So, I've said this before as a bit, but monster hunting wouldn't really be about combat most of the time. There's probably some edge cases, like vampires, where you're fundamentally looking at a human with superpowers, but against the vast majority of critters, monster hunting would be more like, well, hunting, or pest control.

If the monster is exceedingly lethal, you don't want to be getting into fights with it. That means taking a more methodical approach to identify and exploit weaknesses, and then eliminating it like any other pest.

Ironically, while the book is a bit crude at times, one of the first examples that comes to mind is Vampire$ by John Steakley, (and the film adaptation by John Carpenter.) The priority there is to identify vampire nests during the day, then use specialized stake guns attached to winches to drag the vampires out into the sun, before collapsing the building entirely.

This means, you're probably better off looking at people with backgrounds in animal control, exterminators, park rangers, game wardens, and similar backgrounds, rather than military or law enforcement backgrounds. (Though, technically, rangers may fall under the header of LEOs.)

Effectively dealing with any animal (and most cryptids tend to fall into this category) involves learning about its behavior. Now, obviously, if you're dealing with some incredibly reclusive creature that's evaded detection by the modern world, it does strain credibility a bit when someone wanders in with a complete understanding of their behavior. (See: Every bigfoot expert ever.) But, the basic premise is foundational if your characters are going to go out hunting those creatures.

When you're dealing with more overtly supernatural foes, then the focus on information they'd need would change somewhat. But, in a lot of ways, the same template holds. It's critical for your hunters to understand the limits and favored behaviors of those creatures.

Now, obviously, you can have very different approaches. I was recently reminded of the old World of Darkness Demon Hunter X splat, where one of the groups detailed (in a modern urban fantasy setting) were using extensive cybernetic augmentations to directly fight monsters (with a very anime inspired aesthetic.) If you have the setup for it, you can go in really wild directions with your urban fantasy monster hunters, and the advice of a relatively low-power group that treat cryptids the same way you'd treat a rat infestation might not be applicable. Similarly, hunting vampires and werewolves may involved more conventional, military tactics, if that's what you're looking for.

It does depend on what your story calls for, and I'll readily admit, my main observation here has more to do with how modern horror writing tends to present these creatures, and then looking for a practical solution to the problem they pose. (Also the juxtaposition is funny. You start out expecting Blade, and instead get some random guys in jumpsuits with animal control poles, who are going to grab the horrific deathbeasts, stick them in crates, and ship them off to a preserve in Montana.

-Starke

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CQC and CQB are blanket terms. These are abbreviations for Close Quarters Combat, and Close Quarters Battle. Describing either as a combat style is an awkward application of the term. You'll sometimes see either term used to categorize the intended use case for a weapon. Especially more compact weapons.

For example: Clearing a house, or dealing with tight alleyways, are likely to result in CQC if combat does occur.

Also, the terms evaluate the distance between enemy combatants, so technically CQC can occur in open spaces, it's just more unlikely.

You might encounter someone using CQC as a shorthand for any melee combat. That's technically not quite right, but it's not wrong.

CAR is a handgun stance. Short for Center-Axis Relock, CAR was developed by the late Paul Castle. It is designed for using handguns in CQC. The stance is built around keeping the handgun very close to the body. This has two direct features. First, it's very hard to disarm someone using CAR in hand-to-hand. Simply put, there's not a lot of good access to the pistol. Second, and a related feature, you can use the handgun in far tighter spaces than you could in a more conventional stance like Weaver. Again, this is because the pistol is close to the body. The trade-off is that it's less stable and accurate than Weaver. Ideally, you don't need to worry about those, because of the ranges you should be using CAR at, but, you may find people who try to use CAR longer distances.

John Wick is probably where CAR got the most attention, though it's not the originator of the stance, and the films include a lot of material that's completely unrelated to CAR. Even in the film, Keanu regularly switches between CAR and Weaver stances (though, he's not always switching to Weaver when it would make sense to do so.)

I think it would be fairly obvious, but in case it's not, if you don't have a handgun, there's no way to practice CAR. It's not some martial art where you can use a handgun, it's literally just, “here are a few ways to hold a gun so you can use it effectively in tight spaces.”

CQC is just, “a fight is happening and everyone's really packed in there.” It could be guns, could be knives, could be fists, could be tire irons, but there's not a lot of room between the fighters.

-Starke

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So, there's two approaches to this. Like you, I'm not coming into this with a lot of prior knowledge, so this is from some very cursory research.

The first one is, simply put, they're not suitable. Rhinos tend to be a bit too aggressive to take a rider. This isn't 100% true, and there are rare examples of rhinos that were willing to take riders (though the only examples I've found have been singular parings of a rider and animal, not rhinos that would take whomever.) The aggression might sound like a good feature, until you realize the animal will also be aggressive towards its potential rider.

Also, interestingly, rhinos appear to have limited eyesight. The estimates I'm seeing suggest it drops off sharply at ~25ft. That would make them less than ideal for use as shock cavalry. They'd be fine once they were in contact, but getting them out and maneuvering them around would be a pain. (I'm going to point out, this “fact” isn't particularly well studied. So, it might be somewhat incorrect, but reportedly does appear to reflect how the animals react towards humans approaching them.)

Put those together, and you've got a recipe for an animal that will identify its rider as the problem, and then go after them, without any awareness of the enemy army.

The other option is to simply go for it. It's not something you could do in the real world, but if you're accepting that as break from reality, you could simply roll with rhino cavalry as part of your world. Granted, this works better if you have an overtly fantasy setting, rather than one trying to maintain a veneer of realism.

