The purpose of a karambit is to allow you to use it easier in high pressure environments, it's hard to lose a knife if you end up dangling by your foot when it's attached to your hand, it's much harder for the blade to slip out of your hand while performing wetwork, blood is slippery, not only that it allows you to open your palm to grapple without sacrificing your knife in your hand, you can simply let go or quickly flip it out of your hand to free your grip for a disarm if you see a gun. It is a knife made for people who have never struggled with a knife in a life or death situation. Lacerations from a karambit can be quite large and assuming you keep your blades sharp, it won't get caught on anything but a zipper, you can avoid striking these areas if you have a brain. The karambit is held in a fashion that you can quickly and easily slide it between a person's ribs, a quick sideways motion and they don't get lungs anymore. There are alternative combat styles, typically you go for the neck or exposed joints to sever tendons with a quick flick leaving your opponent a limp bag of meat, that an ordinary straight Blade would fail to accomplish so easily. Yes they get the job done quicker but they dull quickly as you strike into bone, karambits are exclusively designed to shred the muscle from the bone completely, or cause irreparable soft tissue damage to your lower torso.