Arrow to the torso

efreysson

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I have a scene where a villain gets hit with an arrow and falls out of sight. The archer is too busy to pay him any further heed and assumes he's dead. The villain then crawls away, makes a full recovery and seeks revenge at a later point.

There is no advanced medicine available, so I need a kind of wound he can survive with just basic aid. Where in the torso could I inflict a wound like that?

Oh, and the bow isn't terribly powerful.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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If he falls out of sight and has the brains to stay there, he could be as minorly injured as you want.

Or does the archer actually see the arrow sticking out of him?

The arrow could go through a fold of flesh in the side. If it doesn't hit any organs or stomach or guts, then it's "just" a flesh wound.

With no antibiotics, an arrow wound even in the flesh is difficult to recover from. It brings the bacteria from the clothes the victim is wearing deep into the body and it's harder to avoid infection.

What kind of arrowhead? Is it a modern target arrow? In that case, not as much of what the villian is wearing would get dragged into the wound. Is it a broadhead combat arrow? Much harder to recover from.

One possibility is that the arrow gets caught in the villian's armour or cloths, and not very much in his body. The archer would see a hit and the arrow sticking, but there wouldn't be much of a wound.

Depending on how bad your villian is, and how distracted or not distracted your archer is, I'd wonder why the archer, or someone, didn't check later to be sure the villian was dead. Especially if there wasn't much blood.
 

waylander

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If he has a mithril coat under his tunic then we could get up and walk away.
Seriously if the arrow knocks him off his feet and he falls out of sight almost anything could have happened.
 

efreysson

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Or does the archer actually see the arrow sticking out of him?

Yes, I'll have to have a decent reason for the archer to assume victory.

What kind of arrowhead? Is it a modern target arrow? In that case, not as much of what the villian is wearing would get dragged into the wound. Is it a broadhead combat arrow? Much harder to recover from.
It's a broadhead.

One possibility is that the arrow gets caught in the villian's armour or cloths, and not very much in his body. The archer would see a hit and the arrow sticking, but there wouldn't be much of a wound.
That's basically what the plan is. I'll give him some minor armor, make the shot not very powerful (archer didn't have time to pull back all the way), and assume the villain gets lucky in combating infection. Heck, and have characters comment on him being lucky. Those factors together make his survival plausible, right?

Depending on how bad your villian is, and how distracted or not distracted your archer is, I'd wonder why the archer, or someone, didn't check later to be sure the villian was dead. Especially if there wasn't much blood.
The villain has allies nearby who are liable to collect the bodies for burial. And the heroes have to keep moving to fight a different, more dangerous enemy.
 

WeaselFire

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Archer victims throughout the ages have survived hits. Most medical people, as far back as archery existed, have the ability to treat a non-life-threatening wound successfully, one of the keys is leaving the arrowhead in the body until you get medical attention. Cleaning the wound with clean water and bandaging it go a long way toward preventing infection. Doctors (or the like) used to treating battle wounds would be extra sure to get all the debris from the wound.

In real-life archery up to the middle ages and development of the long bow, it was actually fairly rare to kill with an arrow. Taking a man out of combat and leaving him for the sword was more the normal goal. Or simply causing a formation to break. You have to be pretty close to have enough power with a standard bow to even bring a man down, let alone kill him instantly.

Jeff
 

sciencewarrior

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"How's that possible? I saw you die"

"Fool. You saw me fall."

"But the arrow should have killed you!"

Grinning, he raised a pocket-sized book with a black hard cover. It is ruined, with a hole in the middle that goes all the way to the back cover.

"The Evil Overlord's Guide, third edition. It has saved my life several times, but never so directly."

:)
 

benbenberi

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What WeaselFire said. Many arrow wounds are survivable without advanced medical help, even if (frex) they penetrate a lung -- you obviously don't want him to be shot through the heart or one of the major blood vessels, & arrow wounds to the hollow organs are bad news (peritonitis is a bitch), but for the rest you can make it as bad or trivial as you need. (N.b. when he gets the wound treated, it may be better to push an arrow all the way through in the direction of the point rather than try to pull it out backwards & cause more damage from the barbs. Knowing the right way to get an arrow out is one of the things that distinguishes a good military surgeon from a butcher.)
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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If the villain has friends to help, then his chances of survival go way up. So that's good. Basically you can survive just about any wound.

If he gets hit and the arrow lodges in his armor or clothes so there's not much damage but he hits his head going down so he's unconscious, you'd have a rather plausible reason for the archer to think he's dead and you could leave him in plain sight if you wanted.
 

Torgo

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It's difficult, this; a hit to just about anywhere could maim for life. For instance, I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee.
 

Royale

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You could just push the arrow through the torso, break off the arrow head from the back of torso, pull out of the shaft via the front and seal the wound with a hot poker. It's an old outdated method and sort of brutal but might work for you. Would leave quite a substantial scar.
 

Oldbrasscat

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Second intercostal space might look deadly, but wouldn't be a serious wound, relatively speaking. In cases of tension pneumothorax, we'd stick a needle in there to bleed off the air. It's at the top of the chest and might look like a hit to the lung, in the midst of battle, but it's actually just above the lungs. The only thing you would need to worry about then was infection.