Your choices are Kill, or ... Kill

[Incenjucar]

That's absolutely wonderful.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

Actually I can end this entire discussion pretty quickly.

You can choose to "disable" an enemy at any time with your last blow that would have normally killed them.

[minor spoiler for LFR Escape from Sembia]

When I played through LFR "PREV-2 Escape from Sembia" at DDXP there is a part when were fighting some guards. We were given the choice to either kill them with our blow after we got them down to 0 HP or "pull our hit" and instead just wound them and knock them out. We were allowed to make this decision AFTER we hit and with any type of attack (spell, ranged, or melee).

We actually didn't kill any of the guards and instead knocked them out, which we found out later was a good decision as it changed how the adventure would have been played.

But you can basically decide, at will, if you want to kill something or just knock it out.

Brilliant! Now I don't need to pull my punches with the PCs, and if they happen to have a fight turn against them, I can just have them captured with a built-in mechanic, rather than having to inflict a TPK on them.

 

[hong]

I've used that rule too, since 1e in fact.

But I was the first to post about it! Therefore it's my idea. Publish or perish, you know, old bean.

 

[The Little Raven]

On the other hand, grab has been nerfed. To the extent that the scene on that Tantive IV where Vader chokes the dude who won't say where the ambassador is being impossible. To actually grapple or trip in Star Wars requires a feat which Vader doesn't have.

He used Grab to physically grab him, then used Force Grip (his signature move, yo) to choke the guy. Easy.

Disarming is ridiculously difficult. And Force Disarm? I think it was determined Vader needed something like an 18 to do that thing he did to Han on Bespin.

Force Point. Vader is a powerful Sith, after all. He needs them alive for his trap, so why wouldn't he expend a minor resource like that to get what he needs?

"Gosh, the first twenty pages of War and Peace didn't do it for me, I think I'll read the whole thing!"

It's more like "I heard some people who haven't read this book talking about it based on incomplete information, so I'll form an opinion about it."

It's a game of Blind Man's Bluff with a Jump to Conclusions Mat.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

I'm quite happy with this though there's a handful of situations where I'd rule that the target has to die (or more rarely survive even if the PC wants him dead).

Not that many situations, mind you. Even if a PC hits a target with a sword and reduce him to zero we can describe the last blow as an hilt strike to the face, for example. That's the good old Feng Shui method and I'm fine with it. And certainly a magic missile can stun.

But if the PC chose to use alchemical fire or a fireball for the last damage, he pretty much chose that his victim would die of severe third degree burn. Similarly, if he chose to push a thug off the roof of a 30 feet building in order to inflict the last 3D6 of damage, he pretty much chose that the victim would die IMO.

On the other end of the spectrum, if the target is pushed off a cliff and falls into the sea, receiving massive damage, whether or not he dies is also my choice as a DM. If the PC really wanted the guy dead he just had to make sure the last blow was a sword strike that took of his head, an Edritch blast that punched a hole throug his chest or whatever.

---

Personnally, I want choice to have consequence. If you choose to use the big guns, you choose that the victim probably won't survive. If you choose to use a fireball to win a bar fight, I'm sending the city guard after you for mass murder! To be fair, I should probably apply the same reasoning to some martial maneuver. Like, when the fighter does that daily power that does almost triple her normal damage while using a axe, it'd be kind of silly to insist she isn't going for a kill (and unfair to the wizard).

I'm eager to see the full PHB to see what, if any, houserule will be needed to satisfy me on that front.

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

We also know that certain very powerful effects (namely Wish) are completely gone. The claim that 4e has nerfed the wizard is supported by evidence, and fairly convincing evidence at that. This evidence follows comments by the designers that led us to predict that the wizard would be nerfed even before we saw evidence of this. However, the claim that it is not possible to do non-lethal damage is not supported by evidence. It is groundless speculation.

Now, let's look a little closer at what the OP is doing. He is speculating that 4e will Fail To Deliver. It doesn't really matter what the specifics are, because he's not the only one doing this. He, without reference to evidence, is suggesting that 4e will be written in a way that produces generally negative results, and which will detract from everyone's play experience. By spreading misinformation (sleep does damage) and starting groundless rumours (there is no way to do nonlethal damage in 4e), he seems to be making an attack against the edition for whatever reasons he has to do so. This is negative behaviour.

