Hi Tom,
From Iraq and Afghanistan trauma and military clinicians and medics talk about the platinum 10 minutes as well as the golden hour, in which if it’s possible to stop blood loss and instigate a blood transfusion within the first 10 minutes of wounding the patient if then evacuated to a medical facility in the golden hour have significantly increased chance of survival.
That’s why they train soldiers to apply tourniquets and have them carry them into the field, have blood transfusions initiated within fast response medivac facilities, and have forward deployment of surgical field hospitals. Get them medical assistance in 10 minutes or less and get them to hospital in less than an hour and your critically injured soldier has a 40% survival chance. That was up from 2% at the start of the conflict.
Best regards,
Ewan
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Sent: 29 September 2020 20:58
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Subject: [TML] [MT[ Hand to Hand combat questions
Looking at MT's hand to hand combat, a couple of questions came to my attention:
1) If someone comes at you with a knife, and you lack a weapon, how do you defend? The confrontation task for a hand to hand weapon task is:
To hit another unit with a hand-to-hand attack: Routine, Off=Weapon skill, Str; Def=Weapon skill, Weapon Def (confrontation). Referee: If the attacker is unskilled, increase the difficulty of this task by one level; if the defender is unskilled, decrease the difficulty of this task by one level. The defender may use his weapon (whatever weapon he currently has) for defense
Should this likely not have 'Brawling' as an alternative to Weapon Skill? I know that in both Karate and Aikido, we learned weapon defenses when unarmed.
2) You get a zero or positive DM as the defender (Weapon Defense) but not a similar advantage from your weapon on the attack. Will this not prejudice defense over offense if two people have the same weapon?
3) Is there not a strong argument for allowing DEX to succeed (foil, for instance, is clearly a DEX weapon vs. a STR weapon)? Arguably, many knife fighters are far more about speed (DEX), than strength because the cut of a sharp knife does not need strength and they will slice extremities to exsanguinate the target rather than going for a vital strike (at least until the opposition has bled and is weakened).
4) Would it not be better to rewrite the HTH confrontation as:
To hit another unit with a hand-to-hand attack: Routine, Off=(Weapon skill|Brawling), (Str|Dex),WeaponAtk, Def=(Weapon skill|Brawling),(Str|Dex), WeaponDef, Confrontation.
To do this, one would need to establish a Weapon Attack stat for weapons just as Weapon Defense exists. CT sort of had this by various modifiers by weapon. It might also be useful to identify weapons that are STR, DEX, or EITHER for the stat bonus.
5) I'm considering a shock-related rule...
From reading effects of gunshot injuries and other injuries, from talking to paramedics, from talking to friends who have been in a variety of hand to hand combat on the street, and from thinking about how that knowledge should be modelled:
Shock impairs people and often when they start to show shock symptoms, they are out of a fight. In opposition to shock is the fight/flight epinephrine (adrenalin) response that helps us get into a fight, shrug off injuries, and keep fighting when we out to collapse or die (which we can do sometimes when the adrenalin turns down and shock sets in).
You get several scenarios arising that are fairly different:
First shot or sucker punch takes someone unaware out of the fight. (Adrenalin not switched up, sudden injury, shock sets in immediately, out of the fight)
Attacked person has some warniness or sense of danger, at least partial adrenal response rolling, gets shot or sucker punched, has a chance of not going out of the fight immediately. (Adrenalin is partly switched on, shock has a harder time just immediately setting in, may drop out of the fight or be able to continue).
Attacked person's adrenalin is fully activated (expectation of immediate violence/threat to life or body), gets shot or sucker punched or otherwise hit, has a very good chance of shaking off the first hit and not going into shock because adrenalin is spiked up.
Person has already been injured, has shaken off the shock effects of the first injury, and is injured again. In some cases, it will be an accumulated effect and the adrenalin fails to the accumulating shock-causing injuries. In some cases, they shrug off the shock again (and in some cases, again, again, again).
There would also be a medical impact to shock in terms of treatment and the effects of shock wearing off and characters suddenly going into mortal danger right then.
Another bit of knowledge from paramedics I know: If you get a gunshot or other significant trauma, if you don't bleed out (gross bleeds pre-empt airway or other concerns...), then if they can get you stabilized to move and get you to a primary trauma center within the first 60 minutes after the injury, you are quite likely to survive (at TL-8!). They call this 'The Golden Hour'. Not getting to them to stabilize them with a gross bleed or too much multisystem trauma still can't be saved, but even a couple of non gross bleed gunshots stands a good chance of not killing you if you get stabilized and to a good surgeon/trauma team within 60 minutes.
In an MT sense, I'm thinking of something a bit like:
To Resist Shock From An Injury, Routine, END, Fateful, Instant. NOTE: The task is Difficult if the attack/injury happened with surprise. If you've already resisted shock from an injury in the last 30 minutes, the task becomes Simple.
Effects of Shock: (just a guess)
reduced initiative
poorer coordination
reduced awareness/perception/sensory processing
may pass out
reduced cognition/attention impacting skill checks
Just some thinking out loud...
TomB
--
“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.” ― Aristotle
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