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{{trope}}
[[Subsystem Damage]] is the opposite of [[Critical Existence Failure]]. It is when individual body parts can be targeted or damaged, or when physical effects impede your character, such as limping or shaky aim.
Subtrope of [[Multiple Life Bars]]. See also [[Cognizant Limbs]], for the [[Boss Battle]] variety.
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{{examples}}
== Arcade ==
* ''Phoenix'' has attack waves where the player's spaceship is threatened by a flock of large birds. They can be killed by a shot to the body, or damaged by shooting their wings. The wings regenerate after a few seconds, giving skilled players a chance to rack up lots of points [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|at the bird's expense]].
* In ''Bosconian'', the goal is to destroy several space stations in each wave. A station can be blown up with a single direct shot to its core, or the player can attack the six pods around the station's perimeter, which progressively disables the station's weapons. Once all six pods are destroyed, the station blows up anyway.
* The arcade weapon-fighting games ''Time Killers'' and ''Bloodstorm'', both by Strata, both have a feature that allows the player to target and sever one or both of their opponent's arms. ''Time Killers'' also gives players the possibility of [[Off with His Head|lopping off their opponent's head]] (resulting in an instant victory), while ''Bloodstorm'' removes the beheadings but adds the ability to cut off the opponent's legs at the torso. The opponent can [[Only a Flesh Wound|continue to fight without arms]], [[Major Injury Underreaction|and even without legs]], but any attacks or special moves requiring the use of a missing limb cannot be performed, and legless opponents can barely move.
== First Person Shooter ==
* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' has separate health for each body part of an entity. As each is damaged, a corresponding change occurs: if your arms are hit you can't aim as well or use two-handed weapons, if your legs are hit you can't run (or you can only crawl if both are "dead"), if your head is hit your vision becomes murky. You can also choose to heal individual body parts.
* ''SiN'' had different armor points for legs, torso and head.
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* Occurs with the player's interface in ''[[Halo: Reach]]'''s "Lone Wolf" epilogue.
* The ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' series has a system where from 40-100 health, your character runs normally, from 2-39 health, you begin to limp and move more slowly, then at one HP, you're reduced to a snail's pace limp.
* ''The Terminator 2029'' implements this with the various systems, in addition to standard health. They get fixed using an autorepair system.
== Real Time Strategy ==
* ''[[Cortex Command]]'': Since all of your units are machines, the game allows your characters to be almost fully dismembered and keep on ticking. Lose an arm? No more two-handed weapons. Lose a leg? Hop. Lose both arms? Ram into the enemy. Lose both legs? Use your rocket pack to get around. Being dismembered even makes you lighter (good for flying) and smaller (good for mining.)
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' does this for every living organism except vermin, tracking damage on down to individual fingers, toes, organs, and even nervous tissue. In certain earlier editions, without taking into account surrounding tissue. It was at one point perfectly possible to take both of someone's ears off with a single arrow without hurting the head in-between.
** Which is why sponges are practically impossible to kill in combat - they don't have vital organs. A single Giant Sponge can flypaper a whole invasion of zombies just by sitting in a pond near their way - they could claw at it forever.
* ''[[Homeworld]] 2'' both uses and subverts this. Capital ships have subsystems like engines and guns, but they also have a [[Hit Points]] meter, depleting which causes [[Critical Existence Failure]] regardless of the status of their subsystems.
* ''Spellforce'': Critically injured characters have reduced speed, making it easier to catch up with them when they [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|try to flee]].
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* ''[[Star Ruler]]'' uses this: Weapons, armour/shields, engines, "support" etc. are all put together on a blueprint and can be individually damaged to put out of commission.
▲== Turn Based Strategy ==
* The ''[[Front Mission]]'' series gives each mech separate [[Hit Points]] for their body, left arm, right arm, and legs. If an arm dies, you can't use any weapons equipped on it and if the legs die movement is limited to one square (visually they appear badly damage rather than completely destroyed). If the body dies though, the entire unit dies, which tends to make shooting the other parts a waste of time. Unfortunately, [[Luck-Based Mission|you have no control over where your shots hit]], although certain skills can make it more likely.
** Actually, aiming for limbs CAN be useful, at lest in Front Mission 3, as if you destroy several of them, enemy soldiers will sometimes surrender, allowing you to capture their machine. You can then either sell it, let one of your characters use it or split it into parts which can then be equipped on your other machines.
*** In Front Mission 4, you can often stop snipers and Bazooka Mechs by destroying the arm holding the gun, and those Arms have significantly less health than bodies do. Destroying the other arm reduces the mechs accuracy.
** The highly contested]] [[Third-Person Shooter]] [[
* In the rare case that an ''[[X-COM]]'' soldier hasn't been instantly killed by whatever hit him, the body part that wound up getting hit suffers from this. Though damage may be spread across the head, torso, and individual arms and legs, the most common malaise is sending a [[Red Shirt]]'s accuracy [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|even further into the toilet]].
