NPC Hit Points and Non-Lethal Damage


Playing the Game


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Non-Lethal Damage

Page 294 says wrote:

If you’re making a nonlethal attack with a weapon that doesn’t have the nonlethal trait, calculate your attack

roll’s result as if you were untrained with the weapon.

Trying to do non-lethal damage with a weapon changes your proficiency to untrained. Why didn’t you just make it a -2 conditional penalty, similar to PF1? It would be easy to implement, easy to remember.

Making your proficiency untrained makes the penalty fiddly and slower to calculate. Even worse, if someone is untrained, it’s no penalty at all!

I think a -2 conditional penalty for lethal weapons doing non-lethal attacks would be better, easier to remember, and easier to implement.

NPC Death at Zero Hit Points

Page 295 says wrote:
When most creatures reach 0 Hit Points, they die, unless the attack was nonlethal

In PF2, you’re proposing that when NPCs go to 0 hp, they’re instantly dead. I think the rules for all living things dying should be consistent, I think all living things should use the same rules the PCs use, or at least go to Dying 2 before death.

In PF1 PCs and NPCs followed the same rules on death and dying. Is there a really good reason to do it differently?

Dying
Dying. Why does this condition not have any penalties associated with it? When you get back up after Dying, shouldn’t you be at your worst, your weakest? Dying should have the same penalty as either Frightened (or perhaps Fatigued), so that their offensive potential is reduced.

If you're looking for a way to penalize someone who has been taken down without CCing him entirely, adding a penalty to Dying is one good way.

Getting hit when you are down
Maybe further an explanation that dying increases when you get hit when you're down. I was confused by that. Or maybe it's just me.


Chiming in with support for NPCs to use the same rules as PCs. The current version really hurts the "down then stabilize" strategy, which admittedly is one of my favorites. It also wastes any previously done nonlethal damage, which can be a pain.


You can still play NPCs with the normal Dying rules if you want though, there's nothing stopping you. Well, actually, I guess there's no guidelines for what the Stabilise DC is when a PC downs an enemy. You'd have to either ignore that or adjudicate it.

I do agree Dying should have some penalty beyond "You are closer to death" but one has to be careful or it can quickly turn into a downward spiral where once you're downed once you're worse, which makes you easier to down again, etc.


TheFinish wrote:
You can still play NPCs with the normal Dying rules if you want though, there's nothing stopping you. Well, actually, I guess there's no guidelines for what the Stabilise DC is when a PC downs an enemy. You'd have to either ignore that or adjudicate it.

Follows the usual rules; otherwise there'd be no way to tell what happened when a PC-like NPC downed a PC.

playtest rulebook page 295 wrote:

Recovery Saving Throws

When you’re unconscious, at the start of each of your turns you attempt a special Fortitude saving throw to regain consciousness, called a recovery saving throw.

The GM sets the DC of your recovery saving throw when you’re knocked out. This DC equals the DC of the spell or ability that dropped you plus your current dying value.

If damage that reduced you to 0 Hit Points came from something that doesn’t have a DC, such as an attack roll, use the attacker’s class DC. Though a class DC usually includes the key ability modifier for a character’s class, the GM might sometimes decide a different ability score is appropriate; for example, a wizard’s class DC usually uses Intelligence, but if he knocks someone out with his staff, the DC might use Strength or Dexterity. For monsters, the GM will use a high-difficulty skill DC of the monster’s level (see page 336).

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