It only needs to happen once, and those shorts will be worth every penny, trust me.
I've taken a number of hits in the region of there, usually I have an invisible force field or automatic reactions that swing anything out of the way.
Eventually I took extra precautions.
On one of our events I was dressed in a dish dash (with trousers underneath) I was sat / laid back photographing and took a direct hit up the dish dash.
(I in fact awarded points to the team as there was a price on my head - they hit 'a head') Due to the specific circumstances I didn't expect that again
At one of the Call to Duty games I took major bruising on the inside of my thigh and found a bruise on 'it'. The thigh bruise gained me a welt of the month on here, I didn't show the other
At the bunker in Exeter I took 3 direct hits at close proximity leaving me 3 distinct bruises on it.
Now I wear a box for CQB