D&D 5E Killing is Wrong: Adding Theme to a Campaign

[Tony Vargas]

So all Australians are murderous psychopaths?

Seems unlikely, or it'd be an even more sparsely-populated continent, but I've never been there.

But, I've found that things people post about being universal tendencies are often regional tendencies. (I started noticing myself doing it, first.) In my area, Champions! got a lot of play, especially in the 80s & 90s, presumably because the guys who wrote it were from around here. At some cons there'd be as many Champions! games as D&D. On the east coast, not so much. The mechanics of Champions! made it fairly easy to avoid killing, and the build system rewarded you for establishing character traits, "Code Against Killing" was a notorious example, very appropriate to the superhero genre.
That attitude bled back into D&D. It's not hard, at all, to get a less fatality-riddled D&D game going around here - especially if you can avoid being penalized for doing non-lethal damage.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Tony Vargas]

I would disagree, in two parts.

First, as posted earlier, I would agree that violence is hard-wired into the DNA of D&D. Especially in the RAW.

Violence, sure, but once you've had an inoculation of cartoon violence, killing can be teased out from it.

Second, I would argue that it is hard. Not because it's impossible; you can play D&D (5e) as gamma world, you can play it without magic, you can probably convert it so that the players never level and just run taverns. But it is hard because it's not what the RAW contemplate.

It's been harder and easier than it is in 5e to avoid killing. 5e makes it straightforward for melee attacks (just declare it non-lethal when your enemy hits 0 hps), for spells it takes some thought, you'll have to prep that Sleep or other non-lethal spell instead of jumping to fireball. Ranged weapons are kinda hosed, that's about it, but you can always get creative, the ol' pin their cloak to the all trick and such.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Yaarel]

The designers often mention the possibility of an ‘intrigue’ campaign setting.

This kind of setting organizes around personal relationships.

It is worthwhile for D&D 5e to develop an Urban campaign setting with all kinds of nonlethal combat tactics available, whether magic or mundane.

An Intimidation check after bloodying a target to half hit points, can end a combat by forcing surrender or scaring away.

All spells using the ‘lightning damage type’ (electricity), like Shocking Grasp and Lightning Bolt can work like stun guns, and being explicitly nonlethal damage if the spellcaster wishes to use these spells this way.

 

[Yaarel]

Maybe disabling spells like Hold Person only work after the target is bloodied, or alternatively the target suffers a disadvantage to the save if already bloodied.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think you avoided some of the things I wrote.

They were only relevant to the concept of non-violent D&D, not a "Killing is wrong" campaign. Violence, IRL, almost always runs the risk of killing, but in fiction & RPGs, you can have tons of violence ('action') with very few to no fatalities.

Sure, D&D - most RPGs, really - put combat and thus violence front-and-center, devote disproportionate page count to it and so forth. That doesn't mean they enshrine murder nor even killing. You can run D&D with a theme that killing is wrong (but violence isn't) - taken to the extreme, it'd play out like a Saturday morning cartoon. Conan the Adventurer, for an instance some folks not quite as old as myself might remember.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Tony Vargas]

And, again, while you can certainly have some "killing is wrong" in D&D (aka, some morality, not all hobomurder) ... it's exceptionally difficult to do so in D&D ... so much so that you might ask yourself, "Why bother?"

Again, it's not that hard, 5e already gives you some non-lethal spell options, and any melee attack can be non-lethal. You can avoid killing if you remember to say "oh yeah, I'm not killing him." If you're a caster you have to watch your spell choice, missile weapons you have to get creative. None of that seems exceptionally difficult, and it's as far as you need to go, you can still have plenty of combats (6-8/day, even!), people just don't get killed in them so much.

 

[lowkey13]

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