoid Called Shots personally. It makes me have to do more work

That usually takes care of the problem.

I must admit that male members of the party were more interested in certain types of armor.

If we’re playing D&D, and a player tries that, I’ll ask him to cite the rules on it, and where they’re found. I’m not stopping combat so we can make up some game-breaking mechanic on the spot.

If a player wants to do something just for the “cool” factor, it’ll probably happen, and I may even make up some cute little mechanic for it. (Take a penalty to your attack roll. If you succeed, the target has to make a Fort save; the DC is 10 + the penalty you took.)

However, I’ll make sure that everyone knows this is a rare occurrence.

And he wasn’t really a “spotlight hog”, although he did take up a bit more time than a few other players (but not so much as to really consider him greedy). However, he didn’t use called shots.

Often, he’d just describe what he wanted his character to do, and we’d use an attack roll to figure out how successful he was. Each round, he would say something like “my character will jump on the table, kick one hobgoblin in the face, and lunge at another with his blade”. And we’d just make an attack roll (as if he were using two-weapon fighting), and take it from there.

Personally, I loved it, because it meant that he was paying attention. And that’s something that should be remembered – a player that wants to do things like a “Called shot to the nuts” and other stuff that could be “cool” is probably really into the game. So, while it could be considered a “red flag” in many situations, the exact opposite can also be true – it could just mean that you’re doing a killer job running the game.

Then theres always the fact that most creatures and people who fight would come to expect a kick to the nads in a fight, thats why most suits of armor have some sort of hard protection over them, usally called a cod piece.

Spiked armor anyone?

I could also see just see a hobgoblin training sargent walking down a line of recruits kicking each one just to toughen then up and forceing them to built up a immunity.

General rule for me would be if it gets laugh, you should let it go.