If you're wanting to go this route, then you've already answered your question. Using the rhino riders as heavy shock cav, and probably relying (at least partially) on the rhinos themselves to participate in the carnage. At that point, the real world considerations of the animal don't really apply, because your rhino riders are riding something other than the real world animal.

So, you've got options.

-Starke

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So, I'm probably missing something here, but “keeping” the knives backwards?

There are a couple ways to read that which make perfect sense. One is the reverse grip. There are reasons to carry a knife in a reverse grip (meaning, the blade protrudes past the pinky finger, rather than the ring finger.) The first thing that comes to mind is the karambit. This a curved knife which is intended to be used from a reverse grip (though, it can be used in a forward grip as well.)

Another thought is that in a reverse grip you can conceal the blade along your forearm before striking. Because the blade doesn't (noticeably alter) the wielder's silhouette it has a significant impact on limiting their victim's ability to see the blade. An experienced knife wielder can quickly and easily switch their grip, so they're not limited to reverse grip strikes from this starting position.

From a throwing perspective, an experienced knife user (with a lot of guts) can simply drop their knife and catch the blade before throwing. There are multiple ways to throw, and the one I'm most familiar with is a spinning throw while holding the blade. Actually doing that is not a great idea; it's unnecessarily risky, but it is the kind of thing you'll see in fiction from time to time. (It's probably easier to simply to reverse it into a forward grip and launch the knife into a flat throw. But, that's the one I'm less familiar with.)

If the intent was that the character was wearing their knives with reverse sheathes (meaning the knife is carried blade up on the body), that's a personal preference, and has more to do with how they reach for their weapon. For example, a vertical sheathe on the chest (whether blade is up or down) can be very easy for a practiced fighter to reach and draw. (If the blade is up, it will easily draw into a forward grip; if the blade is down, it will draw into a reverse grip.)

Incidentally, if you're wondering how you keep a sheathed knife in a blade up position, you've got options. There are pressure sheathes which will hold the knife in position until pulled. There are strap options that are a bit more secure. It depends, but it can be securely held until needed.

Now, it's just a joke that the character is throwing their knife behind them, when they get ready to launch it, that's not really going to happen. It's the kind of mistake someone might make once or twice when they first pick up a knife, but learning how to hold and throw a blade isn't that difficult, and the motion bringing the knife to ready for a throw isn't (or, shouldn't be) forceful enough to have that result. Your arm is not a catapult or bow, the energy going into readying the knife doesn't need to be equivalent to the force of release. You've got the electrically excited meat to generate that force, and you don't need a lot of energy to get that knife moving.

For a character without a lot of combat training, knives are one of the worst weapons you can hand them, and throwing it makes things even worse. This is one of those blindingly obvious statements, but, if you have a knife, and you throw it, you no longer have a knife. You have just surrendered your weapon, and are now unarmed. (Obviously, if your knife was a backup, you might not be unarmed, but you're still giving up a functional weapon, until you can retrieve it.)

Even without considering throwing, knives are exceptionally lethal in the hands of an experienced wielder. An inexperienced fighter armed with a knife, is not going to stand a reasonable chance of surviving contact with the enemy. So, someone equipping an inexperienced fighter with a knife has already made a horrible mistake. It's a deceptively high-skill weapon, being put in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use it.

Beyond that, if someone is training for a full year, and not seeing any progress, that's a personal choice. They're either disengaged entirely, or their teachers are completely incompetent (which, might track with the part where they decided to start her off with a knife.)

With most weapons, you should see practical competence within a few weeks of regular training. When you see longer time frames like this, it can either reflect a weapon that is exceptionally difficult to use (such as the urami, I'm not sure how long it takes to train on one of those), that the writer has severely dropped the ball, or that they're letting their biases show.

In this case, it's probably the latter. That's not the kind of mistake someone's going to reasonably make more than once.

So, in answer to your original question: Yeah. It kinda is. It's a little harder to say who that reflects on, but it isn't a reasonable mistake to make.

-Starke

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Inelegantly and briefly. The golf club isn't particularly well suited for use as a weapon. Most attacks have large, telegraphed swings, that are easy for a trained foe to counter or evade.

Ironically, one of the more “realistic” depictions I've seen was from the film Suicide Kings (1997) where it's used to ambush someone seated at a booth. Because the victim is pinned, his options to defend himself are extremely limited, the attacker can just flail away on him. The attacker also breaks his club during the attack. (And, it wouldn't surprise me if Dennis Leary broke the actual prop shooting the scene.)

Which is a bit of a theme, given the use in Bioshock also results in a destroyed club. Fragility is a problem with a lot of improvised weapons, and the golf club is no exception. Just because it's designed to hit a 1.6oz (46g) ball, that doesn't mean it's well designed to kill another human being. That thin shaft is not meant to sustain combat damage, nor is the head designed to remain attached when you start slamming the club into large sack of watery meat with the distressing habit of leaking and screaming.

So, what you're left with is a disposable, improvised weapon that a character can probably use briefly, but in the process it will be ruined and discarded. That cuts hard against it being used as a serious weapon.

Ironically, the use in Bioshock does nicely illustrate one potential application. Because the club will start to fail quickly, it makes the ensuing murder feel much more brutal, than if Jack used the wrench.

