I've had a few players wanting to shoot people with arrows 'non lethally' and I've had to inform them it's not an option in the regular rules.
But it occured to me the rules say it's up to the GM if an enemy dies at zero HP or goes unconcious (and unstable)
So you could give your players the option to do less lethal ranged attacks - sure, if the attack makes the enemy go to it's HP in negative or less, it'll die. And sure, it's making death save if you knock it to zero. That's what makes this less lethal rather than non lethal. But it's not actually dead.
Thought I'd put the idea out there.
My reading is that a player can choose with relative ease whether they knock their target out non-leathaly, be it with a sword, arrow or spell.
KNOCKING A CREATURE OUT
Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.
Yeah, 'with a melee attack' is key to the subject.
Noon, I actually like your idea better for all attacks rather than the "knock out" rule in the rules.
Knocking a creature out is not an exact science. There should be a chance that you try, but kill by mistake.
If the creature isn't stabilized it will die. If it is stabilized before it dies it can be saved.
As DM, I might even just give each fallen foe 1 death save when players declare that they are doing less lethal attacks. Some will live and become prisoners. Others will die unless they are brought back by magic. That seems much more exciting.
Unless you're Green Arrow and you have arrows with boxing gloves on the head, it's quite difficult to non-lethally ram a metal-tipped shaft through someone's body intentionally.
Think about where on your body you'd like to ram an arrow or knife at over 200 km/h to "non-leathally" hit yourself, and now figure out how to do that to someone else in the middle of a fight while they're trying to dodge it. It's really quite a silly idea.
Yeah. The reason that melee weapons have the option is because they have blunt striking surfaces. Even a blunt-tipped arrow will pierce the skin with a combat bow at less than 20 yards. You've need special ammunition to even think about it.
With ranged attacks, I don't even think it is the striking surface of the projectile or whether or not it would break the skin and cause blood loss that resulted in not having the option to strike non-lethally; I think it is entirely that you line up the shot, fire, and then you have no more control over the projectile - it is entirely up to your target, moving about however they are, to make sure it is only their arm in the path of your projectile instead of leaning a bit and taking the projectile impact in, as some examples, the heart, brain, or a major artery.
You could easily aim for the knee and your target duck a little for some unrelated reason and take an arrow straight through their femoral artery, and as a result you can't "pull your swing."
Idea sounds fine, Noon. So the arrow pins the target's foot to the ground or something. Terminator shooting out a kneecap ("He'll Live"), not something you'd do to someone you wouldn't just as soon kill IRL, but for general badassery, who cares. Whatever works for your group.
Another less lethal option for an archer is to get some fowling arrows - they have oversize fletching and needle-like points, much lower velocity, shorter range, the idea is to be able to kill a bird while leaving it in one piece, thus a much smaller wound - and put some kind of carefully-dosed curare or something on it to paralyze or otherwise incapacitate the target. Again, realistically, it's a dumb idea, even the fastest poisons are slow compared to six-second melee rounds, but it could work. If you don't judge every use of 'poison' evil, like in the olden days.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I'd consider it more a matter for what kind of campaign you want to run than trying to use "Realism" as the basis. If it is good for your campagin and your players without hurting your game, go for it. If it would be detrimental to your campagin to stick a stun setting on a bow, say as much to your players.
You're only dragging things out if you debate around the bush citing how unrealistic it is to knock somebody out with an arrow while your fighter is busy taking ogre punches to the face as your warlock channels the dark powers of Not Satan. But then I do tend to look at table top games as, well, games.
I have a friend who thinks it's "unrealistic" to let us KO people with arrows because they are piercing, but also thinks alchemical fire powered steampunk cannons are potentially viable and would totally allow any spell KO because "Nothing I can do about magic being unrealistic".
Until you do the science, everything can be argued that it works this way or that completely opposite way and sound really, really plausible.
Stabilising Arrows (Uncommon)
These arrows are specially infused, On a hit, they do normal piercing damage but if the target is thereby reduced to 0hp it is allowed a Constitution saving throw against a DC of 10 plus the excess damage (if any). On a successful save, the target is rendered unconscious but stable; otherwise it is dead.
Formula
Take 5 normal arrows of good quality and 1 Potion of Healing. Pour the potion into a clean silver dish and lay the arrows in a pentacle upon the dish, with their tips immersed in the liquid. Allow them to infuse for one hour. Place the arrows, tips downwards, into a pig's bladder containing holy water and tie the bladder closed until the arrows are used. The potion and the holy water are expended. The silver dish is not expended.
I think this is a bit more of a lack of a called shot problem. Im not sure if called shots are a thing in the dmg, but non-lethal attacks from ranged fall under this in my opinion.
