RFisher said:
But I hate death spirals. Especially since I've learned that they are less realistic.
Nothing unrealistic about them at all. There's a limit to how well someone can function while injured that has less to do with pain than fractures and shock. Shock is a particularly good model because the way its stages affect the body are well recorded. They are:
* metabolic acidosis, which causes a burning sensation, other pain, and nausea. This is the first, immediate result of shock.
* Compensation includes vasoconstriction and other attempts to preserve blood volume, many of which reduce subjective discomfort but do not actually help performance. This does not actually prevent progressive acidosis though and eventually passes.
* Lastly, we get to organ failure, which isn't great for your sword swing.
Yes, there are lots of *subjective* reports about people gritting their teeth and injuries that seem horrible are often medically trivial, but the fact is that the compensatory stages of shock, fight/flight response and other psychological factors make people highly unrelaible reporters of their own competence. Plus, MDs don't measure how god your kung fu is after getting shot or stabbed and even military accounts are focused on performance that has little to do with the dynamic, close-quarters action of RPGs.
The effects of fractures, dislocations and the like on performance should be obvious.
What *can* be unrealistic is how damage is calculated before being applied to a given track, and how to assess damage at all. There should be plenty of chances for 0-damage results on the track, for instance.