D&D 5E Knock Unconscious and Massive Damage

[Cristian Andreu]

Last weekend I ran into a problem: The party's rogue wanted to knock people out quick and assuredly by using his Assassinate feature to both sneak attack and auto-crit, in order to make sure he reduced the victims down to 0.

However, this often meant he would deal twice the target's HP in damage, particularly when using it on regular servants with very few HPs to begin with.

Does the Massive Damage rule mean the victims would die regardless of the rogue's intention to knock them out?

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.

Thanks beforehand.

 

[jodyjohnson]

If a character wants to not kill things, I try to reward that. The sap is probably a better idea though.

I don't think the massive damage rule requires a kill.

 

[Eejit]

Non-lethal damage is a standard option in 5e, apparently.

Knocking a Creature Out
Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

If a character wants to not kill things, I try to reward that. The sap is probably a better idea though.

I don't think the massive damage rule requires a kill.

Aye, I'm with you there: If players try for alternatives other than outright murder, I like to encourage that.

My interpretation was that the Massive Damage still applies even when trying to knock someone out, representing the inherent danger of hitting too hard and killing the victim by accident. However, that made stealth-based situations very difficult for the rogue (who was CG and didn't want to actually kill anybody; he was just there to investigate), who either risked hitting and alerting the victims (by not dealing enough damage to reduce them to 0 in one hit and thus knock them out) or risked killing them (by dealing too much damage in a single hit).

The sap helped fix that problem, but I'm not sure if I'm either missing something or misunderstanding the rules.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

Ohh, I think I found my problem: I had mistakenly assumed the rules for Massive Damage were the same for PCs as they were for NPCs, yet the ones described in the DMG are different and indeed allow for stealth attacks to be useful without outright murder involved.

Thank you very much!

 

[jodyjohnson]

Reminds me of a situation in Cyberpunk 2020 where I wanted to just knock someone out and rolled very well.

I killed him instead. Never really enjoyed playing with that game ref.

Where are my flying cars and Cyberware anyway? Only 5 years left on the clock. (JK, I'm hopeful of not seeing a cyberpunk future any time soon).

 

[iserith]

It's also reasonable that game mechanics needn't even apply when a capable assassin is taking out workaday servants. Provided the player's stated approach for his or her character was sufficient to achieve the goal, I'd just rule that the servant is knocked out without applying dice to the situation. This would be especially so if the servant wasn't really in the position to defend him or herself.

After all, the dice and rules are only there to resolve uncertainty.

 

[Sunseeker]

I would say no. Why? Simply because the intention of the assassin, the design of the class is all about *drumroll* assassination! Using your features designed to kill people to not kill people defeats the point I feel. Those features are as powerful as they are because they are designed to kill.

I think that the player should have to go about not-killing with abilities that don't kill.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

Reminds me of a situation in Cyberpunk 2020 where I wanted to just knock someone out and rolled very well.

I killed him instead. Never really enjoyed playing with that game ref.

Where are my flying cars and Cyberware anyway? Only 5 years left on the clock. (JK, I'm hopeful of not seeing a cyberpunk future any time soon).

In our case, we were playing last Saturday and they rogue had infiltrated the Burgomeister's mansion to find out who was kidnapping women from the poor side of town:

Rogue: "I hurry through the bushes and try to knock the stable boy unconcious with the handle of my blade. I'll use the auto-crit and sneak attack to make sure"
<rolls like 35 damage, stable boy only has 6 hp>
Me: "Hmm... let me check the rules for a moment. I think... I'm afraid you sort of... cracked his head open?"
Rogue: "Oh gods, oh gods, he was just a kid! I only wanted to let the horse loose for distraction!"
Me: "Yeah, well... <checking the rules for an exception>... I'm sorry, man."
Rogue: "I still check his pockets, though. What? I didn't WANT to kill him, but that's spilled milk. Pockets"

Process more or less repeats again with another servant, before he tries to do it without sneak attack or critical, in which case he doesn't do enough damage and almost raises the alarm.

A little while later:

Me: "You can hear a couple of women walking into the music hall while chatting. You get a glimpse in the mirror; both maids, one going in your direction. Neither has noticed you"
Rogue: "I sneak underneath the harpsichord and knock her out. Carefully"
Priest: "Are you sure? What if you don't knock her out? You almost got caught the last time!"
Rogue: "Shoot, right. How many HPs?"
Me: "Yeah, no"
Rogue: "Damn it, damn it! Alright, I'll only sneak attack this time, no crit!"
<Rolls enough to kill her>
Rogue: "THESE HANDS WEREN'T MEANT TO CREATE, THEY CAN ONLY DESTROY"
Me: "Hmm, this is getting out of hand. Look, I'm not sure what I'm missing here, but let's create a sap, does 1 damage but can be used for sneak attacks, and no matter how much damage, all it can do is knock people out. Deal?"
Rogue: "Deal!"
Monk: "Hold on! Are you telling me this guy has been carrying a perfectly safe sap the entire time, while 'accidentally' killing people while trying to knock them out with his sword? Yeah, some pretty good rogue we've got here"
Rogue: "Wait, it's not like that! What if... what if the maid had it and I just took it?"
Me: "Sure"
Monk: "Nice. So you 'accidentally' kill the stable boy and the maid to steal their stuff, and now use the latter's stuff to knock people out. Sure, almost celestial"

They spent the entire rest of the session mocking him for that.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

I would say no. Why? Simply because the intention of the assassin, the design of the class is all about *drumroll* assassination! Using your features designed to kill people to not kill people defeats the point I feel. Those features are as powerful as they are because they are designed to kill.

I think that the player should have to go about not-killing with abilities that don't kill.

Yeah, that was more or less the thought process I followed. But at the same time I wanted to go through a route like what Iserith describes, as it seemed odd that the rogue, an expert assassin, would be unable to at least gauge/control his own strikes. But since the rules do not allow for characters to voluntarily lower their damage, I was in a bind.

The sap helped solve the problem for the immediate time, but since after that session the group finally decided to convert our main campaign to 5e, I was afraid I had been misunderstanding the rules.