Dogma (1999) is another. In that case, the absurdity of killing a literal demon with a golf club is more used for comedic effect (because it's a ridiculous weapon), with the punchline, “[he's] the kind of asshole who'd bless his own clubs.”

It's also, probably, pretty telling that both of the film examples that come to mind (at least for me) are comedies.

I can't think of anyone trying to do this seriously beyond a couple swings. I can think of a few cases where someone gets their hands on one and uses it in a single scene before discarding it, but in spite of the name, it's really not a weapon, and can't be converted into a weapon the way a baseball bat can.

They do pop up in video games a little more often. Though, those tend to be games that bend a little more towards the absurd (Dead Rising, Fallout: New Vegas, and I'm pretty sure they've showed up as options in the Hitman games and Dead Island.)

Ultimately, the golf club really isn't well suited for life as a serious weapon.

-Starke

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So, no surprise to anyone who's been following the blog for any period of time, but I've been dealing with some chronic illness for a while. (This is also why last week's post never made it over from Patreon. I barely had the energy to write it on Tuesday, and by Friday, I didn't have the energy to get it queued on Tumblr.)

This finally spilled over into a trip to the ER at 3am on Monday, and since then, I've been in the hospital undergoing treatment for Ulcerative Colitis. It's a particularly unpleasant disorder (you can Google it if you want the grisly details for yourself.)

I don't remember if I've disclosed it on Tumblr before, but I have diabetes. Unfortunately, the treatment for UC involves anabolic steroids to manage swelling, and steroids do not mix with diabetes. Meaning, hospitalization really is necessary (at least for a bit longer.)

This is a long way to say, there probably won't be a regular post this week. Once again, I'm sorry about that.

The good news is that I have been improving, so I'm able to do more than just stagger from the bed to bathroom, and then crawl back into bed for the rest of the day.

I'm not sure when regular posting will resume, but I'm not dead yet.

-Starke

So, something that stuck out to me originally, when reading this is, most snipers are going to have a close range PDW. Whether that's just their sidearm or something more substantial, they'd need to be proficient with something in close quarters if it comes to that.

Now, the hard part about answering this question in the abstract is that, almost everything associated with firearms is extremely date sensitive.

For example, if your CQB/CQC character was originally trained sometime in the late 90s to late 2000s (in a Western country), they'd have likely encountered Center Axis Re-lock. Outside of those 20 years, then that style hadn't seen widespread adoption, or had fallen out of favor.

For some specific film examples, Vincent (Tom Cruise) from Collateral (2004) would have been working as an assassin for at least a decade by the time we see him in the film. We can make this assessment based on the way he handles the USP, and then compare to CQC training. His one-handed disarm and execute he uses in the alley puts his training sometime in the 80s to 90s at the earliest, while his lack of CAR in close quarters tells you he didn't have Western military or law enforcement training after the mid-90s.

Another film example that might surprise you is John Wick (Keanu Reeves). In those films he exhibits CQC training that suggests he still in the military less than 15 years before the events of the first film. Except his CAR stances are actually a little sloppy (which is unusual for Reeves), which suggests that Wick may have observed others using the stance, and then improvised a version of it for his own use. Meaning you can't really estimate when his combat training occurred. (This might also might explain why he's a bit sloppy about when he switches between Weaver and CAR.) By the way, it is quite difficult to pick this out. It took a few experts dinging on the first Wick film before I really started picking up on the issues with Reeves' technique. And I haven't seen anyone else draw the conclusion that Wick is probably self-taught in CAR. (This was corrected for the later films, as Reeves did get proper training in CAR in preparation for the second film.)

In particular, this is a singular example, but there are a lot of things someone can do that will inform you about their background and training. This starts with weapon selection. Things like their preferred sidearm and primary can be very insightful. People tend to go in one of two directions with firearms. Either, they're very willing to adapt and experiment, or they'll find something they're comfortable with and hone in with that specific firearm.

For example, is your sniper carrying around a Remington 700, or something like an MSR or AWM? Both are legitimate answers, but they say very different things about how your character approaches their area of expertise. Similarly, are they carrying a 1911 pattern pistol, or something more modern, like an HK USP or FN P45?

If your sniper is carrying around an AMT Hardballer, and your CQC specialist is carrying around a P45t, your CQC specialist has twice the magazine capacity. They can afford to dump rounds into someone until they stop twitching. Where as a Hardballer is “just” an extremely well made 1911. Their kills are going to look different, but it's a function of the weapon they chose.

Without knowing what they're carrying, it's very hard to answer definitively how their kills will look.

If it was me, kitting out for CQC in a situation where I'd need to hide the weapon under a jacket, I'd seriously consider an AAC Honey Badger hidden under a sport coat. (I know, I trash talked the Honey Badger a few years ago, before getting a good look at one and seeing just how tiny they are. Mea Culpa. I should know better than to shit on a gun I'm unfamiliar with by now. That's a toxic element of gun culture I've been trying to get away from. It still clings a bit sometimes.) Similarly, the Mk18 and Colt 733 are also pretty good options. That's a little bit of an M4a1 bias, but it's a decent platform. There are other valid options, those are just the first that come to mind for me.

If your character was kitting for CQC, and wanted Warsaw pact weapons, the Groza is a bit exotic, but that's what it was designed for. The SR-3M Vikhr is an update of the Val, and a pretty legitimate choice. They're both 9x39mm rifles, so long range accuracy isn't happening, but in close quarters they still hit stupidly hard. Granted, any Krinkov would work in that role. (So, mostly AKS-74Us.) (I think there were some 7.62x39mm Krinkovs, but I can't remember the name.)

