Non-lethal damage

[DracoSuave]

I've survived gaping cuts and a concussion too. Oh, but wait, if a wound was treated/healed it wasn't actual damage, by your reasoning.

No, my reasoning is that it is damage but it wasn't lethal because obviously you didn't die, yet it could have taken you out of a fight. Yet the wounds could also have been taken in a fight to the death, ergo, the only wound that makes the difference between lethal and non-lethal is the killing blow, which is how D&D4 works.

Not to mention, in a fight to the death, you're less likely to kill them on their feet than to knock them down and kill them once you've won. D&D4 just takes the lethal/non decision out of the hands of strategy (which doesn't simulate real fighting anyways) and into the hands of narration, which is better given that D&D xth Edition is a storytelling tool, not a simulation of real events. (x is any integer or 3.5)

 

[DreamChaser]

I'm with Cadfan on that last post. I have no need to overthink this. Heck, it was a pretty simple question, I thought

These boards are all about overthinking things

Also, for the record IIRC, you could choose non-lethal for your last strike only to knock someone out in 3e as well. If the amount of non-lethal damage exceeds the character's current HP, they get knocked out.

4e just made it a question of last second rather than last strike.

DC

 

[Nytmare]

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.

I think that the game would be a lot more interesting in deciding to cart an unwilling prisoner across a monsterfilled wasteland while The Bandit Lord's enemies give chase so that they can kill him for themselves.

That is, instead of attempting to find joy in wonky mechanics and added book keeping.

 

[WalterKovacs]

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.

Of course, instead of making things more difficult to knock the enemy out ... you make it harder to "return" a live prisoner than to drag a corpse back to town. There isn't the old fashioned "beaten so far into unconciousness that they'll wake up in a few weeks" type of subdual from 3e anymore. Someone that is unconcious is back to 1 HP after a short rest ... so you pretty much have to take care of deal with the defeated enemy all the way back to town. That means attempted escapes, and things like that.

 

[jbear]

Why? Why can't CON represent endurance and how much physical damage the body can take before death?

Hit points can be based on class and be a measure of staying power and luck in a fight.

If the two are separated then the nonlethal damage problem can go away.

When fighting, hp damage occurs. Whacking a completely helpless target means an attack on CON directly. When 0 hp is reached the combatant is "knocked ou" and easily dispatched.

What good is luck and battle savvy to the bound or sleeping victim?
Just go straight to the CON. Out of CON = out of life.

sounds like over complicating things for the hell of it... Luck/doge/near miss HP (based on what? Dex? Int? Wis? All of the above?) and separate CON oww... that sword actually hit me HP.... Where would Psychic damage go? Who decides if it was a near miss or a solid hit.

Who is to say a sleeping target cant turn with a groan just as a blow is struck ?

Also HP are not always CON based. There are several regions in FR for example which allow you to use other primary stats to determine initial HP. Something very easy to rule in any campaign.

Also if you think about it each class has a certain amount of HP assigned which is added to CON... perhaps these are your 'luck/near miss HP', which then are increased each level (and are no longer affected by CON)... the player growing in skill, become better at avoiding lethal blows and thus can afford more close shaves that might have knocked them out the level before.

Also if the problem you have with the system is how to reward your players for capturing rather than killing their enemies, from my point of view the sipliciy of the game mechanic does ,as you say, limit the battle aspect of the adventure because its so easy; what it also does is open up wonderful opportunities for you to use your creativity and imagination to make what happens after the enemy in question slumps unconscious to the ground truly memorable and really make them earn that extra reward on offer.

I'm sure after being pursued by a horde of angry followers over swing bridges, narrow ledges and quicksand ridden swamplands with an uncooperative prisoner trying to slow them down, they will toss up whether next time they simply slice his head off and put it in a sack.

 

[ExploderWizard]

sounds like over complicating things for the hell of it... Luck/doge/near miss HP (based on what? Dex? Int? Wis? All of the above?) and separate CON oww... that sword actually hit me HP.... Where would Psychic damage go? Who decides if it was a near miss or a solid hit.

There wouldn't be confusion. Hits against combatants target hp. Psychic damage won't exist, and all hits are hits -no solid or near misses. Once hp run out CON takes over. CON wounds represent the bad stuff. The kind of wounds that take actual time to heal. 5 minutes of rest don't cut it.

Who is to say a sleeping target cant turn with a groan just as a blow is struck ?

The same type of arbitrary rule that says you cant move diagonally past a hard corner.

Also HP are not always CON based. There are several regions in FR for example which allow you to use other primary stats to determine initial HP. Something very easy to rule in any campaign.

Sounds like a neat idea but the design goal was to make HP class based with no stat influence at all.

