Things I like About This Rule
- My players can easily keep key NPCs/monsters alive for interrogation. This interrogation can make my job easier by creating an additional avenue for providing them with key information.
- No bookkeeping! After a battle I can just ask: which of the opponents did you merely knock out and which are dead?
Things I Dislike About This Rule
- When a player deals massive damage to a creature and reduces it below 0 hp, it is fun to provide a gruesome description of what happened. If they decide that creature is unconscious at the end of the battle I have to retcon or ignore the previous description.
- It feels a little too "easy" on the players. Sure, they may intend to keep certain opponents alive, but is battle always so clean? Shouldn't there be a random component?
What ideas do you folk have for homerules that tweak this dynamic slightly? Ideally any modification would add little or no additional bookkeeping, add an element of uncertainty to the unconscious/dead opponent dynamic, but not overly punish players who make an effort during battle to subdue an opponent.
Some Ideas I've Considered
- Dealing 1/4 or 1/2 of a creature's total hp in the final blow forces it to make a single death saving throw or die immediately. This is simple, but does require me to make a note of which creatures are dead and which are only possibly dead (i.e. up to the players).
- Assume all combat damage towards monsters/NPCs is lethal unless players explicitly announce otherwise ahead of time. For simplicity's sake, once an opponent is target for nonlethal damage, that opponent is target for nonlethal damage by all players until the end of the encounter. This is also a simple way to keep the descriptions matching the damage type without too much additional bookkeeping. I could use a checkbox on my combat tracking sheet for this option or the one above without much difficulty.
- Make combat more deadly for non-PCs across the board. All NPCs and monsters save vs death when reduced to 0 hp. This is also easy and simple to track, but seems too random and punitive to the players.
With any of the above options, the players may be enticed to use grappling, sleep, and other clearly non-lethal attack vectors on targets they wish to capture. This could make the game more interesting and challenging at times. Another option would be to let the players use a skill challenge to subdue an opponent in a nonlethal way after all of its allies have been dispatched.
I've also considered that since D&D is heroic fantasy, I should just leave the existing rule alone. After all, if the players want to subdue an opponent, as heroes they should have no problem hitting with the flat of the blade, using their weapon to hold off the opponent while they punch them out, altering their fireball to burn up the oxygen around the target and not cook the target alive, etc. After all, hp is not and has never been about physical damage and D&D is not a combat simulator, but rather a storytelling ruleset.
Thoughts? Please keep it PEACHy.
If your players decide not to leave any enemies alive then so be it, you'll just need to give them info another way.
I like the idea of a death saving throw for all monsters once they hit 0; the idea that they don't always die and might recover lends to a very shades-of-gray question of if you wander the battlefield afterwards, dispatching the ones that are barely alive still, or let them live, being no harm to you now (although they might come back later...).
If your players want to purposefully take one alive, you could either skip the saving throw for that one, or just apply modifiers if you wanted a still-randomization to it.
Personally, I have seriously considered making players call out non-lethal damage before they swing; if they deal a killing blow, they KO the creature, but they don't then they fail to inflict any harm at all. Makes it so they have to guess when they stand a chance of dealing the killing blow to a bloodied opponent, risking killing them or risking leaving them alive to still fight.
> shades-of-gray question of if you wander the battlefield afterwards,
That was done away with deliberately, and not merely for shades-of-gray reasons, but for the fact that the PCs aren't now REQUIRED to go around stabbing all of their fallen enemies a few more times after the battle to make sure that they're really dead (which is what was happening under the 3E approach of monsters getting the chance to recover like PCs could).
The fog of war issue seems like the exact sort of over-simulationist detail that bogs things down, if you must offer up a chance to completely fubar a capture mission like that I suggest allowing a death saving throw with a massive bonus for the guy being knocked out. Then for things like crits, or hist dealing some massive portion of the target's HP, reduce or remove the bonus.
So if the player wants to KO Mr. Killdoom, they say so after landing a hit that reduces Mr.K to 0 hp. Then Mr.K rolls a death saving throw with say a +7 bonus, if he saves he's unconcious, if he fails despite the bonus, he dies. If the attack was a crit the bonus drops by three, if the attack dealt 1/2 or more of Mr.K's max HP in damage the bonus drops two.
If the players don't say otherwise I automatically assume they are going to kill an enemy. My houserule is that you must state that you aren't trying to kill the creature at the beginning of the attack. I did that simply because I didn't like the idea of people unleashing some crazy attack and then saying they weren't killing the creature. It also allows me to describe the action more accurately.
