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[Riemann]

Some time ago I posted what I thought was a bug in that about 50% of my military dwarves would no longer spar in the barracks. Turns out all of them had injuries (all from training, despite their steel chain mail) to the spine / neck that permanently disabled them and made them useless for further military training.

What kind of sucks about this is the only way to tell if it's time to go all Logan's Run on a guy is to select the dwarf, go to the Wounds screen and (usually) attempt to scroll down (as the spine injury doesn't show up in the first page of wound locations).

I would suggest the following:

1) Some means to tell if a dwarf has received a permanent disabling injury more easily.
2) Make spinal damage heal and don't permanently disable a guy if it is less than a "yellow" injury. Out of a military of 40 I had no less than 19 dwarves in a disabled state due to spinal injuries less serious then yellow. Every one of these injuries was recieved via sparring with no weapons. These were all wrestlers. They all had steel shields and helmets. Most had steel chain armor / leggings  / gloves / boots.

[Footkerchief]

Has Toady ever commented on the healing/sparring issue?  It's possible it's an oversight, like an unintended consequence of the combination of a) dwarves don't spar unless they're fully healed and b) nervous wounds never heal.

[Granite26]

He's looked into it and 'fixed' it numerous times.

Personally, I've NEVER had a sparring dwarf get injured, ever.

Looking at that big long 'on deadly sparring' thread a few weeks back, it looks like what people really want is a more humane, more modern, take years to train, slowly but safely system.  The current alternative 'live training with real swords so that a dwar knows how to defend himself when the gobbo's come, because they sure as hell won't be using padded sticks' is constantly maligned as being too dangerous.

I think what is missing is a clear discussion about what the desired risk/reward rate for training is.  If I just throw my dwarves out there with no management, what's the designed injury rate?  If I do 'smart' things (micromanage weapons and train up armor/shields/wrestling first), what should the injury rate be?  People are complaining, but is it because the rate is more severe than intended, or because the intended rate is higher than they want?

[Mephansteras]

While I've had a number of injuries and even deaths from sparring with weapons, I've never had my wrestlers get these kinds of injuries. *shrug*

Personally, I'd like the option to do both the "Fast but risky" and "Slow but safe" ways of training. If you've got a small military and facing the risk of goblin ambushes, you might need to train them up fast just to survive. If you're an established fort with a strong defense, there isn't any need to risk killing new recruits. You've got time to take it slow.

Personally, I think squads should have a Training order (like the carries food and whatnot orders). Here you can say what that squad will do. Train without weapons, train with practice weapons, train with live weapons. Maybe even train with training dummies (pells), for the very safe but slow work. You can't become a master working at a pell, but it actually does a lot of good for building up muscle memory for different shots.

[G-Flex]

Personally, I'd like to see both options available (sort of fast and haphazard training as well as a more professional but perhaps slower option), but I'd err on the side of dwarves not stabbing each other.

Also, a lot of this would be much less of a headache if you could specify which weapons dwarves should use, or at least which type (similarly to telling a stockpile what it can and cannot hold).