Non-lethal damage

[Greenfield]

I'm sure that this has been beaten to death, but the topic is non-lethal damage in D&D 3.0, 3.5 and Pathfinder. (I'm pretty sure the rules vary by edition, so please include Edition notes with your replies.)

By the book, to do non-lethal weapon damage the attacker takes a -4 penalty to hit, but the damage is counted separately. When lethal and non-lethal add up to the target's hit points they drop unconscious.

For spell casters there is a "Non-Lethal Substitution" feat.

Some creatures aren't subject to non-lethal damage. Constructs come to mind at once, as do undead.

Normally we think of non-lethal damage as "flat of the blade", or perhaps as striking with the pommel (origin of the idea of "pummeling" someone BTW.).

With ranged weapons I tend to think of them as "flesh wounds", targeting non-vital areas. (There isn't really a "Flat of the arrowhead" to speak of.)

Some DMs insist that a portion of the damage is still lethal.

Since we have a lot of rules scholars here I thought I'd ask: How do you explain/visualize/justify non-lethal damage?

For weapons, is it only melee?

For spells, how does a "non-lethal" fireball look/work?

Do you count some of it as lethal? What is the hard rule on that (meaning, RAW and the source)?

Oddly, the Energy Substitution doesn't add to spell slot level, but Non-Lethal does. Further, you need a separate Non-Lethal Substitution for each energy type. It's like the authors are trying to actively discourage less deadly encounters.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? How do you handle these things in your games?

 

[delericho]

Since we have a lot of rules scholars here I thought I'd ask: How do you explain/visualize/justify non-lethal damage?

I don't have a consistent model - the player can describe how he turns his blade, or goes for a flesh wound, or otherwise strikes in a non-lethal manner.

For weapons, is it only melee?

Whatever the RAW says. I think it's both, but it's been a while since I've checked.

For spells, how does a "non-lethal" fireball look/work?

It looks exactly like a fireball, including secondary effects (such as setting things on fire), it's just that the flames burn vitality/energy levels/whatever rather than burning flesh. Which doesn't make a huge amount of sense, I know, but ultimately... it's magic.

Do you count some of it as lethal? What is the hard rule on that (meaning, RAW and the source)?

No. Per RAW there are a very few cases where non-lethal damage "spills over" to lethal damage (dehydration?), but otherwise they don't cross over like that - you just accumulate a total until you fall unconscious.

Oddly, the Energy Substitution doesn't add to spell slot level, but Non-Lethal does. Further, you need a separate Non-Lethal Substitution for each energy type. It's like the authors are trying to actively discourage less deadly encounters.

That, or their sense of balance isn't as strong as it might be. This is 3e, after all.

 

[Greenfield]

I did some research on my own. (Silly me, actually reading the books. What was I thinking?)

Non-lethal is melee weapons only, not ranged.

I don't usually have non-lethal spells like Fireball include their secondary effects like setting things on fire. Inanimate objects aren't subject to non-lethal damage, after all. So I see that as more of a flash-bang, inducing shock. But that's just me.

 

[Celebrim]

I treat non-lethal damage as being largely the sort of thing that 4e DMs have to treat all damage as - largely non-meat, very superficial contusions and abrasions, fatigue, soft impacts, and so forth. If you've played 'paintball', think of the damage inflicted by a paintball as being an example of 'nonlethal'. They can hurt - hurt a lot if they hit an ear or a temple. They can often leave bruises. But the average person can absorb a lot of these and still walk home. Most people have experienced what I consider equivalent to the game's concept of non-lethal damage in various forms over their lifetime. If you've had sunburn or mild heatstroke, chances are what you have is nonlethal damage. If you've taken a hard fall and limped for an hour or two, but then been fine except for at most a bruise, that was 'non-lethal damage'. If you had a cut that scabbed over after an hour and then didn't bother you, then it was probably how I imagine 'non-lethal damage'.

Actually having experienced in real life what I'd call lethal damage in the game in any real form is relatively rarer, and save for a few broken bones most people have never taken what I would describe in game as more than 1-2 lethal damage from any source (broken bones being also an example of _ability_ damage). Granted, most of us are normal, not heroes. Athletes are probably counter examples, where you hear of athletes 'playing through the pain' and 'playing at 80%'. Interestingly if damage could be uniformly measure - same sized cut for example - for heroes, many things that count as lethal damage to them, would only count as non-lethal damage to a non-hero.

Of course, eventually you are going to run up against limits of how well any game mechanic translates to real life. Realistically speaking, there might not be just 2 or 3 categories of damage but a half-dozen that cripple to different degrees and heal at different rates and differ in how effective they are depending on the sort of tissue that they hit. But eventually you have to accept the limitations of any simulation.

