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Originally Posted by VonKatzen
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Combat in real life is not actually super-lethal. Most people in hand-to-hand melee and gunfights survive - even the ones who lose due to injury. Most of the deaths in WW2 were civilians who were never in combat. People are surprisingly tough.
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This is interesting.
How do you win a combat if you don't kill the enemy?
The answer would seem to be that you impair the enemy so that you can then overwhelm them, control them, or deny them first aid.
What is the main source of impairment in combat with firearms in real life?
It seems to be that enough wounds take an enemy out of action.
Is this mainly psychological? The soldier is hunkering down, assessing his injuries, and concerned.
Or is it somatic in nature? The body is in shock (general, not GURPS) and preventing activity.
I don't know this for sure, but is it safe to assume that a wounded victim bleeds a lot faster if engaged in the rigorous activity of continuing to fight. So shock is the body's mechanism to keep a willful individual "down?"
With regard to unconsciousness in
GURPS pg. B423 says:
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It is up to the GM to decide whether you are truly unconscious or just totally incapacitated by pain and injury - but either way, you can't do anything.
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In a typical firefight (disregarding headshots) would you say GURPS unconsciousness more often represents the body responding to wounds by restricting activity than true loss of awareness? (Victims are lying all over the place, groaning, but no longer effective.)
To me this all shifts the question of lethality toward which side can survive the battle for consciousness (GURPS) so that their casualties can be rescued from death.
So then, are the unconsciousness injury rules sufficiently realistic and potent?
(To me, the HP danger zone seems near enough. Issues with high HT have already been identified.)