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[JohnieRWilkins]

The point WAS that Nerve damage as it is now could serve as a catch all for the many kinds of crippling injuries you can get.

Tendon was a horrendously poor example because the DF doctor does track tendon and even ligament damage.

I think that the numbers for nerve damage aren't all that bad, and if anything the common nerve damage thing is just a visible eye sore because wounds aren't deadly enough. If your dwarves didn't survive to find out they had nerve damage, or had to have their part amputated due to infection, you wouldn't be as concerned about some nerve damage. That stuff builds character.

To quote this website: (I don't know about the validity of the figures, but they sound reasonable enough)

Of the approximately 175,000 wounds to the extremities received among Federal troops, about 30,000 led to amputation; roughly the same proportion occurred in the Confederacy.

40% of wounded men with wounds to extremities had to have those amputated. Only 75% of those survived the amputation. How about dem apples?

If real life were like this, everyone would be crippled because of nerve damage

Well in real life you tend to die from being stabbed almost regardless of where you were actually stabbed.

Though to my knowledge there are many ways more common then having nerve damage that can cripple you. For example cutting the Achelies Tendon.

Been stabbed on two separate occasions. Stabbed in the face through the cheek gums and top of the jaw, and gashed open arm with visible bone I think there was a tendon but the blood pooled to fast, as well as numerous gashes in the thighs. I suffer no permanent disabilities and have only a scar on my arm, the rest are unnoticeable. This is modern science, though in all of them nothing more serious then stitches and some cleanings were required. Though my wound in the torso was considerably more painful and I lost the ability to move for some days. Thanks to modern medicine I suffer no lasting problems from this either. You'd be surprised how much damage you can take.

Being stabbed with a pointy end of a pocket knife isn't really the same as being hacked into pieces with an axe or a large contact area blade. Luckily, I've only suffered blunt trauma, which wasn't all that bad, just some broken bones.

[NW_Kohaku]

People who had amputated limbs had access to crutches and prosthetics, though.  Meanwhile, dwarves have access to soap and an understanding that it prevents disease to keep wounds clean, which is part of why the Civil War had such horrific wounds.

Also, those "wounds" that actually get tracked because they went to the doctor are generally things like having a bullet in your bone causing a compound fracture, there.  That sort of thing is lethal in DF right now.  You probably won't even survive to get to the diagnosis stage, depending on how coy the doctor wants to be. 

The sorts of wounds that had amputations were the wounds that had bleeding that was problematic to stop, and amputation was the treatment because you would just throw a tournequet around the whole leg or arm, and then write the whole limb off as dead, since that was an effective way to stop the blood loss.  In DF, you almost certainly die of the blood loss before that point.

The treatments that are occuring in DF are treatments for seriously minor injuries that dwarves probably should be trying to "just walk off" rather than seeing those madmen with the bonesaws.

Crippling nerve damage, unless caused by something like a blunt shock in the right area of the body, should probably not be happening as frequently as it does unless you're already hitting the "wouldn't live to get to the hospital, anyway" stages of bleeding wound.

[Neonivek]

You'd be surprised how much damage you can take

Ohh I am aware that is one of the issues I have with "The Deadliest Warrior". People have survived Executioner Axes to the neck and jumping infront of trains.

I am also aware of how little the body can take. Little cuts knocking people out in two minutes, brain damage in 5, and brain death in 10.

Though honestly Modern medicine makes even the GREATEST historical physicians look like med students by comparison excluding mythological things like curing the dead...

The sorts of wounds that had amputations were the wounds that had bleeding that was problematic to stop

Also infection and also incompetent doctors and also poor tools.

unless caused by something like a blunt shock in the right area of the body

Well right now Blunt damage is magical pixie blasts.

[NW_Kohaku]

The sorts of wounds that had amputations were the wounds that had bleeding that was problematic to stop

Also infection and also incompetent doctors and also poor tools.

That's not the point I was making; The point I was making was that "wounded soldiers" meant soldiers wounded seriously enough to see a doctor.  Johnie was talking about how many wounds had amputations, and how many amputees wound up dying in spite of medical care.  I was saying that you had to already be suffering a degree of damage that would probably already be fatal in DF to get a wound that would be the sort of thing you get an amputation for. 

Basically, if there's cuts deeper than the fat right now, it's probably going to kill you in DF.  The survival rates of dwarven medicine are already more than appropriately slim.

unless caused by something like a blunt shock in the right area of the body

Well right now Blunt damage is magical pixie blasts.

