D&D 5E House Rule for Subdual, is it fair?

[midichloriless]

Our group has been playing together for a little over a year, and is made of two groups that lost some players and have now come together to form one.

One of the groups had a house rule regarding subdual that consists of declaring you want to subdue before rolling (you have no idea if you are close to taking out all of the opponents hit points at that point). Once you declare, you roll two dice and must take the lower roll for the subdual hit. If the lower roll is horrible, you can use the higher die if you want but it will no longer be a subdual blow. This mechanic is rationalized by thinking that it would take great finesse to deal a blow on purpose that knocks someone unconscious but does not kill them, and therefore would be rather difficult.

When the two groups came together we all discussed this mechanic and agreed to adopt it. We now have a new player who has joined the group and has been playing with us for a few months. He thinks this mechanic is the worst thing he has ever encountered in playing D&D for 20 years and has declared that the rule must go or he will.

I'm not really interested in opinions on this players attitude, but whether or not others think that this mechanic is really that out of line in terms of fairness.

Thanks for your input

 

[jaelis]

There are a lot of facets here. First, just to be clear, the book rule is that you can just decide to knock a creature unconscious when they drop to 0 hp, rather than kill them.

Is your rule more realistic than the book rule? Sort of, but (a) the hp system is massively unrealistic to start with and (b) in real life it is really hard to knock someone unconscious in a controlled and safe way. So if the realism of the book rule is 1/10, yours might be 2/10... better but I wouldn't say by enough to matter.

Is your rule more fun than the book rule? That's really up to you all. It doesn't sound great to me, it is more complicated and requires more finicky decision making which probably slows down combat. And it is more likely to fail, so it probably gets used less. But fun is a subjective standard, people can disagree without anyone being wrong.

Is your rule more fair? As long as the same rules are applied to everyone, then they are equally fair.

 

[Satyrn]

There are a lot of facets here. First, just to be clear, the book rule is that you can just decide to knock a creature unconscious when they drop to 0 hp, rather than kill them.

Is your rule more realistic than the book rule? Sort of, but (a) the hp system is massively unrealistic to start with and (b) in real life it is really hard to knock someone unconscious in a controlled and safe way. So if the realism of the book rule is 1/10, yours might be 2/10... better but I wouldn't say by enough to matter.

Is your rule more fun than the book rule? That's really up to you all. It doesn't sound great to me, it is more complicated and requires more finicky decision making which probably slows down combat. And it is more likely to fail, so it probably gets used less. But fun is a subjective standard, people can disagree without anyone being wrong.

Is your rule more fair? As long as the same rules are applied to everyone, then they are equally fair.

This.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's not the worst rule ever. It's a lot of complexity for a scenario that isn't likely to come up very much. I can't imagine that I would draw the line there, unless this person feels very strongly about their preferred definition of Hit Points.

The only user-unfriendly part of the rule that I can see is that you don't always know whether your attack will be the final one until after you hit and deal damage. If the enemy is at 70/210, and you really want to take them alive, then you might feel obligated to attack at disadvantage even though you're in no danger of killing them either way. Or even if you somehow know that they only have 10hp left, if your attack is for 1d8+5, then you might suffer disadvantage and roll 9 for damage anyway.

Honestly, if I was playing in a game with that rule and really wanted to take someone alive, I would just ignore the subdual option entirely. Go ahead and nuke them as hard as you possibly can, because nobody actually dies until they go fully negative of their maximum hit points, and you can always stabilize them immediately before they bleed out. Given how easy it is to keep someone alive at zero, it's hard to justify the extra hoops.

 

[Illithidbix]

What exactly is the problem this rule is trying to fix?

Were too many prisoners being captured? And it felt it was too easy?

 

[Ganymede81]

You're making it more difficult to inflict subdual damage, which means you are going to discourage subdual damage.

Is that your goal? Is the prevalence of subdual damage really derailing your campaign that badly?

If not, just switch it back to the book rule.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What exactly is the problem this rule is trying to fix?

When there's literally no barrier to taking someone alive, it presents a moral dilemma whenever you choose to kill someone. Under default 5E rules, if you get jumped by normal bandits, then you should probably just subdue them all and turn them into the authorities (or whatever); taking them alive is just as easy as taking them dead, and unnecessary death should be avoided, but it involves a lot more grunt work that some players might find boring.

If you introduce some sort of penalty - even as small as -1 on the attack roll - then you are morally justified in going for the kill. Since trying to subdue them would increase the chance that they instead kill you, you can go ahead and just kill them in self-defense, and now you don't have to worry about dealing with prisoners or anything.

 

[jgsugden]

Are you not giving the player advantage effectively? "I try to subdue... an 8 and a 20? Well, that 8 seems low so I guess it is a lethal blow."

 

[Uchawi]

When a creature drops to zero is the simplest compromise. I have never found a solution I liked in D&D for subdual damage. Hit points are too generic. As shown by the one player, different interpretations of hit points are game breakers for some, including what damage is.

 

[Shiroiken]

I require subdue damage to be declared before the attack, which is obvious to intelligence opponents. This provides interesting opportunities, since it shows mercy (indicating that surrender would be accepted, or perhaps negotiations initiated). Dedicated followers might then become afraid they would be captured, rather than die gloriously in battle, and may kill themselves instead. I never found the need to reduce the damage dealt or penalize the attack, despite this being the norm for most prior editions.