My husband and I play a wide variety of campaign settings. One in particular has a bunch of Royal BodyGuards that like to train (spar) on a regular basis. Their training rules include that all weapons taken to the sparring cirlce are wooden (designed for non-lethal dmg).
We have a few characters that, even without enchanted weapons, deal a *bleep* load of dmg. So it got me wondering... how much lethal dmg can a PC take before they are dead?
The PHB's combat section says that once you take all your HP in nonlethal dmg, you become staggered....however, we didn't find anything that talkes about combining lethal and non lethal together.
..So... how does it add up?
I have always played that any damage over the required subdual damage to knock a character out "swings through" dealing lethal damage. For me this simulates the ability of a wooden sword to break necks or an untrained punch to connect with something vital. It also simulates the "kicked to death" if they continue the beating once said character is unconcious.
Mind you this isn't official, but it works well for me and my group.
They're completely separate. When your nonlethal exactly equals your current hp (not max), you are staggered. What's more likely is that it exceeds your current hp, at which point you are unconscious. Because nonlethal is not real damage, you could theoretically take an unlimited amount without ever suffering real harm or being killed.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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You track hit point loss by subtracting lethal damage from your hp total.
You track non-lethal damage by adding it to zero.
So, if you had 50 hit points and took 25 damage from a fireball, you'd be at 25 hit points.
If you then got hit for 10 points of non-lethal, you'd be at 25 hit points with 10 points of non-lethal damage.
Once non-lethal damage > hit points, you go unconcious.
Hope that helps.
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Rules Compendium[/b], Page 72, Effects of Nonlethal Damage]When a creature's nonlethal damage equals its current hit points, that creature is staggered. A creature falls unconscious when its nonlethal damage exceeds that creatures current hit points. It doesn't matter whether the nonlethal damage equals or exceeds a creature's current hit points because the nonlethal damage has gone up or because that creature's current hit points have gone down.
Simply put, if Character A is attacking Character B, and knocks B out. Any nonlethal damage over what it takes to knock B out is still nonlethal.
As an aside, those wooden swords, while blunt and not made of metal, would likely be considered clubs by the rules of the game, and actually deal lethal damage. They can technically use their regular weapons and deal nonlethal damage, as long as they take a -4 penalty to attack when doing so. Although I see no reason why you can't house rule it so that waster swords like that don't deal nonlethal damage.
Alternatively, they could all get Merciful weapons. Merciful weapons deal nonlethal damage, cost the same as a +1 enhancement, and deal an extra 1d6 nonlethal damage(that's in addition to however much damage it normally deals nonlethally). These weapons can also have this function suppressed on command, acting as a normal weapon with no additional damage. The DMG doesn't say the type of action, but I'd suggest making it a Swift action.
I'm here off an on if you need any more clarification.