UltimaGabe
First Post
Hey, everyone. My name's Gabe, and I've been playing D&D for two or three years- and I've been DMing on and off, switching off with another player in my group. Most of our adventures have been very hack-and-slash- we've tried to have some roleplaying sessions, and it hasn't really been bad, and we've definitely developed some good characters and everything, but the other DM and I have been planning for a while on starting a campaign that's almost entirely roleplaying in an urban setting (with one battle here and there).
Anyway, the campaign is going to be very big on investigation, and the aim is to make it more like an episode of Batman or something- but one of the problems that is going to arise is the fact that- well- it's far too easy to kill people. Now, I'm not saying that monsters or anything are easy to kill, but I don't like the Nonlethal Damage System the way it is- so I came up with a slightly different one (for this campaign, of course- I don't think this would work in a less urban setting).
You see, I'm planning on instilling the idea in the PCs heads that killing is bad. I mean, in real life, I don't care how bad people are, but if you kill someone, it's a BIG deal. Barroom brawls that turn deadly is gonna get somebody sent to jail for life, and no teleport spell is gonna get you out of there. In the same token, I think that killing in D&D should be a much bigger deal than it is. The problem, of course, is that the way it is, it's far too difficult NOT to kill people. You have to take a penalty on attack rolls to deal nonlethal damage, and what's even the point of that? Unless you have the Nonlethal Substitution metamagic feat (Complete Arcane), your fireball's gonna kill whatever the fighter's sword didn't. So, what to do?
Well, for this upcoming campaign, I was planning on doing this: First, I'm getting rid of the -4 penalty for dealing subdual damage. I don't care if it makes sense (since it's harder to hit with the flat of your blade than to slash with the edge), it forces PCs to kill everybody they come across, and it just doesn't add enough to the heroic feel of the game (after all, in however many episodes of the Ninja Turtles show and comic and whatever, how many people did Leonardo kill with his swords? Or Raphael with his Sais? Yet it sure didn't seem like THEY were taking penalties on their attack rolls). In addition to getting rid of the penalty, I was planning on stating at the beginning that all attacks, unless stated otherwise, are considered to be Nonlethal.
But then the problem arises about dealing damage with spells. I mean, what good is it going to do if you can deal nonlethal damage with your sword, when a Fireball's gonna kill everything in a 20-foot radius? And no matter what, you can't take a -4 to deal nonlethal damage with a fireball, trust me. So how could that be fixed? Well, rather than granting them the free Nonlethal Substitution feat (which causes problems with Sorcerers and whatnot), I decided on a different fix. You see, in our campaigns, we allow players to choose spells from the Player's Handbook and one or two other books (depending on if they're a new base class or anything), and any other books (like the Book of Vile Darkness, for example) are off limits until the players are able to find someone in-game that's able to "teach" them the desired spells. (It's a DM device that lets us limit the players, only letting them use the horribly broken spells when we're ready.) This Nonlethal Damage fix I came up with, you see, goes like this: From the beginning, we state that any spell that deals damage (like Scorching Ray or Lightning Bolt) deals nonlethal damage. Plain and simple. It ALWAYS deals nonlethal damage. The players could, however, eventually find someone that would teach them the lethal version of a specific spell- so that even once they're able to deal actual damage, they can only do it with one or two of their spells, and hopefully they'll be less apt to use it. Spells that kill instantly, of course, will either knock their targets unconscious, or will simply be banned until the players find someone who knows it.
Using this kind of a system, it's assumed that enemies (unless they had a good reason not to) always use Nonlethal damage as well. I mean, if you were to get mugged on the street, chances are they wouldn't kill you- just beat you up. Animals, in some cases, would deal nonlethal damage, or in other cases would deal lethal (depending on the animal and the situation). But, with all this Nonlethal damage going around, something needs to be done about the cure spells. I vaguely remember a rule stating that a single cure spell will remove all nonlethal damage instantly (although I could be making that up)- this kind of a rule would, of course, need to be gotten rid of in this type of a system. One idea is to possibly have Cure spells heal double hit points when healing Nonlethal Damage (so a maximized Cure Light Wounds would heal 13 hit points, or 26 Nonlethal hit points). Another idea is to have separate Cure spells- one that heals Nonlethal, and one that heals Lethal- but limited they players in this way could only be bad, since they're definitely gonna be taking Lethal damage at some point or another, and we wouldn't want to screw them over by not allowing them to know the Lethal version of Cure Light Wounds. Any thoughts on this fix?
This type of a Nonlethal Damage system could prove quite useful to establish a certain type of feel for a campaign. It allows recurring villains (since most, if not all, villains are subdued and jailed rather than killed), and, this way, when someone DOES get killed (by an assassin or something), it's a BIG deal. Also, being able to cure Nonlethal damage more easily will prolong battles and, hopefully, take more focus off of fighting, since in a lot of cases fighting isn't going to solve very much.