So, ultimately, identifying the differences between the weapons, starts with knowing what the weapons are. Having a basic idea of how they handle (even if that's not first hand), and then being able to see how they differ from one another. This is made even harder in the sense that modern firearms have become extremely modular. Given the option to fully kit out the same gun for you CQC specialist, it's a pretty good bet you and I would walk away with distinctly different end results. Even if the base model was the same. (For the record, I'm not saying my configuration would be better. I have biases and preferences that aren't necessarily the best option available.)

The best place to start, is looking at the kinds of weapons your character would use. Your sniper's going to want a long range precision rifle and a sidearm. She might also go for a small machine pistol/SMG. Your CQC specialist would probably prioritize an actual primary. That might be an SMG, a carbine, or even a shotgun (because nothing says hello quite like three or four 12 gauge shells pumped out of a fully automatic Saiga. (And before someone corrects me, yes, I know, there are no production full-auto Saigas, however they can be illegally modified for full-auto.)

Once you know how different the weapons are, you can start digging into how the characters themselves approach combat, and how their respective styles differ.

-Starke

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So here's a fun thought to play with. A leather jacket is made from treated animal hide. In most cases, they're actually softened a bit to be more comfortable.

Shotguns are frequently used to hunt large game. Large game where their primary form of armor is their skin. Their skin which does almost nothing to stop a shotgun blast.

So, unless it's loaded with something like rocksalt, a leather jacket is not stopping a shotgun.

In answer to your original question, “what kind of wounds?” Catastrophic ones. It would be really messy.

Also, remember shotguns are still usable up to ~100 meters, at which they'll have a roughly 2m spray pattern. Getting hit by a shotgun, even at 50 meters, is going to be really bad. It's a bit like hitting someone simultaneously with a hail of small caliber rounds. Individually one piece of shot isn't likely to be lethal, but get hit with five or six of them, and that's a real problem. It's going to create a bunch of wound channels, and each wound has a chance to hit something vital, or ricochet and try again. And even at best, you're going to be losing blood from each of them simultaneously.

As for actual armor, most Level III or higher armor should stop a shotgun blast. However, shotguns are pretty good at damaging body armor. So someone wearing a ballistic vest who takes a shotgun hit, probably isn't going to be safe from the next pistol round that hits their vest anywhere near where the shot landed.

Similarly, with plate carriers, it should be fine, but there's a real risk that some of the shot chipped the plate. That's not going to cause the next shotgun blast to punch through, but it does mean that carrier now can't be trusted to stop rifle rounds.

Now, none of that are things you usually obsess over. For the most part, ballistic armor is single use anyway. If you're wearing a Kevlar vest and get shot, it's time to replace that vest. So, having your vest soak a shotgun hit isn't some kind of special tactic on your enemy's part, and is really just your vest doing its job.

Against unarmored targets, shotguns can be downright horrific.

So, using a winter parka to stop a shotgun blast is probably the result of someone who heard the, “shotguns are horrible at armor penetration,” line and took it a little bit too seriously.

There are some AP shells out there. Including slugs that market themselves as armor penetrating. I've never looked too deeply in to these. I know of their existence, but not how effective they actually are.

There's also probably some close quarters scenarios where a slug might punch right through body armor, even though, generally speaking, slugs lose energy extremely quickly, and at mid to long range, they're not going to penetrate. Ultimately, it is an 18mm bullet without a lot of powder behind it, so the drop off makes sense, but it's still a lot of mass to deal with when it's leaving the barrel. Even if your armor holds up, taking that hit is probably not going to be fun.

-Starke

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Something to remember: Pokemon is a game. I don't mean in the meta-sense that the anime and ancillary materials are based off of the video game and card game, the way you could, for example, describe the Fallout TV series as based on a game. I mean, literally, that the structure of Pokemon itself is a competitive game.

When you start stripping it apart, and really dig into the structure, combat in pokemon is a game where the trainers are the players, and their pokemon are the pieces they're using on the board. This is an important concept to grasp when you're dissecting the material, because it informs why it functions.

There is a concept in games called an action stack. When you're playing a strategically intensive game, you'll often come across some version of this concept. Basically, you announce your action to your opponent, they then get an opportunity to take a legal response (if one exists), and then the action resolves. In situations like this, calling out your actions is a necessary step in keeping your opponent apprised of changes in the game state. It's also (often) necessary as a step to give them the opportunity to respond (whether that's part of the same action stack, or as a following action.)

Now, much like in Pokemon, in casual games, these kinds of declarations, and even the structure of the action stack itself, can become very ad hoc. You wouldn't do this in a tournament environment, but in casual circumstances you'll see players doing things like say, “I'm playing this,” or just drop the card on the table as part of their appropriate action window. (Though, again, this behavior is extremely rude in a tournament environment.)

As you mentioned, the instructions given by the trainer is, technically, for the Pokemon's benefit, rather than the opponent. Also, pieces on the board not following the player's commands is a concept that does exist in some tabletop games. For example: if you botch a Leadership test in Warhammer, you're not going to get the results you were hoping for.

So in this specific case, being privy to your opponent's actions ahead of time is really more an example of intelligence gathering (even though it's at a very limited level.) And, this is, absolutely, a consideration in competitive games. If you can accurately predict your opponent's next action it can let you take preemptive steps to mitigate their move, or even outright prevent them from doing what they want.