And now the point of nonlethal damage - I don't think it's a good solution. First off, there's no reason to assume spells can even do nonlethal damage - they couldn't in previous editions, and nothing has been said to the contrary. Secondly, nonlethal damage is not really a nonviolent solution. If the mayor is possessed and your solution is to beat the crap out of him, expect the city guard to have a problem with that.

IceFractal explicitly avoids the type of behavior you're condemning. He's saying you shouldn't assume spells can do non-lethal, not that they definitely don't. And gives evidence from previous editions. All his other arguments are also from specific evidence we know about 4e. The only unqualified statement he makes in his entire post is "Guess you're going to have to kill [the possessed innkeeper], or else run away."

However, if a poster makes a groundless speculation that 4e will contain some feature that will be really excellent and which will improve everyone's play experience, he is not engaging in negative behaviour. He might be in error, but his error is merely wishful thinking, rather than pernicious slander. He may spread misinformation, but he does not want to rally an attack against either 3e or 4e. He's just groundlessly optimistic. Naive, perhaps, but not trying to start a fight.

I think that trying to get people together to hurl invective at the new edition without ground is a much worse behaviour than trying to get people together to be happy about an unreal feature of the edition. It causes more fights, spreads more negative feelings, and is generally a more aggressive and combative stance.

Although it will be interesting to see how much nerd rage greets the news that the nerd class got nerfed....

Oh, I am expecting a *lot* of howls of rage and protest in the coming days from primary spellcaster fans in the upcoming months. Most of the other classes will have their scope broadened and have gotten a lot of cool new toys. The wizard class, which was previously hogging damn near all the cool stuff, is going to be narrowed in scope and options and it will lead to psychic pain from some quarters that we won't hear the end of for decades.

I thoroughly approve of the design change, needless to say.

Pro-4e posters like Hong are just as aggressive and combative as anti-4e like Ice Fractal. I really think you're looking at the pro 4e crowd with rose colored glasses if you claim that they do not want to rally against 3e and are not trying to start a fight. Their posts are "hurting feelings" just as hard as anti 4e. Forgive me for ascribing motives, but I suspect this may not have been obvious to you because your feelings were not hurt by them.

 

[hong]

Are you taking my name in vain, "Deep Blue 9000", if that IS your real model number?

 

[glass]

That also begs the question

No it doesn't. It raises, poses, suggests, inspires, creates, promotes that question. Begging the question is something else entirely. Sorry, but you're about the 10th person to misuse that phrase in the last few days and I had to get it off my chest.

why would you read the PHB when you have strong evidence you won't like it?

You wouldn't. But I'm sure plenty of people on ENWorld will when it comes out so you'll be able to get much better evidence then (either way) than you can possibly get now.


glass.

 

[OakwoodDM]

IceFractal explicitly avoids the type of behavior you're condemning. He's saying you shouldn't assume spells can do non-lethal, not that they definitely don't. And gives evidence from previous editions. All his other arguments are also from specific evidence we know about 4e. The only unqualified statement he makes in his entire post is "Guess you're going to have to kill [the possessed innkeeper], or else run away."

That and "Sleep does damage", which is actually demonstrably wrong.

Pro-4e posters like Hong are just as aggressive and combative as anti-4e like Ice Fractal. I really think you're looking at the pro 4e crowd with rose colored glasses if you claim that they do not want to rally against 3e and are not trying to start a fight. Their posts are "hurting feelings" just as hard as anti 4e. Forgive me for ascribing motives, but I suspect this may not have been obvious to you because your feelings were not hurt by them.

You see, the way I read the quoted post from hong is that he's being sarcastic and dry, which, to anyone who's read enough threads he's commented on, is what most of his posts on the 4e forum have involved. Nothing aggressive or combative, simply trying to inject some humour into proceedings.

 

[Stormtower]

You could make killing optional. For example, whenever a PC deals the "killing blow," the PC can choose to leave the mook mortally wounded or just unconscious and able to be saved.

Our DM for "Escape from Sembia" quoted essentially this as RAW for 4E. Essentially, when a blow is struck that reduces a foe to 0 HP or less, the PC always has the option to say it was a non-lethal blow.

This came up because we didn't want to actually KILL the Sembian guards in the first encounter... even through they were corrupt bastards, the good-aligned among us couldn't stomach their deaths at the party's hand, so we asked the DM. I don't think he was fudging... he represented the above as RAW.