I'm also probably going to keep track of the negative hitpoints of unconcious creatures. They won't be able to recover or have to make death saving throws but if they keep getting hit with AOE's or things like that then they could die.
- Make combat more deadly for non-PCs across the board. All NPCs and monsters save vs death when reduced to 0 hp. This is also easy and simple to track, but seems too random and punitive to the players.
My table uses this rule and I think it makes a lot of sense. It feels a little absurd and immersion breaking to have a half dozen enemies getting knocked unconscious by fireballs because our wizard is a little squeamish. It was also a bit too easy to leave NPCs alive to interrogate after the battle. I guess you like this but I find it time consuming and tedious. If it's done rarely then the DM has an opportunity to imbue an otherwise disposable character with some original personality that can make the iterrogation scene exciting and interesting. If it's done after every single battle interrogations blend together and become repetitive.
One variation I have proposed to the DM is that an unarmed basic attack would guarantee unconsciousness instead of a death. That would help reduce the randomness some, provided you give a description that gives players a reasonable understanding of how close to death the creature is to 0 hp.
This also means that brawler fighters, monks, and other ki-focus-using characters are the most effective at KO attacks, although other weapon users can optimize for them. That also feels appropriate, since these seem like the most appropriate classes for "technical pacifists."
Any weapon or magic attack triggers that attempts a KO triggers a death saving throw.
If the players don't say otherwise I automatically assume they are going to kill an enemy. My house rule is that you must state that you aren't trying to kill the creature at the beginning of the attack. I did that simply because I didn't like the idea of people unleashing some crazy attack and then saying they weren't killing the creature. It also allows me to describe the action more accurately.
I decided to go with a variant of this method. I don't have a problem describing normally lethal attacks as non-lethal, but want to know ahead of time, rather than at the point of assigning damage. To simplify things, I added a "non-lethal" checkbox to my printed enemy-combat-tracker sheet (hp, ac, etc.). When a player declares that they are no longer targeting an opponent for lethal damage (the default assumption is lethal damage), I check the box. This way as damage is dealt I can give appropriate descriptions and at the end of combat I can easily let the players know which opponents are merely unconscious. All damage dealt from that point forward is considered as non-lethal unless the players explicitly ask me to reverse the status.
I suppose this is technically a house rule, but the variation is very minor. My house rules for skill challenges, potions, and "woah" tokens are much more significant, and (in my view) important.
Thanks everyone for contributing. Hopefully this thread will continue to grow over time and help others who might have stumbled on this mechanic and felt that they might like to tweak it just a bit.
It feels a little absurd and immersion breaking to have a half dozen enemies getting knocked unconscious by fireballs because our wizard is a little squeamish.
That's all in the description I think. I can imagine that a Wizard who doesn't want to kill anyone wouldn't throw around Fireballs, but what rather throw around some sort of burning knock-out gas, or use a pressure explosion instead of a real explosion to knock people down.
Your other point is true though, it is pretty easy to interrogate enemies this way.
It feels a little absurd and immersion breaking to have a half dozen enemies getting knocked unconscious by fireballs because our wizard is a little squeamish.
That's all in the description I think. I can imagine that a Wizard who doesn't want to kill anyone wouldn't throw around Fireballs, but what rather throw around some sort of burning knock-out gas, or use a pressure explosion instead of a real explosion to knock people down.
Your other point is true though, it is pretty easy to interrogate enemies this way.
I'd just think of it as more like a 'heatwave' attack rather than actual fire. They overheat and pass out from the exposure.
It feels a little absurd and immersion breaking to have a half dozen enemies getting knocked unconscious by fireballs because our wizard is a little squeamish.
That's all in the description I think. I can imagine that a Wizard who doesn't want to kill anyone wouldn't throw around Fireballs, but what rather throw around some sort of burning knock-out gas, or use a pressure explosion instead of a real explosion to knock people down.
Your other point is true though, it is pretty easy to interrogate enemies this way.
To be honest I grabbed a handy example of an obviously lethal spell that most PCs don't have much fine control over dealing convenient subdual damage.
The truth is this isn't so much a problem with dailies since dailies tend to get a lot of loving detail and evocative description. A fireball causing an explosion that knocks six minions into the wall with enough force that they're not going to bother to get up is probably fine. It's the third casting of at-wills that seem like they are quite obviously at least likely to cause serious injury but which, once again, somehow conveniently knocks the boss unconscious so we can tie him up before he wakes up less than five minutes later.