Also if you think about it each class has a certain amount of HP assigned which is added to CON... perhaps these are your 'luck/near miss HP', which then are increased each level (and are no longer affected by CON)... the player growing in skill, become better at avoiding lethal blows and thus can afford more close shaves that might have knocked them out the level before.

Indeed. All hit points would be luck, and battle skill determined by class. Things don't get lethal until you run out or are otherwise unable to fight. If HP were not connected to physical damage then swift healing might not be quite so immersion breaking.

 

[77IM]

Also, for the record IIRC, you could choose non-lethal for your last strike only to knock someone out in 3e as well. If the amount of non-lethal damage exceeds the character's current HP, they get knocked out.

4e just made it a question of last second rather than last strike.

IIRC, non-lethal damage in 3e often involved taking a -4 penalty to your attack roll.

If 4e is a storytelling tool meant to simulate cinematic-action fantasy, then it seems to me that knocking out foes, capturing them, and interrogating them happen only rarely in cinematic-action fantasy (only when it moves the story forward in some interesting way). For many groups, that's the way the players behave, but for some, it's not: my players enjoy puzzle-solving and often try to seek advantage even when doing so is boring. I don't want them to constantly feel torn between keeping up the fun action pace vs stopping to interrogate prisoners after every fight. So I make that decision easier by adapting the rules to better simulate cinematic-action fantasy: knockouts are harder than kills.

I'm not saying the RAW is wrong in general, just for some groups.

-- 77IM

 

[jbear]

There wouldn't be confusion. Hits against combatants target hp. Psychic damage won't exist, and all hits are hits -no solid or near misses. Once hp run out CON takes over. CON wounds represent the bad stuff. The kind of wounds that take actual time to heal. 5 minutes of rest don't cut it.



The same type of arbitrary rule that says you cant move diagonally past a hard corner.


Sounds like a neat idea but the design goal was to make HP class based with no stat influence at all.



Indeed. All hit points would be luck, and battle skill determined by class. Things don't get lethal until you run out or are otherwise unable to fight. If HP were not connected to physical damage then swift healing might not be quite so immersion breaking.

Initially it sounds like what you put forward would work fine, something similar to the 'serious wounds' type concept I have read on other parts of the board.

I guess it depends how much you and your players enjoy damage having serious lasting effects on roleplay.

My 2 groups consist of Novices so the simplicity of the rules really helps get the game moving, and hopefully hooking them on dnd with swift paced fun.

I have been looking at introducing a 'serious wound' option when they really have hang of things. Inspired from one of the boards I read someones idea of opting to take a serious wound instead of falling below 0 hp that would have lasting effects somewhat like a disease. Your idea of CON reminds me a bit of that, so now I see the full picture of what you're getting at then, ok, fair enough.

How would this work with being bloodied? Is this when CON kicks in. Or would you be bloodied first at 1\2 HP and then go 'Really Bloodied' when you got down to CON?

How would this work for Monsters? When they start getting down to there CON HP they begin seriously thinking about throwing in the towel? How does this effect whether damage is lethal or non-lethal? Or is that a seperate rule i.e -2 to hit or something similar for non-lethal damge.

Didn't like the idea of removing Psychic damage however.
It also seems to open the door for special attacks which directly hit CON... Poison springs to mind... once you're poisoned or even say burning there's no longer much luck or skill involved when dealing with ongoing damage... you're poisoned and its hurting you... And yet if that were to strike CON directly those powers would be way too strong (a wizard could drop in 2 rounds with 10 CON).

I guess you can rule that despite all logic real damage only kicks in when HP are reduced and CON kicks in no matter what the situation (except sleeping which I remember you mentioned before... making the sleep spell a very efficient way to kill , say, a 400 HP dragon attacking its CON and ignoring its other 370 other HP...)...

However if its some kind of realistic mechanic to a wound/damage system this kind of arbitrary ruling would be somewhat of a paradox.

Anyway, each to their own. From my point of view it seems like you could be opening a bit of a can of worms which may complicate you're game unnecessarily where as there may be other more simple solutions which resolve you're dislike of the 4e lethal/non-lethal damage 'system'...

 

[Lacyon]

There wouldn't be confusion. Hits against combatants target hp. Psychic damage won't exist, and all hits are hits -no solid or near misses. Once hp run out CON takes over. CON wounds represent the bad stuff. The kind of wounds that take actual time to heal. 5 minutes of rest don't cut it.

If all hits are actual hits, what's the point of separating hp from CON?

 

[Zaukrie]

There is some kind of serious wound alternate rule in the adavanced players guide from XRP. I don't remember the rules, as I'm at work, but I think it worked like a disease (saving throws failed move you down the line of seriousness....).