Oh well. That's my system. (Sorry for taking up so much of your time.
)
Any thoughts? Criticisms? Pointers? Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Anyway, the campaign is going to be very big on investigation, and the aim is to make it more like an episode of Batman or something- but one of the problems that is going to arise is the fact that- well- it's far too easy to kill people. Now, I'm not saying that monsters or anything are easy to kill, but I don't like the Nonlethal Damage System the way it is- so I came up with a slightly different one (for this campaign, of course- I don't think this would work in a less urban setting).
You see, I'm planning on instilling the idea in the PCs heads that killing is bad. I mean, in real life, I don't care how bad people are, but if you kill someone, it's a BIG deal. Barroom brawls that turn deadly is gonna get somebody sent to jail for life, and no teleport spell is gonna get you out of there. In the same token, I think that killing in D&D should be a much bigger deal than it is. The problem, of course, is that the way it is, it's far too difficult NOT to kill people. You have to take a penalty on attack rolls to deal nonlethal damage, and what's even the point of that? Unless you have the Nonlethal Substitution metamagic feat (Complete Arcane), your fireball's gonna kill whatever the fighter's sword didn't. So, what to do?
Well, for this upcoming campaign, I was planning on doing this: First, I'm getting rid of the -4 penalty for dealing subdual damage. I don't care if it makes sense (since it's harder to hit with the flat of your blade than to slash with the edge), it forces PCs to kill everybody they come across, and it just doesn't add enough to the heroic feel of the game (after all, in however many episodes of the Ninja Turtles show and comic and whatever, how many people did Leonardo kill with his swords? Or Raphael with his Sais? Yet it sure didn't seem like THEY were taking penalties on their attack rolls). In addition to getting rid of the penalty, I was planning on stating at the beginning that all attacks, unless stated otherwise, are considered to be Nonlethal.
But then the problem arises about dealing damage with spells. I mean, what good is it going to do if you can deal nonlethal damage with your sword, when a Fireball's gonna kill everything in a 20-foot radius? And no matter what, you can't take a -4 to deal nonlethal damage with a fireball, trust me. So how could that be fixed? Well, rather than granting them the free Nonlethal Substitution feat (which causes problems with Sorcerers and whatnot), I decided on a different fix. You see, in our campaigns, we allow players to choose spells from the Player's Handbook and one or two other books (depending on if they're a new base class or anything), and any other books (like the Book of Vile Darkness, for example) are off limits until the players are able to find someone in-game that's able to "teach" them the desired spells. (It's a DM device that lets us limit the players, only letting them use the horribly broken spells when we're ready.) This Nonlethal Damage fix I came up with, you see, goes like this: From the beginning, we state that any spell that deals damage (like Scorching Ray or Lightning Bolt) deals nonlethal damage. Plain and simple. It ALWAYS deals nonlethal damage. The players could, however, eventually find someone that would teach them the lethal version of a specific spell- so that even once they're able to deal actual damage, they can only do it with one or two of their spells, and hopefully they'll be less apt to use it. Spells that kill instantly, of course, will either knock their targets unconscious, or will simply be banned until the players find someone who knows it.
Using this kind of a system, it's assumed that enemies (unless they had a good reason not to) always use Nonlethal damage as well. I mean, if you were to get mugged on the street, chances are they wouldn't kill you- just beat you up. Animals, in some cases, would deal nonlethal damage, or in other cases would deal lethal (depending on the animal and the situation). But, with all this Nonlethal damage going around, something needs to be done about the cure spells. I vaguely remember a rule stating that a single cure spell will remove all nonlethal damage instantly (although I could be making that up)- this kind of a rule would, of course, need to be gotten rid of in this type of a system. One idea is to possibly have Cure spells heal double hit points when healing Nonlethal Damage (so a maximized Cure Light Wounds would heal 13 hit points, or 26 Nonlethal hit points). Another idea is to have separate Cure spells- one that heals Nonlethal, and one that heals Lethal- but limited they players in this way could only be bad, since they're definitely gonna be taking Lethal damage at some point or another, and we wouldn't want to screw them over by not allowing them to know the Lethal version of Cure Light Wounds. Any thoughts on this fix?
This type of a Nonlethal Damage system could prove quite useful to establish a certain type of feel for a campaign. It allows recurring villains (since most, if not all, villains are subdued and jailed rather than killed), and, this way, when someone DOES get killed (by an assassin or something), it's a BIG deal. Also, being able to cure Nonlethal damage more easily will prolong battles and, hopefully, take more focus off of fighting, since in a lot of cases fighting isn't going to solve very much.
Oh well. That's my system. (Sorry for taking up so much of your time.
)Any thoughts? Criticisms? Pointers? Any feedback would be much appreciated.
