If you take the -4 penalty to deal nonlethal damage with a lethal weapon, does the attack type change? Does a longsword become slashing rather than bludgeoning?
Can you bypass DR in this manner? While it seems a little unfair to do so, I can totally see a PC striking a skeleton with the haft of an axe or the pommel of a longsword in desperation.
Is non-lethal damage always bludgeoning? I have a hard time picturing a non-lethal slash, pierce, burn, etc. Cold damage I can see. And sonic. Hmmmmmm.
What's the good word?
|
Eh, I don't see any reason to change it's damage type when your doing nonlethal. It's too nit-picky and doesn't really do anything to enhance the fun of the game.
You couldn't break a skeleton's DR like that of course, since they're undead and immune to nonlethal damage.
Now I think more what you'd be looking at is the players using parts of their weapons differently to break DR as improvised weapons. Give them the -4 to hit and treat the damage as that of a club or gauntlet attack if they want to do bludgeoning damage by smacking someone with the hilt of a sword. Roughly the same penalty but a bit more inline with the rules and the attack should probably deal damage for most weapons.
I guess I think of 'non-lethal' as more like Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon shooting the guy in the leg.. of course then the guy had to fall into the pool and drown, but that's another story.
I would disagree.
Lethal damage means you're clawing/slashing/shredding/pulverizing your opponent's body, actually doing real damage to his flesh and other stuff. In small amounts, it usually doesn't kill, which is represented by not doing enough damage to reduce the target's HP to negative numbers. In larger amounts, it can kill, if you do reduce the HP to negative numbers.
If Sgt. Murtaugh had shot that guy in the leg over and over and over, the damage, shock, bloodloss, and general loss of tissue would eventually have reduced that guy's HP to negative numbers and killed him, pool or no pool. Ergo, that was lethal damage.
My take on Pathfinder is that Non-Lethal damage is pretty much its own damage type. I don't believe that this is stated anywhere in the rules. However, we track it differently, put it in a separate spot on our character sheet, heal it differently, die from it differently (as in, we don't die from it), etc. It's all different.
You can take non-lethal damage from heat (not fire) or exhaustion, both of which leave your body relatively intact (except at a molecular level). You can take non-lethal damage from whips and fists, which can cause cuts and bruises, but they're generally just superficial flesh wounds with little likelihood of internal damage. You can take non-lethal damage from swords and axes, although these attacks require the weapon's wielders to make their attacks in unusual fashion (such as with the flat side of the blades). You can even take non-lethal damage from arrows or crossbow bolts, though my sense of reality gets fuzzy here - maybe the archers snap the pointy tips off the arrows/bolts before firing.
If you watched "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" on Starz, there are quite a few scenes in there where the gladiators put on exhibitions with real edged swords, deliberately cutting to draw blood, but at the same time, cutting very shallow, on the sides of arms and legs or bellies. The point being to impress the spectators with blood, but leave the other guy alive and healthy enough to keep training without laying him up in the infirmary for days. This could be considered "edged" non-lethal damage - making the same kind of superficial cuts that a whip would make.
So the damage type doesn't have to change. Swords can still deal slashing non-lethal damage.
Or, we can just think of Non-Lethal as being its own type of damage. With this in mind, if your monster has damage reduction like 5/blunt, and you are doing blunt damage, then you ignore the DR, but if you are doing slashing, piercing, or Non-Lethal, you don't defeat the DR.
It works quite well as its own damage type, though I'm not sure that is the RAW or RAI (but I'm also not sure that it isn't).
My take on Pathfinder is that Non-Lethal damage is pretty much its own damage type. I don't believe that this is stated anywhere in the rules. However, we track it differently, put it in a separate spot on our character sheet, heal it differently, die from it differently (as in, we don't die from it), etc. It's all different.
Yeah thats close to how we treat it.
Although I'd note that there are several weapons that deal only non-lethal damage but still have a damage type. The whip deals slashing damage, but its all non-lethal. Unarmed strike, bola, and sap deal bludgeoning and are all non-lethal as well (barring Improved Unarmed Strike or some other modification).
But for lethal weapons being used to deal non-lethal damage, the question is how does DR vs specific damage types interact with this?
