Ryan S. wrote: |
I think people use the word kill when talking about combat too much. Rather, they should use words like seriously injure or defeat. Sometimes just defeating the enemy is “good enough” but most of the time defeating the enemy without killing him is even better. |
Indeed! I got to the very end and found you have articulated exactly what I was thinking all of the way through reading this thread. Of course, sometimes the only way of stopping a determined opponent may well be killing them or perhaps an injury sufficiently serious that it turns out to be lethal eventually (but is not necessarily immediately so, or even the intended result) but on many levels this is actually a suboptimal outcome.
Yes, by all means disable an opponent and, most importantly, take them out of the fight -- they may be overwhelmed, pinned down, captured... but that does not require lethal force. Outright killing of an opponent deprives the winner of the opportunity for ransom and potentially signifiant wealth. There would have been occasions where this was unavoidable, or perhaps one or both sides knew that capture would inevitably lead to execution and would fight on regardless, but for the most part this would largely have been regarded as a "bad" result.