Not being able to collect intelligence conventionally is a little bit of a problem, but it's not necessarily a deal breaker. A lot of the time, intelligence gathering in games (for an experienced player) is testing limited information against extensive system knowledge to make educated guesses about what your opponent will do. If you have awareness of the board, you don't always need to actually have specific knowledge about what your opponent is planning. Meaning, if they're extremely knowledgeable about what's out there, they might not need to hear their opponents' every command. With enough familiarity, each pokemon is recognizable on sight, and they have limited move options determined by their appearance (with the occasional outlier or exception.)

Also, lipreading is a thing. It's a lot harder when you're just sampling general use of the language, but when you're looking at a limited number of individual words (and you know which words could be issued because of the aforementioned system knowledge) it can become quite possible for someone to pick out what a trainer is telling their pokemon, even if they wouldn't be able to hear the words normally (or lipread a stray conversation between strangers.)

Incidentally, if you're thinking that it's unreasonable for someone to have the stat sheets for over 1k pokemon committed to memory, that's in line with what you need to have committed to memory for a number of competitive games, if you're operating at a high level. Chances are, if you're a highly ranked M:TG player, you'll probably have at least 2-3k cards committed to memory even if you can't use them in Modern anymore.

-Starke

Quick Update

As most of you know, we're in the US. So, the last couple days have been a bit rough.

There's not going to be a post on Friday, and I think everyone that's in the Discord already figured that out.

With everything that's going on, we're going to be put in a slightly precarious position in the near future. We're working on options for what to do. But, with the way things are looking right now, there's probably going to be some disruptions, while we ensure our own safety.

I wanted to thank everyone who supports us through Patreon. We do really appreciate that, and we're going to try to keep our output going, but obviously there's going to be some hickups in the near future.

Obviously, we're going to see what happens, but, I wanted to let you guys know, we do love you guys. Thank you for being here with us, through all these years.

-Starke

Movie style bounty hunters were almost exclusively a myth. There were the odd exception here or there, but the concept of an old west bounty hunter didn't really exist until the 1950s.

The term, “bounty hunter,” is a little anachronistic as well. While there were people called bounty hunters in the 19th century, the term primarily referred to mercenaries. Specifically this was in the context of any signing or campaign completion bonuses that they would receive. That was the, “bounty.”

Using the modern term, most bounty hunters in the old west were actually local law enforcement officers, who relied on the cash payout bonuses from arrests. (And, in the case of these bounties, thinking of it as a pay bonus for law enforcement really is instructive.) In other cases, law enforcement officers would use a portion of those payouts to entice civilians to assist them in making potentially dangerous arrests.

Private detectives, including the Pinkertons, also sometimes tracked down outlaws, and as with law enforcement, the bonus pay was an enticement. Amusingly, Wells Fargo used to also operate bounty hunters specifically tracking outlaws who'd targeted their property. Though, other contemporary companies did the same. In this case, it's less of a “bounty hunter,” and more of a corporate enforcer, hunting down someone who'd crossed the company.

Another interesting thing to be aware of is that those wanted posters were not publicly distributed. There also wasn't a universal format, or source. Some were distributed by the Pinkertons (though, I'm not entirely clear on whether those were given to law enforcement or primarily kept for internal use, though at least some of their circulars did end up in the public record and have been preserved.) In a lot of cases, these were just a written description of the criminal, and a posted bonus (usually $100 or less.) I'm not completely sure how rare the posters were at the time, but very few have survived into the modern day. So, this was more of a resource for law enforcement, rather than something offered for public consumption. The image of a board of wanted posters presented for anyone wandering psychopath to peruse is a fantasy.

Freelancers, such as they were, seem to have been mostly working for private interests. These were often military veterans who would happily hunt down suspected criminals (such as cattle rustlers) and dispatch them. In general, that ends up looking a bit more like murder-for-hire, rather than what you'd think of as a modern bounty hunter, though it may inform some of the modern perspectives on the job. These are the ones you're probably seeing that get categorized as outlaws, and there is quite a bit of truth to that.

A sort of neat bit of trivia, the modern bounty hunter, (also, more commonly known as a bail bondsman, or bail bond agent), is a very old profession. However their history in the United States originated in San Francisco in 1898. The Old West came to an end in 1912 (generally), so there was a period of 14 years where modern bounty hunters existed in America, before the wild west was officially over. So, in that sense, there is some actual overlap, but it's not what most people think of when talking about a “wild west bounty hunter.” (And, on the subject of, “officially over,” it's worth remembering that the last range war in Wyoming took place in 1909.)

The image of the bounty hunter as a sort of freelance cop, who wanders around arresting outlaws, is a product of highly sanitized 1950s westerns.

-Starke

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A shovel through the spine at the base of the skull?

So, the headlock neck break is basically a fantasy. The amount of force you'd need to actually shatter someone's neck in the way presented would be superhuman. (Which does mean there's probably examples as industrial accidents, but industrial accidents are a somewhat uncommon murder method. Mostly because they're not especially portable.)

Hilariously, there are multiple attempted murder cases, where the would-be killers tried to replicate that neck break, only succeeding in annoy their victims, and telegraphing their intention. So, someone were to try to snap someone's neck that way, it would be an excellent indicator that they had no training what so ever.

There are ways that someone can kill with a headlock, such as a blood choke, but nothing that's going to concretely point the finger at someone with a military background.

