Author Topic: Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic  (Read 1084 times)

Offline Juku121

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Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic
« on: October 01, 2022, 03:16:04 pm »
Completely unfazed? Hit between eyes? No amount of drugs will help you if you permanently lost ability to move.
That's the kicker, a headshot is not guaranteed to do that. These cases are very rare, but they do exist. The bullet bounces, gets stuck between the eyes, goes through the skull without hitting something immediately lethal, passes through the eye, etc. The person might die in another 10 minutes (and beat you to death while the adrenalin is still up), might stay but not particularly energetic, might go down.

You pretty much need to hit exactly between the eyes and no higher to get a guaranteed stoppage. Small purse guns in the .30 caliber range are especially infamous for this, but even a 9mm/.38 cal is still on the edge.

Look up Tammy Sexton or Daniel von Bargen, for instance. One made tea right afterwards, the other called the ambulance himself. There's also a video of some badass Russian from the early 2000s getting shot between the eyes - that is, a little above the eyes - with a Kalashnikov and smiling for the camera after it gets pried out of his skull.

Even if it do not penetrate your skull it could knock you out as it have comparable energy to heavy boxer punch.
It could. It also might not. The damage they do is different. A boxer hits you over a much larger area and doesn't make a hole in your skull.

There are even stories of soldiers getting shot in the head with a rifle while wearing a helmet, surviving and killing their assailant right after. E.g. Kyle Keenan, Ryan Stumpff. A bullet is not a knockout punch.

This is whole point, if you hit critical organ then even 9mm can one hit you, if you hit only not important ones, you can spend whole clip and still have live enemy.
Yes, I agree that this is true in the vast majority of cases. But there are rare exceptions, and getting shot with a rifle instead of a handgun is far more likely to kill or disable somebody even with a 'flesh wound'. Same thing with hand cannon vs rifle, grenade vs non-HE cannon, artillery vs grenade, etc.

This is someway comparable to dagger vs greater sword, against armored enemy in hand of skilled fighter dagger can do a lot of more damage than any sword.
In general, a dagger guy (skilled or not) will get their head caved in by a twohander long before they manage to get their wrestling on. There's a reason people did not field pure 'dagger fighters'. Of course one might get lucky. All sorts of weird stuff can happen in combat.

A guy with a dagger, superiour armoured wrestling and another longer weapon to make it into grappling range, that's another thing entirely. Dagger skills don't really come into this. 'Stab him in the eyes or armpit while he's pinned' isn't an advanced dagger move.

Also, half-swording says hi.


TLDR, my point is not that you cannot outperform a rifle with better-placed handgun shots, or a literal hand cannon with a rifle. Of course that can happen. But it is the averages that count for in-game weapon stats. A graze from a cannon round is worse than a graze from a bullet and a headshot will take your head off instead of 'most likely' killing you. One really should not try to balance weapon stats using outliers.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 01:34:21 am by Juku121 »

Offline Juku121

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Re: Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2022, 02:24:33 am »
I don't know, all these are probably American-related stuff which I know little to nothing about...
SCA is the only purely American movement. Historical re-enactors (including the kind that like to try out their weapons on each other, sometimes pretty hard) exist in a great many places, aren't particularly unified and were probably what the early Polish 'HEMA' you mentioned was. What exactly these people do, how 'historical' the techniques are and how much they care tends to vary, but AFAIK the degree of manual-studying and scholarly study thereof were a novel aspect of modern American-inspired HEMA.

Bohurt/Historical Medieval Battles/Armored Combat/Battle of Nations are the crazies who put on the heaviest armour they can find and then beat each other into the ground, melee-style. The most un-American sub-movement of all, and probably has a great deal of overlap with your 'barbarians'. Not sure there's been even a single event in the US, though some SCA heavies have participated in European/Russian events.

Even the term "HEMA" I'veo nly seen in English sources from the US and Canada
HEMA is a specific movement, largely US-inspired, but there's a whole bunch of people all across Europe who do more or less the same and might even be affiliated with US orgs. Not sure what the generic term is these days, WMA?

we call them either "knight brotherhoods" or "barbarian brotherhoods", depending whether they care for the historical aspect or ar in there just for combat.
That's not a particularly precise distinction. Where I live, there are no 'official' HEMA orgs, but there are some pretty hardcore medieval/viking re-enactors who like to hit each other hard with their as-authentic-as-possible swords and armour. Not aware of them having a lot of overlap with the bohurt people or studying manuals, though. So, which ones are they? :P

A good starter would be Eric Lowe's articles on Quora. ... old books in Polish ...
But Eric Lowe is a (relatively prominent and outspoken) representative of the modern US HEMA movement? Ex-lawyer, emphasis on manuals, started training in the 21st century, etc? I tried looking, but didn't really find anything about Poland and the man himself says "I don’t have any experience with the Eastern European HEMA scene".

I was interested in what the Soviet-time Polish scene looked like. I imagine there might have been more of an emphasis on sabers and historical armour in general rather than snapshots of how German longswords or Italian smallswords were used at a specific point in time.

It'd also be interesting to know what people did for saber fencing then, since AFAIK there are no surviving technical manuals or live lineages for the Polish saber, and from a USian HEMA POV it's all made up.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 03:18:34 am by Juku121 »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2022, 03:01:22 pm »
Eric Lowe is Canadian, I think. And yes, a modern practitioner. And no, nothing related to Poland. There are also several competent YouTubers.

I don't know anything about the Soviet historical reenactment scene, sorry.

Offline Juku121

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Re: Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2022, 03:56:09 pm »
What was in those old Polish books, then? I was under the impression they were about historical weapons and modern(ish) people using them.

Eric Lowe is Canadian, I think.
He is? HEMA ratings seems to put him as a US national. Perhaps he got US citizenship later?

In any case, he both learned and teaches in the US (and was a lawyer in New York to boot), so whatever Canadian-ness he still might have is probably vestigial. :)
« Last Edit: October 05, 2022, 04:50:41 pm by Juku121 »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Damage, firearms, melee and HEMA offtopic
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2022, 05:43:38 pm »
What was in those old Polish books, then? I was under the impression they were about historical weapons and modern(ish) people using them.

Stuff about fencing techniques and such. Like I said, I've been more into it in around 2000, as a university student. Been a while.

He is? HEMA ratings seems to put him as a US national. Perhaps he got US citizenship later?

Perhaps. Or more likely I just misremember.