I do not allow non-lethal damage to be inflicted by a ranged weapon unless it has the nonlethal property. This is a 'realism' judgment to me. It's not possible to be accurate enough at range, or to pull your punch when striking someone with a projectile. Presumably you could throw a leather sack loosely filled with pebbles or lead shot or the equivalent, or in a modern setting fire 'rubber bullets' or beanbags from a shotgun.

I do not allow the non-lethal substitution feat, though there are a variety of spells that produce non-lethal damage in my game.

If a critical hit is made when attempting to inflict non-lethal damage, one multiplier worth of damage is considered to be lethal. If the amount of non-lethal damage you absorb is greater than your remaining hit points, half of what you continue to absorb is considered lethal. If the amount of non-lethal damage you absorb is greater than your hit points plus your dying reserve (normally 10 hit points), all non-lethal damage you absorb is lethal.

You don't bring up what I consider to be the biggest problem here.

In 99% of cases, nonlethal damage is just as lethal as lethal damage. Once a target is unconscious, and therefore helpless, you can slay them at your leisure. So there is really nothing to privilege 'less deadly' damage in the game because PC's - if they could inflict it - would abuse it. And I say PC's, because it's most often players that adopt the absolutely ruthless stance in the game of winning at any cost or by any means, often ironically out of fear the DM has the same stance. This is the reason I make no effort to encourage the use of 'less deadly' damage, and probably why the game does not. In point of fact, lethal + nonlethal tends to drop the target as effectively as lethal alone.

 

[delericho]

Non-lethal is melee weapons only, not ranged.

Well, there it is - were I to run 3e again, non-lethal would be melee only.

I don't usually have non-lethal spells like Fireball include their secondary effects like setting things on fire. Inanimate objects aren't subject to non-lethal damage, after all.

Yeah, but the "setting things on fire" isn't a consequence of the damage so much as being hit by fire. Which is a nitpick, I know.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, but the "setting things on fire" isn't a consequence of the damage so much as being hit by fire. Which is a nitpick, I know.

Well, to nitpick your nitpick, I disagree. Within the simulation, at least one sufficient prerequisite to setting something on fire is that it takes fire damage. Things that are immune to fire damage cannot be set on fire even when "hit by fire" because they can't be ignited (they are either fire itself or some material which is completely incombustible).

The steps of the simulation might be:
1) Is it an object that is not explicitly vulnerable to fire? If so, half the fire damage.
2) Is the object explicitly immune to the damage? If 'yes', stop.
3) Does the object's hardness apply to fire? If so, subtract the hardness from the fire damage taken.
4) Is the damage the object zero or less. If 'yes', stop.
5) Apply the damage to the object. If the object has no remaining hit points, it is incinerated.
6) If the object is not incinerated, it may catch on fire. Make a reflex save. If this save fails, the object now takes 1d6 fire damage in the next round. Repeat the procedure for this damage. (Note: Large or persistent fires might develop to 2d6 fire damage per round at the DM's option.)

A brick wall under this model ultimately doesn't burn. Being not vulnerable to fire and having a high hardness, it can't actually burn. It can be mildly damaged by intense heat, but its not actually going to burn. Conversely, a pile of paper will burn. If the rule was only, "Things burn when hit by fire", bricks and paper would both burn.

Reviewing this model, with nonlethal fire damage, if the object is explicitly immune to non-lethal damage we don't apply damage and we never set the object on fire. I think this is the expected result. Presumably 'nonlethal' fire is the equivalent of a sunburn or some hot to a living organism but not hot to an object sort of thing. We wouldn't expect exposure to 200F to even burn paper, but we would expect such exposure to be ultimately uncomfortable to animals. Plenty of things that wouldn't burn all but the most temperature senstive objects would raise angry red welts on living things.

But then again, we also see why I wouldn't allow non-lethal substitution metamagic. Ultimately it doesn't make sense even within a world of magic for fire damage to be just as debilitating, just as briefly applied, but not be as hot. I can see no way to color that consistently, and no reason why the 'nonlethal' fire shouldn't be say 1/5th as effective in traumatizing a living target.

 

[delericho]

Well, to nitpick your nitpick, I disagree. Within the simulation, at least one sufficient prerequisite to setting something on fire is that it takes fire damage.

Flint & steel can set combustible things alight, yet don't have the ability to cause fire damage.

 

[Oryan77]

Non-lethal? What is that? You mean when players want to knock someone out, so they do lethal damage until the guy drops to the ground, then they use a Cure Light spell on him?

I was about to say that I don't think ranged weapons can do non-lethal but it looks like you figured that out. There are however "blunt arrows" which will do non-lethal damage. You could also throw a sap.

We explain weapon damage as you guys do. I've never once seen anyone use a spell to deal non-lethal damage. I never even really knew you could (never thought about it actually). On the surface, that sounds kind of ridiculous. But I'm sure it can make sense if I read about how that works with spells.

