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[SixOfSpades]

I was lately reminded of the famous case of Phineas Gage, a man who, in a workplace accident, had a long iron rod forcibly shot through his skull, taking out a good chunk of his brain. Gage survived, and recovered, although the loss of most of his left prefrontal lobe affected his mental faculties and personality to such a degree that his friends & acquaintances regarded him as being almost a completely different person after the accident.

For the sake of "eh, why not" and "that could be cool", I propose that DF allow the possibility of an Urist Gage. Whenever a reasonably small object tears the brain, the chance of automatic death should be reduced from 100% to 99.9% (repeated hits to the brain would have to roll the dice each time), and those "lucky" enough to survive would have most of their mental attributes, some of their physical attributes (like Agility), and their personality traits randomized. The dwarf's level of skill in their various professions would also take a nosedive. This randomization would be much more likely to take the form of penalties not bonuses, to the dwarf's mental stats: I suppose it's conceivable that a brain-damaged dwarf could actually become more Focused than before, due to her new literal inability to do more than one thing at a time--though I can think of no similarly plausible justification for an increase in pure Analytical Ability. The change in personality traits and preferences would very likely alienate the dwarf's friends, causing feelings of grief on their part (but probably not on his). In extreme cases, the husband or wife of a brain-damaged dwarf might become so psychologically estranged that they actually kill their own spouse, under the logic that the dwarf they married was already dead, and they were just finishing the job.

All in all, this could be a very interesting new source of fun--in the very rare event that it would happen at all. Again, this should only happen if the brain is torn by SMALL objects. Something like an arrow could believably pass through the brain and destroy only a small amount of tissue. A falling tree, not so much.

[NW_Kohaku]

While in the long term, that'd be great, I think part of the problem is that damage isn't very well modeled, or at the very least, not CLEARLY represented in current DF. 

Right now, for example, it is possible to have a massive skull fracture and survive.

The real problem is that damage tends to be all-or-nothing.  That is, it either does nothing of note or it fractures a bone or disables a critical organ.  Pulping is starting to make this better, but there needs to be more gradient between when something is a massive laceration and a mere poke. 

Again, it seems to be getting better with pulping, but in the last major version, an unarmored human could be nibbled to death by three gerbils through the fact that ANY attack that pierces skin causes the same amount of pain, without regards to actual damage done.  Hence, they give in to pain and slowly dehydrate to death as they are locked in permanent pain coma, in spite of no real damage being done.  In essence, three gerbil nibbles on your toes would inflict three times as much pain as having a massive laceration across your gut that nearly disembowels you, because the three gerbil nibbles are three separate attacks, even if they all bite the same toe. 

Beyond that, there's organs that don't do anything yet, like the spleen. 

Someone just posted something the other day about "piercing" attacks always seeming to be aimed straight for the bone, rather than puncturing through muscle then back out due to being an off-center shot. 

Then there's the fact that the new body types from DF2010 were so complicated that he largely copy-pasted the same body onto every animal because he didn't have time to properly give them all details.  Hence, alligators are basically the same animal as a cow, but smaller.

In general, I think Toady intends to let things like this happen eventually, it's just that it's something he dabbles in only from time to time. 

[Elagn]

Also, If new brain injuries were to be added, concussions should be very possible. They are common even in real life, and, depending on what area of the brain is effected, can have interesting results. concussions would, however, be limited to injuries where only brain bruising occurs, which causes instant death now, and where at most minor breaks in the skull occur. If the blow shatters the whole skull, one is almost certainly going to be getting something much worse than a concussion.