Say a fighter has armor that provides DR 5/bludgeoning. (There were items like this in the 3.5 Magic Item Compendium.) Can the greatsword wielding ranger use the greatsword to deal nonlethal damage and change the damage type to bludgeoning? It would be nonlethal damage still, but would it get through the fighters DR, allowing the ranger to drop the fighter faster?
I'd think its clear that using a normally nonlethal weapon to deal lethal damage would not change the damage type. Using a sap to deal lethal damage would still be bludgeoning damage. Should this be different in reverse? I can understand the image of using a greatsword more as a club to strike without threat of death; conceptually that makes sense. But it does strike me as odd in a way. Does the weapon still threaten a critical on 19-20? If its keen (or the wielder has Improved Critical with the weapon) does it still benefit from that? That also strikes me as odd.
Probably the easiest thing to do is when using a lethal weapon to deal non-lethal damage to treat it exactly the same as if it were lethal, with the exception of taking a -4 and dealing nonlethal damage. Thus the greatsword weilding ranger would still be doing slashing damage, and would threaten a critical on a 19-20, but all the damage would be nonlethal. Conceptually think of it as using the blade to deal incapacitating but not deadly wounds: light slashes to the arms, legs, and chest. The -4 represents being careful with the attack.
|
|
Some things I just want to point out about nonlethal damage. You are supposed to track it separately from the actual damage you take. When your nonlethal damage is equal to your current hit point total, your staggered, when it's greater then your current hit point total your unconscious.
Now the Pathfinder RPG added in this next part. When your amount of nonlethal damage is greater then your maximum hit point total any additional damage turns into lethal damage. Just like Shadowrun, it starts to roll over into physical damage.
Historically in game mechanic terms hit points tend to represent more then just your blood. Vitality, luck, divine favor, etc should all roll into the mix too, so you could easily see dealing nonlethal damage as wearing down your opponent.
Also house rules to deal with DR/5 anything are pathetic. Swing harder! ;)
If you want to deal bludgeoning damage instead of slashing with your longsword, you're no longer using it as a longsword.
Welcome to improvised weapons. Non-proficiency penalty of -4 attack.
It's also no longer being used as a longsword (or whatever weapon), and should probably do damage as a club (maybe a mace). Greatsword would probably do greatclub damage (at best? Clubs are actually far more aerodynamic than the flat side of a sword). I'd keep the enhancement bonus though.
Interesting discussion chaps.
Until I hear otherwise, I think the RAW is: Nonlethal is a damage type that overlaps with the weapon's type. That is, if you encounter a creature with DR/slashing that is not immune to nonlethal damage, it will get through the DR if you wield it as a nonlethal weapon at a -4 penalty.
There are all sorts of silly things about this, but I'm not seeing anything indicating otherwise.
Personally, I'm going to continue to let my players use pommels and hafts and flats of blades as weapons of a different damage type. This is something we often ad lib, because it works vastly better with some weapons than others.
|
Interesting discussion chaps.
Until I hear otherwise, I think the RAW is: Nonlethal is a damage type that overlaps with the weapon's type. That is, if you encounter a creature with DR/slashing that is not immune to nonlethal damage, it will get through the DR if you wield it as a nonlethal weapon at a -4 penalty.
There are all sorts of silly things about this, but I'm not seeing anything indicating otherwise.
Personally, I'm going to continue to let my players use pommels and hafts and flats of blades as weapons of a different damage type. This is something we often ad lib, because it works vastly better with some weapons than others.
Of course you can get through DR by using your weapon as a different type, you're just going about it the wrong way when suggesting nonlethal damage.
Just tell them to take that same -4 penalty, but for using an improvised weapon (haft of their sword or whatever) instead of nonlethal damage. You can change the type then, and best of all, it's already in the rules.
-4 for nonlethal (but keep the same type), -4 for improvised weapon (change type, lethal damage) or -8 for both.
Seems simple enough to me. :)
Just tell them to take that same -4 penalty, but for using an improvised weapon (haft of their sword or whatever) instead of nonlethal damage. You can change the type then, and best of all, it's already in the rules.
Surely I do this, but there are some situations (spear functioning as quarterstaff, for example) where I am more generous. But that's best left to GM judgment and not codified.