Although that has made me think of another possibility. Maybe if a character really wants to never kill, but still make regular use of explosions and other highly lethal effects, the player could specify one at-will that always deals subdual damage and explain how that works to the table. Then we can know what to expect and the player can, again following appropriate cues from the DM, switch to that power when he doesn't want to accidentally kill. That way non-monks/assassins/vampires/brawlers wouldn't be gimped by having to attack without proficiency/item bonuses.
Some of my objection is totally subjective. I like the game quick and lethal. Batman is pretty much the only character who will ever get a pass from me for somehow regularly and successfully employing extreme violence without ever needing to resort to killing. Maybe Spider-Man, because it keeps him lighthearted and fun which is how I like my Spider-Man. Nevertheless, other players really want to play these kind of technical pacifist characters, and I like that there are options available for those people. But the absurdity of it really strains the limits of my suspension of disbelief at a certain point. Sometimes you've just gotta smack a dude in the face so hard his brain leaks out a little. Every time a ranger pulls out his bow and declares he wants to K.O. the bad guy I picture this:
But I think there is a legitimate problem with the ease of K.O. attacks, which is the need for every battle to be followed by a lengthy interrogation/torture scene which very quickly bleed together. It's really tiring, and it's probably rare that a group truly overuses it but it's common enough to be worth discouraging, if not through an actual rule then by finding a balanced and efficient houserule that doesn't irk the pacifists too much.
In that case, just state what they learn and keep moving rather than making a scene out of it. Problem solved and you don't need to muck around with the rules.
Also you don't need to make monsters follow the "a short rest fixed it" rules, especially when they hit 0 HP. Just make it crippled for life after a shot like that. Why not? It's only an NPC.
Nobody said that knocking someone unconscious had to be done with blunt force trauma. You could shoot someone in the leg and send him into shock if that's how you want to picture it. Plenty painful and good enough to take someone out for the battle.
Agreed, but you still end up with a situation where you need to put more description onto knocking somebody out of the fight rather than killing him, and it still gets pretty absurd when you have characters walking around with fullblades who somehow have gone the entire game without actually killing anybody. It's silly when Leonardo does it on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. It is no less silly when being performed by a dragonborn assassin.
Also you don't need to make monsters follow the "a short rest fixed it" rules, especially when they hit 0 HP. Just make it crippled for life after a shot like that. Why not? It's only an NPC.
Again, agreed, but you want the character to be conscious and responsive after a short rest so you can get on with the inevitable questioning, and anything too painful or brutal is unlikely to satisfy those players who have been convinced by comic books that it is both acceptable and simple to knock somebody unconscious, but killing crosses some kind of line (although again that is a subjective objection).
As for simply reporting what you find out without enacting it, it seems to me that would drain the life out of the game with equal effectiveness, just for the opposite reason.
If a few simple rules tweaks that don't discourage any character too drastically could make it so that there are only one or two survivors of an encounter rather than a half dozen, then that would better capture the flavor of the game for me and also make the post-battle wrap up more efficient, while still maintaining the ability of non-killers to at least justify their body count as unintentional.
And hey, I'm not saying the 4e rule on this matter is bad. It just doesn't happen to work well for my group.
Agreed, but you still end up with a situation where you need to put more description onto knocking somebody out of the fight rather than killing him, and it still gets pretty absurd when you have characters walking around with fullblades who somehow have gone the entire game without actually killing anybody. It's silly when Leonardo does it on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. It is no less silly when being performed by a dragonborn assassin.
Well... when your character wields a Fullblade and is a convinced pacifist and other people have issues with that, it sounds like a group issue that should maybe be sorted out since not every group member seems to be having the same expectations of the game
Well... when your character wields a Fullblade and is a convinced pacifist and other people have issues with that, it sounds like a group issue that should maybe be sorted out since not every group member seems to be having the same expectations of the game
I think players who want to play nonlethal characters will comport to the rules for nonlethal attacks in the game. The system shouldn't totally gimp them with a -5 or whatever to attack like older editions, but funneling them towards certain equipment and builds seems perfectly appropriate and no different from the way that other types of characters are sorted by class and power set. Telling a player he has to choose between wielding a fullblade and reliably dealing subdual damage doesn't strike me as all that different from telling a player that he needs to choose between wielding a fullblade and having sneak attacks. A PC who wants to go around subduing enemies without killing them is probably only wielding a fullblade just because he can, because he's obviously not doing it because it makes sense for his character.
