subdue rules?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

If your players weren't wielding saps, and making solely non-magical attacks, most of the damage deal to Guy A would be HP damage.

HP damage reduces the amount of subdual damage needed. Subdual damage is harder to do than HP damage. Unless you're willing to give up a huge chunk of time whiffing with your attacks, you're going to go for mostly HP damage, with just enough subdual damage to knock them out.

Unlike in 4e, the subdual damage won't necessarily be the final hit, you could hit them with subdual at some point early on, so if their HP turn out to be lower than you think, they'll get knocked out when you stab them later anyway.

I agree with you that's how it works, but I disagree with that there's a problem - the mechanic worked fine for my 3e group. We didn't do it unless we explicitly wanted someone alive - not too much hassle to focus fire the other baddies with spells while the melee guys bludgeoned the target. And in 3e, the -4 wasn't that big of deal - you still usually hit with your primary attacks, its just the secondaries (and tertiaries, etc.) that it really mattered for. So, it seems my 3e experience with the subdual rules is quite different from yours - which is fair enough.

And it may just be because we were used to the 3e mechanic that the 4e one seemed a bit... odd. I think I prefer the 3e one, but not enough to do actually change from using the 4e rules. Indeed, its only in a situation where you had 3+ sides that the differences between the two rulesets was highlighted... and since its quite rare that non-lethal is used, the circumstances where there are 3+ sides and the 4e rules seem strange will be much, much rarer.

 

[Joshua Randall]

In answer to a previous question in this thread about when you must declare you are "subduing" someone*, my interpretation is that you can wait until after reducing the target to 0 or fewer hp, and then declare.

* Note that technically what you are doing is "Knocking Creatures Unconscious"

Knocking Creatures Unconscious
When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points or fewer, you can choose to knock it unconscious rather than kill it. [etc...]

So:

Player: Tordek slams his hammer into the evil high priest, hitting AC 23 for 8 damage.
DM: The evil high priest crumples under the force of Tordek's blow. He's down.
Player: (OOC) I'll knock him out rather than killing him.
DM: Okay. Tordek strikes the evil high priest a glancing blow to the head, knocking him out.
Player: Tordek moves over to the skeleton minions....

 

[Jhaelen]

In answer to a previous question in this thread about when you must declare you are "subduing" someone*, my interpretation is that you can wait until after reducing the target to 0 or fewer hp, and then declare.

Indeed. Nothing in the rules indicates you need to mention your intent to subdue an enemy before you know if your blow is going to reduce it to 0hp or below.

If a DM told me I'd have to declare it beforehand, I'd just auto-declare it for every blow. Problem solved.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the entire idea of the "foes die at zero unless you don't want them to" is to gloss over the entirely necessary practise in some previous editions of walking across a battlefield CDGing anything still breathing, which really doesn't fit the tone of 4e.

Also, I remember in 3.5e, there were a fair few items that made dealing all subdual damage a benefit rather than a penalty... The best way to kill most creatures was to knock them out and then CDG them.