subdue rules?

[Saeviomagy]

Replace disintegrate with a 2 ton boulder.

That's really easy. 2 ton boulders often leave people banged up but alive.

 

[Garthanos]

I like this. There are a lot of ways that someone losing hit points or regaining them as a result of various different effects could be narrated in-game. It's cool to let the player choose this, if s/he wants to. One person could be nimbly ducking out of the way of serious harm, another could be shrugging it off through pure stubborn toughness, and a third could be actually taking wounds but just fighting on through force of will. Either way, they're that much closer to being unable to continue fighting, but there's no reason that it can't be narrated in whatever way the player thinks is interesting and suitable for the character and/or scene.

Lucky Heros / Skilled Heros / Magical Heros / Tough Guy Heros / Monsterous Heros.

I usually figure real wounds are paradigm of the "regenerative hero" or "monster hero"

A way I put the description of defense and even its failure in the players hands ... is to have the players make active defense rolls (an Idea from an Unearthed Arcana book)

 

[Zaran]

My GM hates the 4e subdual rules. If the enemy has like 3 hit points and we do 10 damage saying we want to knock them out he declares we did too much damage and they die.

Of course he probably didn't want us questioning them and a GM has that right. Although I see no good way of doing it any other way than how the game is designed. Trying to use your fists is a losing battle. I really have no issue with the wizard knowing a different spell that does about the same effect as a fireball but doesn't do any lethal damage. If you can put skeletons to sleep with a 1st level spell you can alter your magic to knock someone out. Same thing with the fighter using the flat of his blade or smashing his hilt into the foe's face for the same amount of damage the blade would do .

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I may have missed this elsewhere, but:

Does the player have to declare the intent to do subdual damage before the attack, or can it be after they know the critter is down?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I may have missed this elsewhere, but:

Does the player have to declare the intent to do subdual damage before the attack, or can it be after they know the critter is down?

Depends entirely on your DM.

Mechnically, hit points are the measurement of how long a person can continue to fight. No more, no less. Now we will fluff this as saying it's the person or monster's 'energy' or 'will to continue' or 'health' or whatever else we deem to explain this game mechanic. And this is also true when they reach 0 HP or less. We fluff it as 'knocking him unconcious' or 'giving up' or 'dying' or whatever else.

It's the fact that once you reach less than 0 HP and then go into 'three strikes and your dead' territory that all of a sudden we players seem to want to consider the damage that a character took to reach that point to suddenly become 'real'. If you go beneath 0 that suddenly that fireball actually burned you alive... that the sword tore open your abdomen. But it's still not. It's still nothing more than fluff description. Mechanically, all you've done is just cross the threshold that says you get to take actions in subsequent rounds. That's it. And we know the damage isn't 'real'... because you can still get the person back on his feet with a warlord or bard's non-magical "C'mon! Get up and fight!" non-magical so-called 'healing'. The only really true 'damage' per se is that third 'death save' roll. That is the only point where an actual physical change occurs to a PC that cannot be rectified by any sort of 'healing' power. They go from 'living' to 'dead'. That's the only one. Everything else can be fixed via the so-called 'healing' mechanic.

Thus, as a PC you do not in any way have to say whether your damage is 'subdual' or 'real' not... because those two terms are nothing but fluff description you are adding to a mechanical game concept. It's only after a fight is over that the PCs can now choose to say "Okay, we killed all these guys, except the leader, who we've kept alive for questioning". And the only reason why you as a PC couldn't do that would be if your DM made the executive decision to say "No, they're all dead" or "No, they are all still alive and just knocked out" or anything in between. And if he does that, there's a specific storyline reason he is choosing to do that... not because of any mechanical rules reason.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Sounds like a cool, if frustrating, encounter.

Yeah, only time will tell whether they found it more cool than frustrating - at the moment, I think their vote would be firmly in the frustrating camp. Anyway, those who want more details about it can message me.

