Of course one of the other things is that flesh (as opposed to armor) is better at shedding BFT than slashing damage as it is spread over a larger area. Most armors start by turning the damage into BFT.

Accentuating armor as you described would also work.

One other point, while arrows and crossbow bolts penetrated armor better than swords they were less lethal than edged weapons, which dealt greater tissue damage. Even today you are more likely to survive a bullet bound than a wound from a knife fight. Though puncture wounds heal very slowly.

Getting back into period leechcraft for WHFRP - Given that by and large WHFRP is closer to Reformation than Medeival there were a few treatments that were falling out of vogue which actually helped. Maggots and washing the wound with urine. Maggots eat decayed flesh, helping prevent necrosis, while as a weak antiseptic wash urine was better than almost anything else that was used. While novels have wounds being washed with brandy it was not in actuallity done, brandy was however used before amputations, the patient being a much more docile subject while unconcious. Brandy, urine, and maggots were used however in the Ottoman Empire, as were 'white spirits' (distilled grain alcohol). Turkish and Moorish physicians were considered the best in the world, followed by Jewish. (The Jewish physicians insisted on cleanliness, which is better than most of the doctors of the period...) The downside of washing wounds with urine was that it greatly increased the chance of scarring - to about 100%.

Surgeons would reuse bandages, since they helped once it must mean they are good... Washing the bandages was done with cold water. In my last WHFRP campaign one player lost it when the surgeon pulled out the stained bandages and referred to them as his 'good luck bandages'.

Leeches by the way actually do produce a weak antibiotic, and have found their way back into medical practice in the modern day, being used in limb and scalp reattachment. (Yay leech!) They help with blood circulation, both with an anticoagulant and by preventing necrotic blood from pooling. However some of the barber/surgeons decided that it was not the leech that was helping patients, it was the loss of blood, so they developed 'bleeding' - Which did not help at all. (And may have been what killed George Washington.)

Pulling these out and horrifying players is a lot of fun!

The Auld Grump

I gather that he was indeed a good teacher.

The Day the Universe Changed is another great show, and how I found out about the book De Re Metallica. After four attempts I finally finished it this time through! I just kept muttering 'Dwarfs, you can use this for dwarfs...' as I read it this time.

The Auld Grump