* The ''Earthsiege''-universe computer game, ''Cyberstorm'' used this for your mecha's dozen or more systems, generally reducing performance in a linear fashion as damage accumulated. The enemies in single-player did not have subsystems until ''Cyberstorm 2''... where your giant cannons, once quite effective at killing, suddenly gained an annoying tendency to "critically hit" an enemy's arm, rather than put a hole in the chassis.
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* ''[[Lost Souls MUD]]'' has limb-based hit points, and you can get mental disorders from being smacked in the head.
* ''[[Vagrant Story]]'' does this for Ashley and most enemies.
* ''[[Wild
* ''Colosseum: Road to Freedom''; part of the HUD showed a figure, which would start out colored green. If the hero was attacked on his right arm, the figure's arm's color would change, from green to yellow to red. If a leg was hurt beyond red, the hero's speed would decrease dramatically. If it was the arm, he could no longer attack or defend with it. Lose too many use of limbs, or lose the torso and head, and you'd lose the match.
* ''[[Dead Island]]'' zombies can be hit in the head, torso, abdomen, and upper or lower sections of both arms and legs, all for different amounts of damage and crippling them in a multitude of ways. Taking out the legs of a fast zombie or amputating the arms of a brute zombie are often the best ways to kill them. Headshots, of course, do the most damage, but can be extremely difficult on a weaving, ducking, running/stumbling zombie... and the more powerful zombies can take several headshots, so removing their arms and legs first is almost required.
* ''[[Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria]]'' has this for enemy monsters. You can attack, and break, individual limbs and other appendages for either [[Twenty Bear Asses|item farming]] or to reduce the enemy's
* ''Last Rebellion'' has this as an important feature in its battle system: if you targeted the right parts in the right order, you can maximize the damage you do.
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* ''[[Star Raiders]]'' (1979) was one of the earliest examples of this. Your ship's shields, engines, weapons, targeting computer, and scanners could be damaged or outright destroyed.
** To be fair, the game would never destroy a combination of systems that left the player ''completely'' helpless; there would always be just enough systems (barely) functional to allow the ship to limp back to a starbase.
* The earlier ''[[
** Its sequel, ''[[TIE Fighter]]'', had an even more improved system, allowing individual turbolaser turrets to be taken off capital ships, as well as nearly every subsystem. Taking enough time, one could completely strip a ship down to little more than a hull floating in space.
*** Given even more time and a fighter with strong enough shields to withstand a few turret shots, it's possible to single-handedly disable enough weapons that a capital ship can no longer hurt you. Then you can disable the engines so it sits still in space, and then you rest an object on the fire button, go drink a coffee, and return to your ship firing lasers at nothing, the capital ship now reduced to a few chunks of hull floating around.
** The next sequel, [[
* ''[[Star Trek: Bridge Commander]]'' has this in abundance. Damage depends on where you hit and how strong you set your weapons, you can target everything down to individual torpedo tubes and phaser arrays, subsystems can be disabled but reparable or completely destroyed, doing so affects the ships's performance (an especially effective tactic is to knock out the enemy's sensor array as that renders them unable to target you and return fire), and the 3D models show realistic battle damaged, to the point where you can punch holes all the way through or lop off engine nacelles. Destroying the warp core/Power plant kills a ship/station outright even if they are probably over 50% percent integrity
* ''[[Star Trek Starfleet Command]]'' lets you knock down an enemy's shields and beam commandos on-board to knock out subsystems. Ships generally don't blow up until they've lost so much functionality that they're reduced to drifting pieces of junk.
* ''[[Free Space]]'' and ''Freespace 2'' allow it both ways, and have specialized weapons just for this purpose. You can even have your own radio shot out and be unable to call for resupply/repair, and incoming transmissions/dialog will be garbled and distorted. Individual batteries on capital ships can be taken out if they are harassing you, or entire operational systems completely destroyed. However, the trope is averted in the sense that most ships have [[Hit Points]] independent of their subsystems, and blow up when those are depleted regardless of any other damage done to them.
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* ''[[BattleTech]]'' is all about this. Not only do the 'mechs have locational damage for the limbs, three torso locations (left, right, and center), and the head, but the individual subsystems, weapons and so on that are contained within them can be damaged too. This means you can trigger ammunition explosions that tear one apart from the inside, disable the gyroscope so it falls over, or go for a critical hit directly on the pilot...
** ''[[BattleTech]]'' is in the unique situation wherein it has both [[Critical Existence Failure]] and this. A single hit on the cockpit, or 3 engine hits will instantly kill a mech, and any given shot has a small but non-zero chance of doing this. At the same time, you could have a mech with both arms and both side torsos blown off, no armor left, 2 engine hits, a single gyro hit and both hips damaged and it will still be able to move around and keep firing if it has weapons on the head or center torso.
