Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
This doesn't seem unreasonable to me from a realism angle. Naively, it would seem that it would take more control, rather than less, to hit someone with precisely controlled force. And if you have a combat skill (as opposed to sport or art), hitting people lightly is doing things differently than the way you were trained.
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I'm not sure you can even safely bring the Sport version into a real fight for this purpose, even though you're "only" looking to just tag them on the chest (or whatever). Sport skills specifically teach you techniques and moves that leave you in a position for a foe to retaliate because it doesn't matter - if you
do tag them, the round ends, or the target you leave open isn't valid in your sporting association, or it's open to kicks but your sport doesn't allow kicking, and so on and so forth.
If you're using a skill where you trained to make "real" hits, it really doesn't feel simple to just tag people. I took TKD classes, and it was definitely a Sport version - but a full-strength, full-contact version with a
lot of armor. I had tons of drilling on striking
into a target, setting myself up so at wherever I planned on extending my limb, it end up one to three inches
into the target (if not more) depending on if it was a quick jab or a big hit. You can't stop at the surface if you're trying to hurt someone, and they grind that into you.
Learning your real reach in combat takes a lot of training and is really really danged important, and it's not where your fingers or toes (or weapon) end. Per my training, my effective combat reach for a full-strength punch is somewhere around my wrists because if I'm much further than that, I just can't deliver maximum force with that punch.
Equally, if I'm too close, I can't extend my elbow and step in for that maximum force punch, and if I want to deliver big force, I have to consider other options (don't step in - don't get as much force, don't extend the elbow - don't get as much force, palm-heel strike, elbow strike, knee them in the balls, head-butt, whatever). Or switch to another plan entirely obviously.
It seems pretty simple, but I had to write a lot of sentances to talk about it, and you have to drill and drill and drill until you're making that evaluation in real-time. Which means that training heavily colors what you're doing.
Incidentally, this reminds me that we need another variation of Pacifism (Reluctant Killer).
That's another thread though.