Similarly, stab wounds can be very informative about the killer. But all you'll really gather is how familiar they are with human anatomy, and how comfortable they are with cutting people-shaped meat. This won't help you distinguish between someone who's done this before, and someone who's done this before for their country. (Incidentally, “people-shaped meat,” isn't strictly a joke. There are lot of potential careers and backgrounds where you could become pretty comfortable cutting into animals, either live or recently deceased. So, in this specific case, that's more about the mindset. Someone uncomfortable with that level of physicality, is like to leave behind hesitation wounds. These are smaller cuts, sometimes in the main wound channel, indicating that they're not really comfortable with what they're doing.)

So far as it goes, I'm more a fan of just ramming a blade into an artery, rather than slitting their throat. The latter is a lot more work, but the former requires you actually know where to find someone's arteries quickly and efficiently. Which isn't necessarily a sure thing.

Even tool selection won't necessarily tell you much. Someone who's using a military knife might be ex-military, or they could be someone who uses surplussed equipment because it's cheap and relatively reliable. And that's assuming you can concretely identify the knife from the wounds it leaves. Which is also not especially reliable. You can tell how far the blade penetrated, and roughly how large it is, but that won't tell you if it was a bayonet or some cheap gas station hunting knife of a similar size.

Firearms present a similar problem. Once you can track down the gun (if there were any intact bullets to compare, which isn't a certainty), you might be able to match the gun to the wounds. But, examining the wounds on their own (especially if the bullets are gone, or buried deep in the corpse) will only give you an estimate of the bullet's size. Here's a problem with this, did you know that .38, .380, and .357 magnum are all 9mm rounds? They're different cartridges, but the bullets they spit out are very similarly sized. You might be able to make some educated guesses based on the wound channel and burns, but these all fire a round that's roughly the same size. So, when someone looks at a wound and definitively says it was a .38, they don't know that. (Unless they found the shell casing. But even then, you're not likely to find a .38 or .357mag shell casing unless the attacker specifically dropped their spent brass and reloaded, as those are revolver cartridges. .380 is a semi-auto round, so those will get kicked out after each shot. And, yes, before someone complains, there is .357 SIG, that's a semi-auto cartridge. It's 9x22mm.)

Also worth remembering, you can't, specifically match a shotgun's ballistics, assuming the shell was loaded with shot, and not slugs. You may be able to match the mechanical wear on the casing itself to a model (or multiple models in some cases), but not a specific gun.

So, how do you know it was someone with military training? You don't. Learning that someone's been trained to kill is a bit easier to pin down, but the information isn't that useful. That doesn't tell you if they're ex-military, ex-police, or even just the product of an extremely messed up homelife with a prepper parent. Or, even just they got extremely lucky (or unlucky) with a single stab.

Now, it isn't pointless to try to determine that, as it can be helpful later to demonstrate that the eventual suspect had the training to kill in the method that the victim experienced. But it doesn't do much to narrow the suspect pool on its own.

Ironically, the killer not having combat training. So, with things like defensive and hesitation wounds, can be far more useful for narrowing the suspect pool. As an investigator, when you're talking to someone that you're sure has been certified in knife combat, isn't likely to be especially messy with their stabbings. (Though, to be fair, even a trained knife fighter might stab their victim many times, to ensure a faster bleedout, and not all of those hits are going to be especially artful.)

So, that's a long way from, “you can't really break someone's neck like you see in the movies.” You can kill people, and as an investigator, you can make a lot of educated guesses based on what you find at the crime scene. But, “this method means they were militarily trained,” doesn't really mean they were trained by the military.

-Starke

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It depends on how much physical abuse she takes. Too much kinetic force, even if it's effectively distributed, can still cause internal hemorrhaging or concussions, and can still kill you.

It's probably worth remembering that bruising is “just” subdermal bleeding. So, even though the blood isn't actually leaving your body, it's no longer in your circulatory system, and no longer transporting oxygen to your brain. It's possible, though rare, to bleed to death from extensive bruising without any external bleeding. (Dying from internal hemorrhaging is far more common.)

More realistically, bruises suck. They'll hurt, and be tender, for days to weeks. Even if it's not serious, they could easily end up with some deep muscle bruises that make them absolutely miserable, with minimal actual injuries sustained. (The point of armor is to reduce the effectiveness of incoming harm, so limping off with a bunch of painful bruises is a pretty reasonable outcome.)

Now, armor is usually designed to distribute and minimize incoming kinetic energy. Unless it can fully negate that incoming energy, the risks of injury will remain.

Everything being numb sounds a lot more serious to me. In the moment it's fine, and that could be as simple as an adrenaline rush combined with a lot of pain. However, if it persists into the next week, that starts to sound more like nerve damage, which could mean permanent impairment. Probably with a lot of downtime and physical therapy before she's back up and going. If they were getting bounced around in their armor, there's a very real risk of a pinched (or severed) nerve, which could cause a lifetime of problems.

The biggest potential outcome I haven't touched on yet is concussions. If some of those blows are hitting her in the head, even with a reinforced helmet, that can still result in a concussion and death or permanent brain damage. That said, it can also result in feeling like absolute garbage for a few days, and then recovering. Concussions are no joke, but they are survivable.

So between deep bruising and possibly a concussion, that would have her feeling (and probably) absolutely horrid for a few days. Though, really, if you want something more serious, you've got options now.

-Starke

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It's not that Wolverine and Deadpool's regenerative abilities are, “cranked up to 10,” those operate strictly under, “the power of plot compels thee!” There's nothing inherently wrong with that approach, but it can cause problems down the line. (At this point, it's functionally impossible to kill Wolverine because he's been shown to be able to regenerate from any surviving tissue. Which does make it a little harder to hold him up as being in significant peril.)