* The RPG ''[[
* ''[[GURPS]]'' uses fairly generic hit locations as an optional rule but then adds on different effects based on damage type. The ''Martial Arts'' supplement added hit locations like veins and arteries as valid targets. Vehicles also have a system of hit locations and spaceships get a different version.
* ''WARMACHINE'' uses this faithfully on everything large enough to warrant it. Every Warjack has a 6 column damage chart with a variable number of ablative "armour" squares in each column. After you hack through those, you start damaging vital systems which have real penalties when they fail. After enough systems give out, the 'jack shuts down.
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* ''[[Deadlands]]'' has this, with five health levels per region. Five levels of damage will potentially destroy any region of your body, which in the case of head or torso is deadly. In addition, most armour is very specific about which regions it protects.
* In the advance set of ''Formula D'' rules, rather than having a set of 18 wear-points (acting as standard [[Hit Points|HP]]), cars (if not playing customized cars or characters) have 6 tire WP, 3 brakes, gearbox, body and engine WP as well as 2 road-handling/suspension WP, should a player lose the engine, suspension, gearbox, body points, they're out of the race, if they overshoot a curve by one space and have 1 tire WP left, they spin out, start in first gear and spend a turn for turning around (if they had overshot a curve by an amount of spaces that would put tire WP in negative, they would be eliminated).
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', of all places. When some developers tired of [[Padded Sumo Gameplay]], they introduced in ''Player's Option: Combat & Tactics'' and ''Player's Option: Spells & Magic'' a variant combat resolution system where critical hits caused non-[[Hit Points|generic]] injuries appropriate for [[Damage Typing|damage type]] with random severity adjusted by relative sizes of the weapon and hit creature, from bleeding to broken bones to having body parts severed/crushed/incinerated/dissolved/etc.
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** Almost every [[LARP]] use it. You can save considerable time just naming the ones that ''don't'' use this trope.
* In ''[[Monster Labs]]'', monsters are killed if they sustain too much damage to their torso, while destroying arms, legs and head impair their fighting (and fleeing for legs). Though if they loose everything ''except'' the torso, they also die.
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' and ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots|4]]'', shooting an enemy in the leg will cause them to limp. Arm injuries will cause his hands to shake and decrease their firing accuracy. [[Boom! Headshot!|Headshots are always fatal]] unless they're wearing helmets.
* In the ''[[Naval Ops]]'' games, your ship can lose the ability to launch aircraft if the deck is damaged. Damage to the engines reduces your speed to a crawl, and a hull breach will eventually cause engine failure due to flooding. And a hit to the rudder will make it very difficult to change course.
* ''[[Dead Space (series)|Dead Space]]'' is all about system damage as a core part of the gameplay. [[Our Zombies Are Different|Necromorphs]] can take a huge pounding in general damage before [[Critical Existence Failure]] kicks in. However, targeting extremities can remove [[An Arm and a Leg]] quite easily. One limb removed will not stop them, but will impair their lethality appropriately (lost arms mean one less claw to rake the player, [[Kneecapping|lost legs]] mean they have to crawl along the ground, [[Off with His Head|lost heads]] cause them to charge while swinging blindly, etc.) and enough limbs lost will kill them outright.
* This is a major gameplay mechanic in ''[[World of Tanks]]'', where you can hit specific subsystems on opposing tanks (their treads, fuel tank, engine, ammo rack, etc.) and preventing them from functioning properly until their crew fixes it (and you even have a chance of incapacitating a crewman). This is especially important if your gun lacks penetrating power or just doesn't do enough damage, like if a light tank goes up against a heavy, the light tank can cripple the heavy tank until it's allies can come along and finish the job.
* In ''[[Need for Speed]]'' Most Wanted, during a police chase, if you somehow manage to get exactly one tire blown out by spike strips, you will lose some acceleration and speed. Two or more out, though, and you are busted.
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* The ''[[Monster Hunter]]'' series has this for its large monsters. Certain parts of these monsters can be broken to grant additional drops; likewise, certain parts grant extra attack options, and destroying or severing these parts impairs these attacks in some way if not disabling them entirely.
* In ''[[Guns of Icarus]]'', enemies can target different parts of your zeppelin. If your rigging or balloon gets destroyed, it causes a [[Critical Existence Failure]]. If your cargo bay is destroyed, it affects the rewards you earn for beating the level. And damage to your engines causes you to slow down and eventually stop. Part of the strategy of the game is prioritizing which sections to repair and how long to wait before repairing them.
* In ''[[FHBG]]'', Sneakers that have absorbed one hit can no longer crouch.
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[[Category:Older Than the NES]]
[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
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