SO a quick called shot variant system
Called Shots- you attack a specific point on your enemy, in the hope of hindering or incapacitingthem instead of killing. Open to all classes, can only be preformed with a weapon you are prof. in, does not work with improvised weapons. adds to the targets ac to represent in creased difficulty. Effects only apply if you bring the target to 0 hps. If you posses manuvers (from battle master subclass or the feat) you may add superiroty die to damage.
Hindering- in an atempt to slow an enemy so they cant run away. +2 ac, limits targets speed to 10 ft.
Pinning- +2 ac, you attempt to pin a target to a near by surface like a tree or wooden building. applies the restrained condition until target makes a str check to pull weapon out or tear clothing.
only two i can think of at 3 in the morning.
I think it's been pretty well covered here already, but just to throw in my two cents anyway...
As others have said; a target is in constant motion - now with a melee weapon you can adapt mid-swing so that even if your victim dodges around it is still more than conceivable that as an experienced combatant you could deliver a glancing blow if that was your intention. However with a ranged weapon you either fire your shot with the necessary force and momentum for it to actually reach your target or you do not - if you held back on the shot the arrow, bolt or stone would inevitably fall short. Plus you would have to aim and fire once and wouldn't be able to account for your targets head being where his arm was a moment earlier, so you have much less control, thus it makes much more sense for non-lethal fighting with melee versus ranged attacks.
On another note, the OP mentions at the outset that if an enemy drops to exactly 0 to allow it to make death saving throws, while negative HP values would mean outright death (at least that's how I intepreted it, please correct me if I misunderstood). In terms of playing a less lethal campaign it has 'ALWAYS' struck me that the way this is presented in the rules is simply for convenience and speed of play - the actual thematic implication is that all NPCs whether they be proponents and allies of the party or antagonists are still subject subject to 'more or less' the same death saving throw rules - the fact that they are less hardy than the PCs was always incumbent in the fact that they had lower stats to influence these rolls. It was just quicker to present the info this way, and also less 'messy' as a lot of good heroes might have a moral problem killing helpless creatures even if they had been enemies while awake. Admittedly 5th 'feels' like it has moved away from that a little bit by making the saving throws straight rolls that are unrelated to the characters stats and it doesn't really feel 'right' for a commoner to share the same fate as a 20th level Paladin - though this is easily fixed - you could, for example, make it so that a NPC has to make the usual three sucessful saves but dies on the first failed one, or even it is one, two or three depending on their level range (CR 1-5 = death on 1 failed, CR 6-12 = 2 failed saves, 13+ = 3 saved fails. - Not especially hard to implement or balance).
Here's how I would fix what you have issues with. Have enemies or allies roll death saving throws like a PC would - that way if they are critted or suffer massive 'overkill' then they will probably die outright from the huge damage, and if the PCs actually want to kill them it takes only a few seconds to slit some throats. Other than the BEST solution is, and will always be, thematic storytelling. Star Wars EotE/AoR/FaD handle this really nicely. In that most sentient creatures are hesitant to take life, and rarely willing to die for a cause - so the Storyteller (their equivalent of a DM) is encouraged to have enemies disband, retreat, surrender, etc before dying in almost every fight - usually when their leader dies or is pretty beaten up, they realise they can't prevail, or several of their number take significant damage. Only rabid beasts, savages and sworn enemies are happy to take that which cannot be returned, life. It also has the added benefit that TPKs are uncommon because more often than not your adversaries would rather capture the party alive and torture, interrogate or hold them to ransome than just kill them and be done with it. And it means that grudges are more commonplace because notable villains generally live to screw you over another day.
Hope this helps, and hi everyone, my first post here 
The issue with trying to justify it with being "realistic" is that knocking someone out is absolutely unrealistic. At least in the way that Hollywood repeatedly shows us and is what we're wanting to do in D&D.
Being hit hard enough to be knocked out for any prolonged time is a deadly serious injury and most likely the knocked out creature will seamlessly slide from being unconscious to being dead without every awakening inbetween.
You all do realise that there are arrows with blunt lead weighted heads that already exist?
It's just a PC call on when to use them, and I think that would be a fair compromise with the rules.
Just be more inventive with that "0 hp" means.
It means the enemy/PC is down, possibly making death saves... but it could also mean that the ranger pinned their sleeve to the wall with an arrow and they're now utterly demoralized and exhausted. It could also mean that the dragon finally lands and goes into melee-mode with another stack of HP for the PCs to chew through.
It's your game, and it's your job to make it work for you.
Zalbarthemad wrote:
ModusPonens wrote:
Noon wrote: