Ilbranteloth
Explorer
Or just chop, slash, stab them and take them down to 0 h.p like the rules say you can, and call it knocking them out.
Gregor the half orc barbarian using great weapon master and reckless attacking while raging and wielding a magical vicious greataxe ,crits doing 3d12+22 damage to a guard npc with only 11 h.p. The DM starts to describe the guards head coming off his shoulders when the players speaks up and says no I just drop him to 0 h.p I don't want to deal with murder charges in town, Gregor will just ko him.
That is the rule, just use the rules. Doesn't have to declare an intent to knock out before the attack, can use any melee weapon, can critically hit, can be raging, smiting, or sneak attacking. About the only thing that doesn't work is rolling a 20 with a vorpal weapon.
Yes it is. And it has been that way for a very long time. But as I said to start with, we have issues with that being the rule for a number of reasons. For those that don't, the rules work fine. For folks like us, I'm just offering an alternative.
Ilbranteloth