Nonlethal damage leading to death.

[Ambrus]

It seems that there's something missing in the description of nonlethal damage in the core rules; or at least I can't find it. Can a character die of nonlethal damage? The player's handbook states "When your nonlethal damage exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious." That's pretty much it. There are lots of environmental effects in the DMG that deal nonlethal damage which should, realistically at least, potentially lead to death such as starvation, suffocation, smoke inhalation, ect. Unfortunately only excessive heat damage seems possibly fatal: "characters reduced to unconsciousness begin taking lethal damage..."

I can't find anything on this subject in the WotC errata or FAQ. Is it clarified anywhere else in the core rules? The simple thing to do is to assume the addendum to heat damage applies to all instances of nonlethal damage, but that'd be a house rule I suppose. How have others handled this issue?

 

[frankthedm]

"When your nonlethal damage exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious." That's pretty much it. Certain effects go over to lethal after that, most don't.

I say PHB races and similar die at 20 subdual over HP. But I also do not differentiate between non lethal and lethal damage for determining one’s current HP. Non Lethal heals faster but since I view remaining HP on how well you resist attacks, if subdual has knocked you down to 2 HP, it will take an attempt to kill [normal melee attack] dealing 12 points of damage to slay you. And if someone reliably does over 20 points of damage when tring to knock someone out, then yes they stand a fair chance of snapping spine or neck or caving skull and should pull [not use] thier entire STR bonus.