I'd say they worked perfectly well - just not in the PC's favour - but it led to interesting story choices and an interesting encounter.

Previous editions subdual rules were too fiddly and ignored by my group.

That's a good way to think of it.

I never found the 3e rules too fiddly (no more fiddly than tracking temp and real hit points), its just the minus to hit that meant it was only ever used when the PCs really wanted the creature alive.

The 3e rules would have resulted in the same outcome.

Guy A goes down to non-lethal mixed with a bit of lethal from Guy B, and from all those spells and suchlike that CAN'T do non-lethal. Gets coup-de-graced. Dies, due to being heavily below zero. Sure it might take a bit longer (maybe 1 turn?) for Guy B to coup-de-grace, but the actual outcome is identical.

Well, I'm not so sure about that... with the 3e edition rules, the coup-de-gras-er would have a whole lot more HPs to chew through, most likely. And in the situation the players were in, one turn was quite meaningful. Besides, none of them really had any 3e "high crit" items, sure, there are weapons that gave up to x4, but not many go around with a scythe and all my baddies had swords, daggers and clubs.

All in all, I'm not complaining about the new rules - just noting that in the unusual circumstances I put the players, the rules didn't work quite how they expected and/or hoped.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

DEFCON 1: I've always pictured subdual as more like "you pull your punch" -- you hit the guy with the hilt of your sword instead of impaling him. I know, it's hard to translate that to fireballs, but it's still the picture I have. So it's easy to see why a DM might say "You didn't tell me you were pulling your punch, so you didn't."

The problem is that you can go into a combat encounter with (for example) the chief lieutenant of the BBEG, intending to subdue him or her so that you can question and find out what the BBEG's plans are, and then forget at the last moment -- which might not even be obvious due to the lack of clarity on how close someone is to death -- to say "I'm trying to subdue." Oops, in the heat of the battle, you forgot, and now it's too late.

It might be argued that this is a good thing -- that it simulates the heat of battle and the fact that an enraged combatant might indeed forget to keep a prisoner alive.

Anyway, I'm really just interested in how people play it.

 

[Mallus]

Replace disintegrate with a 2 ton boulder.

Pop quiz: name an edition of D&D that modeled effects of getting hit with a 2 ton boulder with greater accuracy (ie, broken bones, debilitating injuries, etc.)

As for the original question... you can use Intimidate vs. WILL Defense against Bloodied opponents (I believe with a -10 modifier) to take them out of the fight. That's kinda like subduing them, right?

 

[Kingreaper]

Well, I'm not so sure about that... with the 3e edition rules, the coup-de-gras-er would have a whole lot more HPs to chew through, most likely..

If your players weren't wielding saps, and making solely non-magical attacks, most of the damage deal to Guy A would be HP damage.

HP damage reduces the amount of subdual damage needed. Subdual damage is harder to do than HP damage. Unless you're willing to give up a huge chunk of time whiffing with your attacks, you're going to go for mostly HP damage, with just enough subdual damage to knock them out.

Unlike in 4e, the subdual damage won't necessarily be the final hit, you could hit them with subdual at some point early on, so if their HP turn out to be lower than you think, they'll get knocked out when you stab them later anyway.

 

[Kannik]

So that fireball that just blasted your party only hurt your feelings?

At times like these, it's worth going back to the "master":

Each character has a varying number of hit points, just as monsters do. These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 hit points of damage before being killed. let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The same holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

Hit Points are, and have always been, mostly everything that makes a hero a hero and not simply sheer physical punishment. In this way, even in back in First Edition AD&D, non-magical healing fits in 100% perfectly and makes sense.

And in the case of this thread, can make it such that your last blow is all you need to worry about when determining if you are aiming to kill or to subdue. Really you probably have been trying to subdue the whole time, but there doesn't need to be a separate damage track to track it (as it's mostly non-physical injury anyway).

gamingly,

Kannik