I'm not even sure what that means.

Is a "magical pixie blast" strong or weak?

[Neonivek]

Magical Pixie blasts are magic

They deal magical damage.

This can be weak or strong but always magical.

[TheyTarget]

Being stabbed with a pointy end of a pocket knife isn't really the same as being hacked into pieces with an axe or a large contact area blade. Luckily, I've only suffered blunt trauma, which wasn't all that bad, just some broken bones.

It wasn't a pocket knife, it was a buck knife used for skinning deers on the first occasion and and the second time was well it's hard to explain but I got stabbed by my own sword and I'll leave it at that(no I did not stab myself). But thats not my point I'm just saying you can take quite a bit of damage especially in modern society and getting stabbed most certainly wont kill you unless it's in a real vital area.

[Neonivek]

Good thing it was a Buck Knife. I believe what you really don't want to be stabbed with is a serrated knife.

getting stabbed most certainly wont kill you unless it's in a real vital area

Hmm Actually let me see if I can google that.

Hmm it is VERY hard to find this out.

I know that Knife wounds to vital areas are quite nasty... but other then that...

[thijser]

I think that the main problem with dwarf fotress nerve damage is that we get to know about it. This should be something for highly skilled diagnostics to determine since it's often not obvious (currently a dwarf can't be wrong) in real life (at least at the time(someone was cut open and can't move his hand tendon? nerve? muscle? brain damage? bone?)).

[Kat]

One fort, in .31.18, I had 4 dwarfs get motor nerve damage to a foot, because of goblin lash.
Their steel high boots were ineffective.
Few other serious wounds were inflicted in the battles.

Without crutches being usable, the poor dwarfs are now invalids. That makes them not only non-combat dwarfs, but non-economic too. The only reason to keep them alive is in case they produce an artifact.

I have a marksdwarf, she lost a hand to an invader's sword. She is still fighting, and has shot a dozen or more since then.
Another handful of dwarfs have motor nerve damage to their arms. They are retired from military but are still able to perform useful tasks around the fortress.
Some have grasp impaired because of nerve bruising, not severed.
These injuries are however not really a problem.

It's not just permanent nerve damage being very common, it's any damage to the legs being as bad as damage to the spine. And leg damage is far, far more common than spinal damage.

[thijser]

Soldiers who can't walk are still useful just place their beds near the entrance...

[hermes]

At a guess, id say df might be producing more paralysis than expected because it only models single nerves when the body has many, each innervating different muscle groups. People only tend to get full limb paralysis with spinal nerve injuries. Peripheral nervous cuts will give partial functional loss (eg drop foot),  so a sliding scale model might be better.

[Granite26]

At a guess, id say df might be producing more paralysis than expected because it only models single nerves when the body has many, each innervating different muscle groups. People only tend to get full limb paralysis with spinal nerve injuries. Peripheral nervous cuts will give partial functional loss (eg drop foot),  so a sliding scale model might be better.

Could this be fixed by having longer nerves?  When nerve damage is applied to a body part, it's not necessarily THAT body part that gets paralized, but a random part below it.  (forearm cut makes finger stop working.)

Alternately, what does modding in extra nerves do?  Is it ANY or ALL nerves that kill a part?

[martys1103]

I once stepped on broken glass bottle while swimming. The cut was 4.2 cm long and 1 cm deep. My leg now is fine, but in DF I would be permanently crippled and I would crawl on the ground for rest of my life. DF nerve damage is a little too common in my opinion.

[hermes]

Could this be fixed by having longer nerves?  When nerve damage is applied to a body part, it's not necessarily THAT body part that gets paralized, but a random part below it.  (forearm cut makes finger stop working.)

Alternately, what does modding in extra nerves do? 

I'm not sure since I haven't looked at the raws at all, but I think what you're saying would basically model what really happens.  A real body just has many nerve branches, for example three main branches in an arm, and many, many sub branches from those. 

But I think adding more nerves/branches to the DF model kind of defeats the point of trying to abstract the body efficiently, and what you say about paralysing a random part below a "nerve cut" would be reasonable way to model it.  This would necessitate nerves having something like hit-points totalling the number of "parts" distally (below).

Is it ANY or ALL nerves that kill a part?

It is, usually and unfortunately, any single nerve that kills a part.  Very few areas (like the upper face IIRC) receive dual (left and right side) innervation.