Well... when your character wields a Fullblade and is a convinced pacifist and other people have issues with that, it sounds like a group issue that should maybe be sorted out since not every group member seems to be having the same expectations of the game
I think players who want to play nonlethal characters will comport to the rules for nonlethal attacks in the game. The system shouldn't totally gimp them with a -5 or whatever to attack like older editions, but funneling them towards certain equipment and builds seems perfectly appropriate and no different from the way that other types of characters are sorted by class and power set. Telling a player he has to choose between wielding a fullblade and reliably dealing subdual damage doesn't strike me as all that different from telling a player that he needs to choose between wielding a fullblade and having sneak attacks. A PC who wants to go around subduing enemies without killing them is probably only wielding a fullblade just because he can, because he's obviously not doing it because it makes sense for his character.
It depends on what kinda pacifist the character is actually. Some pacifists believe in non violence, except when defending others, and only as a last ditch effort. Others believe in complete non violence, never attacking or harming another.
There's nothing wrong with a pacifist who chooses to wield a fullblade if he can. It has nothing to do with making sense for his character. He may just use it to defend others, if need be. Or it could be that he wields a fullblade as part of an act. Looking tough and all to make others think twice about attacking him or his buddies, stuff like that.
I think players who want to play nonlethal characters will comport to the rules for nonlethal attacks in the game.
Well, they don't have much of a choice.. they'll have to follow the rules.
Still, being someone who doesn't want to kill everyone he meets in a group that wants to kill everyone they meet sounds like a group issue to me. You don't need complicated rules to allow someone to knock another out, you just need your group to accept that occasionally someone will be knocked out, or you need to make it so that they know you don't want them to constantly knock people out because it's not the kind of game you want to run.
I think players who want to play nonlethal characters will comport to the rules for nonlethal attacks in the game.
Well, they don't have much of a choice.. they'll have to follow the rules.
Still, being someone who doesn't want to kill everyone he meets in a group that wants to kill everyone they meet sounds like a group issue to me. You don't need complicated rules to allow someone to knock another out, you just need your group to accept that occasionally someone will be knocked out, or you need to make it so that they know you don't want them to constantly knock people out because it's not the kind of game you want to run.
If a player wants the rest of the group to abstain from killing, then it might be a group issue or it might be a nice character conflict for the PCs to work out amongst themselves. In this case I'm just talking about a player who doesn't want to kill, not a player who wants the rest of the group to also abstain from killing. That is you reading into my comments more than is there.
What I mean when I say that they will follow the rules is that I think playing a nonlethal character is more important to them than being able to play any class they want with any weapon, so if the rules overly gimp their nonlethal character they will suck it up and deal. I don't think the rules should gimp them, but I do think it's reasonable to have a different set of mechanics for nonlethal attacks in the same way that we have a different set of rules for bull rushing vs. stabbing or whathaveyou.
Besides, in a game that employs houserules, they do have another choice. They can advocate for a change in the rules.
Flat of the blade, pummel shot, aiming for nonvital locations ... lots of ways to not kill people with a sword if you know what you're doing, and PCs know what they're doing.
Maybe. I wouldn't know. I have been watching Pillars of the Earth lately, and there is a lot of nonlethal swordfighting in that series. I noticed a few things about it:
- Nonlethal tactics are invariably employed only in 1x1 fighting, duels being the most obvious example. In battle with multiple combatants, swordsmen use the sharp of the blade to kill their opponents because it is more efficient.
- "Nonlethal" tactics would often be lethal eventually, although of course this is given the medical technology of the time. Only a handful of the people whose faces are caved in by sword pommels are going to live to see next week, and a lot of them are not going to do a lot of moving around between now and then.
- Actually eliminating an enemy from the field of battle typically requires doing enough damage that you can't be certain it won't kill (which would be fairly represented by a saving throw) or incapacitating the opponent in a manner that equally occupies the victor, for example by putting a sword to his throat or a knee on his chest to prevent him from moving or reaching for another weapon.
Besides, if we are going to go the "realism" route, then we have to talk about the fact that somewhere between 50 and 90 percent of the enemies your PCs are likely to face don't have human physiology. How easy is it to knock them out reliably without causing grievous harm? How easy is it to throw a fireball or a Spore cloud at them without killing them? We can't really appeal to realism here, but if we're going to go to the trouble of determining that it is equally plausible, realistically, to eliminate a human with a fullblade in a nonlethal but efficient manner then we ought to at least determine how plausible it is to use an alhulak on a bullywog in the same way.
But it seems better to me to just forego that level of detail and come up with a nicely balanced mechanic that evokes the proper feel and doesn't overly penalize any character concept but which captures the appropriate risk and difficulty of taking prisoners vs. killing enemies in my favorite fiction. This is almost invariably portrayed as more difficult and dangerous than simply killing, children's cartoons being the exception, and I feel that it should be modeled mechanically, especially since it does afford the PCs with advantages that they would not have if they simply killed the target.