 

[Celebrim]

Flint & steel can set combustible things alight, yet don't have the ability to cause fire damage.

Ok, point, but it's worth looking at how that works.

In real life, flint and steel is a mechanism for creating small molten drops of iron. Even so, you can't really use it to set most things alight. You can never light your average piece of wood by hitting it with sparks from flint and steel. You'd have a hard time catching fire even most combustibles. Which is why, in real life, if you are forced to resort to using flint and steel to start a fire, you by all means carry a special box of especially dry and especially combustible very fine and thin tinder. Even so, it often takes a minute or more to start any sort of flame, and 'back in the day' tinder was often ignited with the aid of gunpowder (more on that later).

The game doesn't have specific rules for how flint and steel works, other than mentioning that you can use it to light a torch. It's one of those cases that the game is silent on and leaves it up to the DM's judgment.

Not that this is not the case with objects and non-lethal damage, which is an area the game isn't silent on.

So what's going on here. By the rules, nothing suggests that flint and steel causes either lethal or nonlethal fire damage. But I think it would be extremely backwards to assume that because flint and steel can cause fires, this exception to the normal rules invalidates the normal rules. On the contrary, I think the obvious thing is to assume that flint and steel have the special implied property 'causes sparks', and there are a few special materials that have the implied special property 'highly combustible' such that if you really wanted to describe them under the rules you'd write something like "[flaming oil/gunpowder/dry tender/tender cloth/toilet paper have the property 'highly combustible' that causes them to ignite when exposed to even the smallest spark."

So, I might agree with you that 'non-lethal fire damage' was sufficient to ignite a pile of gun powder or a pool of oil or something similar for which it is reasonable to assume that the substance is far more sensitive to flame than even human skin, if I in fact believed non-lethal fire damage was reasonable in the first place.

But just because agree with you that there are special exceptions to the rules about how fire comes into being that are covered by things like flint and steel, doesn't mean that I agree with you that in general fire is spread just because something is exposed to fire either in the game, under the rules, or in reality. Baring the 'highly combustible' substance exception, I'm not going to let PC's set something on fire unless they can do fire damage to it.

 

[Greenfield]

Ok, point, but it's worth looking at how that works.

In real life, flint and steel is a mechanism for creating small molten drops of iron. Even so, you can't really use it to set most things alight. You can never light your average piece of wood by hitting it with sparks from flint and steel. You'd have a hard time catching fire even most combustibles. Which is why, in real life, if you are forced to resort to using flint and steel to start a fire, you by all means carry a special box of especially dry and especially combustible very fine and thin tinder.

Even so, it often takes a minute or more to start any sort of flame, and 'back in the day' tinder was often ignited with the aid of gunpowder (more on that later).

Flint is a stone that's high in Magnesium. The sparks are burning magnesium, not molten iron. Sparks from steel on a grinding stone are burning iron (yes iron burns. Try lighting fine steel wool some time. You get rust, but it never gets hot enough to melt the iron.)

Having been in the Boy Scouts long ago, I can tell you that you can light wood, paper or cloth with flint and steel. Prepared tinder such as wood shavings and/or char-cloth an be set blaze in seconds. I saw a demonstration at an historic fort in Sacramento California. The lady, well practiced as most people would be "back in the day" could light a fire as easily as you or I would with matches. She had flames from char-cloth first time, every time.

So what's going on here. By the rules, nothing suggests that flint and steel causes either lethal or nonlethal fire damage. But I think it would be extremely backwards to assume that because flint and steel can cause fires, this exception to the normal rules invalidates the normal rules. On the contrary, I think the obvious thing is to assume that flint and steel have the special implied property 'causes sparks', and there are a few special materials that have the implied special property 'highly combustible' such that if you really wanted to describe them under the rules you'd write something like "[flaming oil/gunpowder/dry tender/tender cloth/toilet paper have the property 'highly combustible' that causes them to ignite when exposed to even the smallest spark."

You can burn yourself, slightly, with the sparks from flint and steel. You get micro-burns on the skin. Look at a machinist's hands and forearms some time.

So I'd consider the damage to be "lethal" on the "less than a hit point" scale.

In game terms, those sparks have to be "lethal". Why? Because they can start fires and damage things, and inanimate objects are unaffected by non-lethal damage. What are you going to do, knock the table out?

As for Non-Lethal Substitution: For spells like Fireball, think Flash-Bang. For Electrical effects like Lightning Bolt, think TASER. Cold damage? Thermal shock. (You can knock yourself out by placing ice on your wrists or the back of your neck. ) Sonic is easy to visualize as non-lethal. The hard part of that one is getting sound to be lethal in the first place. Acid? That one's hard.