[MaxWilson]

Is it just conjecture that a head hit bypasses the shield? The manual sounds like all ranged attacks go through the opposed roll calculation and doesn't mention anything about exceptions for head hits--I've never seen any mechanics for how head hits work but I assumed hit location was generated after damage had already been rolled (but before checking Prot, obviously, and before generating afflictions). And it's quite thematic that a shield could be raised overhead as easily as it could shield you from missiles from the front.

After a little bit more experimentation, I'm pretty sure that the one guy getting killed was a moderately high roll combined with a critical hit from spellcasting fatigue.

Thanks for the tip about the debug log, I will check it out.

-Max