So, really, the question becomes, “how fast do you want your character to heal?” “What can they recover from?” And, “how realistic do you want to be?”

In a lot of cases, you can look up projected medical recovery times from injuries. This is usually calculated around a healthy adult (18-35), and will increase as you get older. Or as other health factors slow your ability to heal.

It's pretty easy to take wound recovery estimates and just divide them by a fixed value. So, for example, recovery from a minor gunshot wound is estimated at a few weeks, so if your character heals 7 times faster than a normal human, then they'd be back up and going in a few days. If you want, you can pretty much stop there.

This practice of looking up how long it takes to recover from a given injury will also apply to a lot of those mortal wounds. It doesn't matter how horrific the injury is, someone has probably lived through it.

The question of what they can recover from is a little more involved.

On one end, you have the normal limitations of a character who can only recover from injuries they'd be able to naturally heal from. While in other cases (like broken bones or severed tendons) they'd still need significant medical attention, even if the resulting recovery times would be dramatically reduced. On the other end, you might have a situation where these kinds of injuries can self correct with minimal assistance from your character (and no, formal, medical assistance.)

Then there's the question of being able to regenerate lost limbs. That is biologically possible, and in fact young children can regrow lost digits, though the ability to do so genetically shuts off as we age.

At the same time, humans cannot heal off nerve or spinal damage. Again, this is biologically possible, but the ability is genetically shut down. (In this case, it's theorized because scarring on the nerves could result in horrific issues down the line.)

Ironically, one of Wolverine's more plausible powers is his biological immortality. If his healing factor regenerates his telomeres (which, again, is quite possible. In the real world, some cancer cells exhibit this behavior already), then that would mean that he is not subject to the Hayflick limit. The Hayflick limit is the number of times an individual cell in your body can undergo mitosis, and once it's expended, when the cell dies, it cannot be replaced. In a very real sense, the Hayflick limit, and telomere shortening are what causes biological aging. Regenerating the telomeres would mean that a cell could, potentially, undergo mitosis an indefinite number of times. So, if a character's regenerative abilities do prevent telomere shortening, it's likely that they would be biologically immortal.

If your character's regenerative abilities can restore brain damage fast enough, it might also be impossible for your character to die from bloodloss. So, this probably needs a little more explanation. Bleeding to death is, really, just suffocation with extra steps. Blood is critical for getting oxygen to the brain, and when your cardiovascular system can't do so (for example, because someone's punched too many holes in it) then your brain asphyxiates and dies. With a fast enough healing factor, your character would literally immune to death from bloodloss. (And, you'd probably need to tap them in the head to kill them.)

How fast does that regeneration need to be? I'm honestly not sure. Brain death tends to occur within a few minutes of lack of oxygen to the brain.

This also creates a related potential outcome, depending on whether or not their regenerative abilities shut down when they died. If their abilities are dependent on them being alive, so killing them is enough, then that's normal. However, if their healing persists after brain death (which can happen, as some autonomic functions can continue after death, at least, for a little while), killing them could easily see them regaining consciousness some time after the lethal injury was inflicted, with most of the damage having been regenerated.

One final consideration (and one that doesn't happen that often with superheroes) is the consideration of how you actually fuel all of this. Regenerating an arm is going to require a lot of energy, and your character's going to need to get that from somewhere. Whether they're literally pulling in power from some fixed source (as with the early Spawn comics), or if they just have an implausibly aggressive appetite for food. They will need to get the energy from somewhere. Again, there isn't really a correct answer here, just an answer that fits the story you want to tell. (A fixed power source, like Spawn's, does give you a lot of room to have healing at the speed of plot while still maintaining tension. Or, at least it did, until the countdown was removed.) Of course, if they do run out of energy to fuel their healing ability, that probably means it will fall off, though it could potentially kill them in the process.

One legitimate concern over running out of juice would be scurvy like symptoms, which causes previously healed wounds to reopen. It's pretty horrifying, but might be a way to inject some serious tension into the story, if you've set up the rules to support it.

-Starke

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So, eventually, that arrowhead is going to need to come out. The recommendation about leaving the arrow in the wound is more for immediate first aid, rather than a long term solution.

Specifically, the first aid advice is to bandage around the arrow, so that the entire thing is stabilized. In the event that the arrow is helping to seal the wound, you don't want to pull it out, but you also don't want it moving around causing more damage. It's a bit of a delicate balance in that regard. If it's in a leg, and the injured individual cannot walk on their own (which is likely) they'll need assistance, either a stretcher or someone to help support them, while they get to help.

This is one of those times where the best medical practice runs counter to the popular image of how an arrow in a wound is treated. Which is to say, the character who's just been shot ripping it out, staring at it for a moment, and then throwing it a way. Much like pulling a knife out of a wound, this is a great way to accidentally start a fatal bleed out.

If aid is being rendered by someone with actual medical training, in an environment where a bit more work can be done, then the arrow does need to come out. This may also require packing the wound with gauze in the event that it does start bleeding seriously, and bandaging the wound to minimize further aggravation.

