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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Atridis" data-source="post: 1301655" data-attributes="member: 13919">I agree. I guess I misunderstood when you said you "want it (the set of house rules) to be a realistic option." It seems to me that the D&D rules already include a number of ways to handle an adversary in combat without killing them, they're just more difficult to implement. If I wanted to make inflicting lethal and non-lethal damage equally easy, I would simply remove the penalty altogether, allowing everyone to choose whether they're trying to kill their opponent or not. And frankly, I wouldn't find that to be too unrealistic, given the fact that a "hit" in the D&D combat system represents 6 seconds of pushing and shoving, punching and elbowing, in addition to blows with a weapon. I've never actually fought sword-and-shield while wearing metal armor and a helmet but, from what I understand, the winner is often determined by who gets exhausted first - something that Hit Points could easily be interpreted as representing. I've heard that, in feudal Europe, it was rare for a knight to actually kill another knight (them both being gentlemen and all, and you never know when it'll be you on the receiving end). They'd simply batter each other senseless until one of them slumped to the ground, unable to continue. Then he'd be ransomed back to his family. I agree. In fact, I've always assumed that the weapon categories were intended to reflect the prevalence of weapons in a typical Medieval Western European campaign. For a campaign set in another region or in another era, the table needs to be entirely reconstructed. But I see this as one of those flavor things, not related to the game's mechanics. The effect of using an unfamiliar weapon, or of using a weapon in a strange manner, would be the same. I don't know about whips, but nets have certainly been used as a weapon (not in Medieval Western Europe). If they're a common weapon in your campaign world then, imo, they wouldn't require a Feat.</blockquote>

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