nonlethal damage doing massive damage

[Gris]

Is nonlethal damage treated the same as lethal damage when you have done massive damage. Will it kill you if you fail your savings throw?

[TheWiz]

Massive Damage is a rarely-used optional rule. Unless that huge pile of non-lethal damage ALSO inflicted Massive Lethal Damage (it can happen!) it probably would not apply.

[Mudfoot]

I'd say that it would knock you unconscious.

[Claxon]

Massive damage rule is optional first of all. It's not explained how non-lethal damage interacts with it. I would probably rule that if you were somehow able to deal the minimum 50 points of damage lethal damage after going through their non-lethal hp total that you could force a save vs massive damage if we were using that rule.

However....the massive damage rule is kind of a s@!+ty rule. And by that I mean that mid level characters are regularly capable of inflicting the damage needed to force the save, and so are your enemies.* While it wont make much of a difference for enemies since it requires a single hit that deals at least half their total hp in damage, it could be very bad for players. Because while a DC 15 fort save isn't very high, the more times you have to make the more likely you are to roll a 1.

*Capable of doing so on a critical hit normally.

[TheWiz]

Player characters very much do not want to use the optional Massive Damage Rule. Doing so automatically puts the game in Hard Mode. After a few levels foes frequently inflict this much damage, so the PC kill rate rises drastically. Be warned!