Now, if you need to use the muscles that just got pinned together, I've got some bad news. Even after the arrow comes out, those muscles are not going to be working right for a while. As we've mentioned before, your muscles are basically bundles of meat chords, getting pulled over your skeleton based on electric signals. If some of those chords have been cut, they're going to need to heal before they'll do anything, and the ones around them in the same muscle will be under much greater strain, and also at risk of tearing. So, the affected body part will be weakened, after the arrowhead comes out, and trying to use it in any serious way, runs a serious risk of inflicting further harm and impairment. Worst case, if strained too severely, this can actually cause a muscle to completely tear. In this case, you're probably looking at surgery, just to get the muscle to start healing.

The good news, such as it is, you don't need a full surgical theater or surgeon to get the arrowhead out. A reasonably trained medic with decent supplies can do it in the field. The problem is if the arrowhead nicked an artery, and is holding pressure, if that comes out, you're probably going to die. (Then again, even in a surgical theater, with a wound like that, it could easily be touch-and-go.)

So, yes, the arrowhead does need to come out, and it can be removed by a trained medic. What you don't want to do is the, “badass,” reach up and rip it out, routine, because that can kill you. (Also, a trained medic will be in a much better position to make an educated guess whether it's safe to pull out the arrow, or if it really needs to stay where it is until the injured individual can get to a hospital.)

What's harder is that even after you can get articulation back, that area's going to be hurting for a long time. Torn muscles (which includes if someone's carved you up with a blade, or asked you to hold an arrow for them) can take more than three months to heal. So, while getting the foreign object out is a critical step on the path to recovery, it's going to be a bit before you're up and going after that.

Modern medicine grades all of these (including where the muscle has been completely severed, or torn) as “muscle strains” with three grades. Grade I strain indicates a few stretched or torn fibers, but nothing too serious. You've probably experienced this from time to time, and while your body's ability to repair these injuries is technically limited, it will usually heal in a couple weeks. Grade II strains (which is what you're seeing from an arrow wound) will take at least two months to recover. Grade III strains are where the muscle is completely severed, and as mentioned, require surgery, and will still take months of physical therapy after the injury, in addition to the healing process.

-Starke

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Usually, infection. In a survival situation, it's possible the leg has become gangrenous, at which point taking it off is the only reasonable route. The answer does depend on the overall level of technology, and how little the practicing surgeon cares. I know of a case where an army surgeon was ready to amputate a leg over a spiral fracture. There's also plenty of medical malpractice cases where an amputation is performed on the wrong limb (or wrong patient.) They're not exceptionally common, but they do happen, and when you've got overworked, disengaged, hospital staff, the risks go up.

Maybe it's personal bias, but I think there's something more sadistic about losing a leg to an injury that really didn't warrant it.

In fairness, it's also possible (if your villain is armed or able to exploit the environment) to mangle the leg beyond use in combat. Such as running an axe through the knee joint performing the amputation on the spot, crushing the leg under a car, or some similarly, unreasonably heavy object. There's a lot of industrial equipment that could pretty quickly take a leg off, if you're not careful. At that point, there's a legitimate question about where this fight is happening.

At the other end of the spectrum, your villain doesn't really need to get the leg amputated to take away their ability to fight. Destroying the tendons holding one of their knees together would go a long way towards doing that without actually taking the knee itself.

-Starke

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Not deeply.

So, the problem with all of these is tissue disruption. If the injury gets deep enough, the chances that it will hit something vital (especially on the torso) increase dramatically. So, getting stabbed and having the blade catch bone, instead of getting in deeper is “relatively” safe. Similarly, getting stabbed (or shot) in the hand or foot is unlikely to kill you (though, those injuries are likely to result in permanent damage impairing the use of injured appendage.)

Arrows are a little different, in a couple of ways. First, if you get shot, you do not want to pull that off (nor break it off and push it through.) That will increase the risk of bleeding out. Arrows make fairly large holes in people, but if the arrow sticks in the wound (which, it should) it will actually limit the amount of bleeding. Effectively the wound has a partial plug in it. Pulling out the arrow means that plug is no longer there, and they can happily bleed to death on the spot.

The second thing about arrows is that they actually pin muscle together. Think of it a bit like holding two pieces of meat together with a toothpick. If the toothpick isn't there, the pieces can slide across each other without issue, but that's not possible when there's a wooden shaft running through them. Your muscles are a complex web of meat, that slide over each other as you move. Pinning those together means that part of your body will actually lock up. For example, if you're shot in the shoulder, you won't be able to adjust the position of your arm. It's been toothpicked, and it's not going anywhere.

Arrowheads can get wedged in bone. If it's a broad head, or hunting tip, that will be obnoxious to get out.

At the risk of reading too much into your setting, goblins often means poisons, or other nastiness. Though, really, even just getting a tetanus infection (it used to be called “lock jaw”) from their blades is a pretty horrific potential fate. Even if the wounds themselves were relatively minor (cuts and scrapes, maybe a graze or two), a couple days might still result in some pretty horrific harm after the fact.

Also, remember, it's unlikely that bacteria will be understood by the medical science of your setting. So, first aid would still run a real risk of secondary infections.

Depending on their skill in first aid, anything outside of a severed artery or catastrophic organ damage should be (technically) survivable, though the wounds could easily result in permanent impairments, depending on exactly what was hit. A punctured lung might not kill her, but it could result in permanent respiratory issues, such as a cough, and chronic pain while breathing heavily from then on. It could also result in pneumonia and death, which is also, usually, pretty permanent.

Some of this depends more on where you want to land on a spectrum between dark fantasy and swords & sorcery. The genres are similar (and potentially overlapping), but can scatter out into dramatically different works. But, you do have some options on how you want to proceed.

-Starke

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