New "Bullet Points" up at WotC: Nonlethal Combat

[Plane Sailing]

A simple house rule that I've seen suggested a few times which would work well for allowing strong people to easily knock out ordinary joes, is to use the lowest of MDT *or* max hit points to determine the actual threshold for a KO check. This means that you have to do 4 points nonlethal to KO an ordinary joe - more achievable.

I'm toying with a slight modification to this - use *current* hp for the threshold if it is lower than the ordinary MDT. This seems to neatly provide a bit of "wearing down" in a combat - you could use "lethal" damage to wear their hp down, and then use nonlethal to KO them.

(n.b. are there not also rules for allowing nonlethal attacks against unaware targets to do double damage or something? separate from the feats, that is?)

Cheers

 

[Henry]

...As a fat, nerdy, white kid I learned very early on that I didn't want to be the focus for every bully that walked the playground. As I stated in a previous post, I would do whatever it took to win the fight. If that meant repeatedly hitting somebody in the face, so be it. If that meant hitting them until they were unconscious, so be it.

tburdett, I have to know -- how many fights you participated in actually ended in your opponent's unconsciousness?

Of those, how many were serious KO's, versus the guys just plain staying down, because they didn't want to get hit again?

In our school, any fight that involved unconsciousness also involved expulsion, and in some cases civil trials against the family of the kid in question. Any time you knock someone out, you risk killing them. People even risk death with sedatives, much less violently overloading their nervous systems with punching.

 

[tburdett]

tburdett, I have to know -- how many fights you participated in actually ended in your opponent's unconsciousness?

Six

Of those, how many were serious KO's, versus the guys just plain staying down, because they didn't want to get hit again?

Six. Unless, as you say, one or more of them were pretending to be unconscious to avoid getting hit again. They all seemed genuinely unconscious.

In our school, any fight that involved unconsciousness also involved expulsion, and in some cases civil trials against the family of the kid in question. Any time you knock someone out, you risk killing them. People even risk death with sedatives, much less violently overloading their nervous systems with punching.

Every fight I was in was self-defense. With multiple witnesses, and adult witnesses in more than one case, I was always exonerated. In no instance did the parents involved take any action. The other kids, without exception, had all been in trouble with the law or in juvenile detention at least once. I've never had any legal trouble whatsoever. These fights took place between 15 - 20 years ago.

 

[Bagpuss]

I like this bit

In the movies, a trained killer can sneak up on a bad guy, grab him, and break his neck before he even has time to react. I've heard of martial arts techniques for killing someone with a single blow. Why aren't there feats that let you do that sort of thing in the d20 Modern game?

(snip)

More importantly, if the rules allow a player character to kill a GM character instantly, those same rules should also allow the reverse -- and we all know how much fun it is to lose a favorite character to a cheap trick. Thus, even if there really were techniques that would allow an average person to kill another person easily, we'd probably add an element of challenge to them, both to make encounters with GM characters more interesting and to give heroes a chance of survival when such techniques are used against them.

Obviously the guy hasn't heard of Feng Shui. That's the one thing I really dislike about D&D. It's never seemed to understand that it' prefectly okay to have one rule for the players and an other for the NPC's.

 

[Darke]

Obviously the guy hasn't heard of Feng Shui. That's the one thing I really dislike about D&D. It's never seemed to understand that it' prefectly okay to have one rule for the players and an other for the NPC's.

Nah, I don't like different rules for PCs and NPCs - I' more for the "one rule to bind them all".

das Darke

 

[Bagpuss]

Except that this guy has already said that D20 Modern is designed to reflect action movies and in them it is obvious that the star plays by different rules than the extra's. He can fire a heavy machinegun one handed and every shot takes out an extra. The extra's can fire several heavy machineguns resting on bi-pods at the star and every shot misses.

 

[takyris]

Bagpuss, isn't that kind of already reflected by the average grunt being a Strong1/Tough1 Ordinary with no Talents or other class abilities? I mean, a guy attacking at +2 with a machine gun isn't a terrible threat, and he's probably got a Defense of 14 or 15 at best, and something like 10 hit points. Sounds like the rules already handle that.

-Tacky

 

[Henry]

Point of note: My players have already run into a street gang about 10 strong of a bunch of Fast1/Tough1 ordinaries possessing black-market converted Tec-9's. After most of them (4th level PC's) walked out of the flames and wreckage with half hit points or less, they decided two things:

1) Automatic fire is powerful.

2) Never stand close together.

But ordinaries already start with several strikes against them - I've never minded weaker NPC classes, but playing by totally different sets of rules I don't like.

-------------

tburdett, thanks for the info. Things really are different between school districts, because in mine, the two fighters were suspended or expelled, depending on the fight's severity. A student causing permanent damage or knocking another out was automatically expelled, to keep parents from possibly suing the school district.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Nah, I don't like different rules for PCs and NPCs - I' more for the "one rule to bind them all".

das Darke

What do you do with the rules for Intimidation, Diplomacy etc. where it says that PC's can simply disregard an NPC's rolls?

 

[Ranger REG]

But ordinaries already start with several strikes against them - I've never minded weaker NPC classes, but playing by totally different sets of rules I don't like.

Then apply the same set of rules for PCs to NPCs. Simple as that. As for other GM's campaigns, we may still want to use the "ordinaries" rules.