D&D 5E Knock Unconscious and Massive Damage

[Ilbranteloth]

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

 

[Ilbranteloth]

You can always use the pommel of the weapon, so a sap is not required.

Just an FYI - Sap is a verb as well, meaning to attempt to knock somebody out. It also means club or blunt object, such as the pommel of the weapon, it's not just an object itself, although it is that as well.

Ilbranteloth

 

[terror]

Eejit literally answered this on the second post.

Why are you all still coming up with solutions and pretending like it's still a problem or you gotta cook up some way?

The player can choose to knock out, end of discussion.​

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ok, first off: this is comic gold. LOVE IT!

Second, the whole "knock them out" thing always bugged me. I understand that cutting back on the "murder hobo" thing is worth striving for, and yeah, it's a trope from movies and TV, but it is just as much of a fantasy as dragons and sorcerers.

And my D&D games have both dragons and sorcerers.

My D&D games also have a rule of thumb that an increase in skill doesn't make you less able to do something. Knocking people out should be part of the rogue skillset - and get easier not harder as the rogue level gets higher.

(If you're trying to knock someone out with a fireball spell that's a whole different story)

 

[BookTenTiger]

Eejit literally answered this on the second post.​

​

Why are you all still coming up with solutions and pretending like it's still a problem or you gotta cook up some way?​

​

The player can choose to knock out, end of discussion.​

It was answered 7 years ago!

 

[terror]

I know lol, I just can't help myself.

EDIT: I search these things and this is just what comes up on google.

 

[ad_hoc]

Silly necros. Still want to drop this advice anyway. One of the DM's most important jobs is pacing.

I would be skipping most of that play.

All the attacking and damage and such. I would just treat it as one skill challenge.

Do you successfully sneak around or not.

This is esp. an important thing to do when a player is off on their own so they don't dominate the table time.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I eventually patch-ruled a sap that dealt 1 point of damage but was treated as a finesse weapon so Sneak Attack could be used with it, and it ignored the Massive Damage rules regardless of how hard he hit (thus always knocking people out if reduced to 0 HP). But I was wondering if there's anything more official regarding this particular scenario.

This is exactly what I have done in my houserules: saps are a 1hp damage bludgeoning finesse weapon, and so rogues can do extra damage.

My read of the PHB is that "knocking a creature out" is a specific that over-rides the general "Dropping to zero hit points" (both are printed at the same level of subheading), and so the Instant Death subrule never kicks in.

 

[Blue]

Eh, the Knocking Unconcious rules specifically leave someone unconcious and stable. Wanting to penalize someone for rolling too well goes against every other mechanic in the game.

I had a DM that had goblins attack us 59 minutes and 20 seconds into a short rest inside a barn we all needed because we were long on HPs (and the monk out of Ki). We all had the option of leaving the guy on watch to die outside, or have a very real risk of a TPK.

Saying "Ooops, you are TOO MUCH a master of your craft so your high sneak attack roll means that you kill them because you are TOO LITTLE of a master of your craft to have your intention of knocking them out be true" feels like that. It feels like a DM justifying screwing over players "because the rules tell me so".

But in this case it's because they actively ignored the rules that said they are stable and went with the insta-kill rules, so you know the DM is acting in bad faith or out of some twisted thought of "this will improve my game because of tension or verisimilitude" because they are actively picking and choosing which rules to use and which to ignore to screw over the intended action, since they have to ignore the "and stable" part of knock unconscious.