I'd like to see heads, arms and legs chopped off. But rarely and only with really good damaging hits.

And no chopping off heads with dagger or arrow.

 

Completely exploding heads or bodies? Ehh... no, but kind of yes.

Ok if the opponent has like 6HP to begin with and you hit 78HP's of damage with a morningstar.

 

But if the opponent has 78HP to begin with, now down to 2, and you hit worth 6HP, well then he should just collapse.

On critical hits, hell yeah (head flying off, bolt making a huge hole in the chest and flying through) I'd love to see enhanced combat animations aka NWN, since the characters will be 3D, but it all comes down to resources... Planescape style is also cool

 

Slicing off someone's limbs isn't "just that easy." I somehow doubt entrails are so keen on spilling completely out the moment there's a hole in your stomache.

 

That's very true. If you want a weapon which doesn't lose its edge after hitting armor, you'll have to dull that edge a bit. In the age of full plate armors, swords typically had about 4 millimetres wide edges. Good luck trying to chop off anything with that. (Of course there could be really sharp weapons, but they should be completely useless against armor).

 

On the other hand, your entrails really aren't that well-protected. Puncture someone's belly with a dagger, twist a little, and they'll be all over the place.

 

I seriously doubt, however, that these facts should have anything to do with what we see in the game. Exploding bodies are hilarious, keep them if you want to go all Planescape with the morbid humor. If you want something more serious, relatively tame animations + good flavor text is the winning combination imo.