Non-lethal damage

[ExploderWizard]

I think people are over thinking this.

You attack the orc. At some point you decide you don't want him dead, you just want him incapacitated. You say so to the DM and/or the other players.

If you decide this before you reduce him to zero hp, there's no problem. Any combat description that occurs will take into account your intentions, and any attack you don't bother describing can be presumed to take into account your intentions.

If you decide this just as the DM announces that the orc has reached zero hp, you say, "Wait! I don't want to kill him, just knock him out!" and the DM says, "ok." And then you or the DM describes you knocking out the orc.

Its not like the order that things happen at the game table translates into an actual progression of time in-game. If you want to retcon the attack roll you just made to deal non lethal damage instead of lethal damage, the world won't crash down. Gamers retcon things all the time in D&D. "I'll run over and smash down the door." "You mean the massive, iron reinforced, 18 inch think stone door with the winch to open it?" "Oh. Uh, I don't do that then. I go and stab the orc standing by the winch."

The rules are allowed to take into account the human interaction aspect of RPG gameplay.

It works just fine as long as the rewards and consequences of victory through life vs. death remain the same.

 

[Cadfan]

It works just fine as long as the rewards and consequences of victory through life vs. death remain the same.

I don't follow what you're getting at.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't follow what you're getting at.

Meaning that plots involving greater rewards for capture rather than killing and certain rescue scenarios have to take a dirt nap or else the basic foundation of balancing risk vs reward goes away.

 

[Cadfan]

Why?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Why?

Umm.....an anology:

You have two treasures worth 500 gp. One is placed in a room with a lone 1st level goblin, the other in a room with a 3rd level bugbear. You must defeat one of the guardians to claim the treasure. XP for the combat is not awarded and you may choose only one guardian to defeat.

You may repeat this quest many times. Who chooses the bugbear?

Put a more direct way:

Your party is hired to capture or kill the bandit lord Chumpchange.
Killing him earns a reward of 500 gold. You may earn a reward of 1000 gold if he can be brought back for trial alive.

If its no more difficult to declare knockout rather than kill the target then the choice has no meaning. No extra effort is required and the reward is doubled. Getting double the reward requires no additional planning or thought at all. So in this case the thing to do would be to keep the reward at 500 alive or dead or accept that the PCs are being given the goblin/bugbear choice.

 

[Snotboy]

Even shorter way:
There should be opportunities to reap a greater reward by risking a disadvantageous route to victory.

I say sure, I just wouldn't do it by letting bookkeeping bog down the pace.

 

[James McMurray]

Your party is hired to capture or kill the bandit lord Chumpchange.
Killing him earns a reward of 500 gold. You may earn a reward of 1000 gold if he can be brought back for trial alive.

If its no more difficult to declare knockout rather than kill the target then the choice has no meaning. No extra effort is required and the reward is doubled. Getting double the reward requires no additional planning or thought at all. So in this case the thing to do would be to keep the reward at 500 alive or dead or accept that the PCs are being given the goblin/bugbear choice.

The difficulty change doesn't come from the combat, it comes from the aftermath. Corpses don't try to escape, and their allies rarely try to rescue them. If the GM sets it up so that there is no difference between the two apart from the reward, it's not the fault of the knockout rules.

 

[Cadfan]

Umm.....an anology:

Even shorter way:
There should be opportunities to reap a greater reward by risking a disadvantageous route to victory.

I say sure, I just wouldn't do it by letting bookkeeping bog down the pace.

Fair enough, but I think that building "disadvantageous route to victory" into the "nonlethal damage" rules isn't a very good idea.

So in this case the thing to do would be to keep the reward at 500 alive or dead or accept that the PCs are being given the goblin/bugbear choice.

Or put the reward at 500 alive, 100 dead, accept that the PCs will bring him in alive, and build a risk/reward dichotomy into the adventure through some other technique besides a guessing game of enemy hit points, or a penalty to attack rolls coupled with weirdly augmented healing.

 

[cmbarona]

The difficulty change doesn't come from the combat, it comes from the aftermath. Corpses don't try to escape, and their allies rarely try to rescue them. If the GM sets it up so that there is no difference between the two apart from the reward, it's not the fault of the knockout rules.

QFT

As someone interested in heavy roleplaying and moral dilemmas, I am usually put off by the general D&D "kill everything" tendency. I'm glad they made knockouts so much more mechanically easy, because they set up fantastic roleplaying opportunities. This is one of the reasons alignment is so broken. Even with all 9 alignments pre-4e (which I prefered to the 5 now), without any mechanical system to support it other than a heavy hand to Clerics and Paladins especially (other examples exists, those were just the most prominent), the door was open to completely asinine arguments justifying character behavior.

Sorry for the tangent, but I think all RPGs should be about more than just combat.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Or put the reward at 500 alive, 100 dead, accept that the PCs will bring him in alive, and build a risk/reward dichotomy into the adventure through some other technique besides a guessing game of enemy hit points, or a penalty to attack rolls coupled with weirdly augmented healing.

So half a level appropriate reward for a job well done and a pittance for an adequate job.

Man this DM is hard core!