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[angus_burger]

Hello all, first timer here!

I've been playing DF for a few weeks, complex as hell but tons of fun once you get into it. I just caught my first prisoner ever, a goblin snatcher in a cage trap. I decide to strip all his weapons and clothing away, and have my full-steel armored axedwarf hack him apart. So having stripped him, I have him let out of the cage, and he immediately engages my dwarf.

Two seconds later, my dwarf is dead. He was punched in the arm, bruising the muscle THROUGH STEEL, and then one punch to the head cracked his skull through his brain. Once again, THROUGH A STEEL HELMET. I guess this is a bug, and I'm not sure how to report those, but thats a really freaking basic and retarded bug. How hasn't this been caught? Punch's crack a dwarf skull through steel, hello? I'm assuming this is incredibly rare or something, either punch's have to be toned down or armor buffed somehow, even punching a bare skull would hurt your hand more than the skull.

The most retarded part is, had he kept his dagger, it would have been an easy kill. Disarming him made him far more dangerous. So before I continue playing, any other incredibly moronic bugs I might encounter? Has this happened to anyone else? How good a helmet do I need before I can assault bare handed goblins?

[klefenz]

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress.
That kind of weird occurrences happen all the time, also whips cut thru steel.

[angus_burger]

The whips I've heard about, it seems tough to program because of their small contact size. But fists? Fists aren't some foreign weapon you'd add and need to tweak, fists seem like they should have been in DF since the beginning. Have they always been this retarded? I wanna start an adventurer and fist open people's skulls open left and right now.

[klefenz]

If youre going on adventure beware, you never know when the peasant you attack is actually a ninja in disguise.

[mastahcheese]

Have you checked the goblin to see if it was abnormally large/muscular?

If you're not careful, you can get RamboGob.

[CreamyDoughnut]

Dwarf Fort is a strange plane of existence where physics likes to take an extended vacation.

[Niccolo]

Dwarf Fort is a strange plane of existence where physics likes to take an extended vacation.

Except then we call it back prematurely so it rocks up drunk off its ass and, bless its heart, tries to dance for our amusement but just ends up flailing around and socking us in the face.

[Thief]

how' bout saying the steel helmet hit the Dwarves head and the goblin somehow killed it with that

[Broken]

You were unlucky, thats all. Is rare but perfectly legal. Maybe the goblin was specially strong?

[Telgin]

I'm reminded of how my first captured prisoner cut off a soldier's foot with his knife the second I let him out of his cage.  Combat balance is very screwy in DF.  It pretty much always has been.  Knives, whips and natural body part attacks (especially teeth) are all far more dangerous than they have any right to be.  It is better than earlier versions though, unless you like cinematic and hilarious images of Hulk dwarves punching goblins through the air.

The reason that punches to the skull kill so easily is complicated and probably not something anyone knows the exact cause of, except maybe Toady.  One change for the new version will be a larger skull by default, since by his own admission it's too small and as a direct result too fragile.  Other possible contributing factors would be that armor doesn't always scale properly to body parts, and likely issues with the way DF models impacts.  I always got the impression that it did its calculations as if the two things hitting each other were completely immobile, which would be a much less favorable impact than in reality where punching someone in the head makes their neck absorb potentially a lot of the energy.  Hits to the arms and most any body part are the same story.

It's also possible, if unlikely, that you ran afoul of the bug where a kid grew up to be a soldier in your fort but his size wasn't updated.  The net effect would be like a goblin punching a baby in the head.

The usual reply to this is that it's a work in progress and will get better in the long run.  Many injury related things are really placeholders now anyway, such as the fact that someone can get a leg chopped off and barely care about the blood loss yet bleed to death in 5 seconds if their guts are spilled.  Or how almost every organ can be rotten or even excised by surgery without ill effect.  Or how breaking a pinky finger is often painful enough to make a dwarf pass out, as if he broke a femur.

In your specific case, it was bad luck, but not as rare as it ought to be.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

Basically, DF´s random number generator can turn anything (socks being a famous example) into weapons of mass destruction.

[Swonnrr]

Basically, DF´s random number generator can turn anything (socks Fluffy Wamblers being a famous example) into weapons of mass destruction.

[Aslandus]

Ah, I see, the Goblin must've gotten a lucky punch through the eye holes with his tiny fists and punched through the dorf's facebone. You just have to remember that a random number generator is behind the combat, so these things do happen sometimes

[Nyxalinth]

There's an incredibly complex tabletop RPG out there called Rolemaster.  It's pretty much the DF of tabletop games.   It has all sorts of charts for combat, and according to the charts, with a VERY lucky shot, someone could indeed punch someone through their helmet and kill them.  sucks, though, but yes, it's perfectly fair.  Think of it as like one of those freak occurrences in real life that should in no way ever happen, but do.

[Naryar]

Betting that goblin has hilariously high strength either, and the dwarf has low toughness and the steel helm is basic quality.

Not a bug, you just got really unlucky.