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working it out now for my character, sap adept, sap master, the sarenrae trait that lets you deal nonlethal damage with a slashing weapon without a -4 penalty. being a bit of a zealot and a pacifist (not wanting to draw blood ) but i got to thinking, a number of classes have DR N/- nonlethal, and how my attacks will work when i run into them. ( partly a PFS question, but asking here because its a general rules question too )
when part of an attack is nonlethal, all of that attack is considered nonlethal damage ( i.e. if you attack with a +1 flaming sap, you're dealing 1d6 nonlethal fire damage in addition to the sap damage ).
how does that interact with the DR/ nonlethal? typically energy damage is explicitly stated as always overcoming DR, but when the energy damage is considered nonlethal damage as a property of the nonlethal attack with the weapon...
I think that energy damage should remain lethal. By the way, DR functions against physical damage, not energy damage.
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i thought i'd read somewhere in a faq or forum, that when you sneak attack with a flaming sap, all of the damage is considered nonlethal , including the flaming portion.
usually yeah, +1d6 fire damage, that goes through DR even if the rest of your attack is absorbed (barring fire resist/immune). I just wondered how that worked with nonlethal fire damage.
I'll try and dig up where i heard about nonlethal attacks
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closest i could find was a +1 merciful flaming sap.
merciful makes all of the damage nonlethal. so how does the flaming nonlethal damage interact with DR / nonlethal or resist fire ?
same conundrum comes up with a merciful fireball. if a creature in the AoE has DR/nonlethal, does it just ignore it all ? or do they need resist fire to ignore the nonlethal fire damage?
closest i could find was a +1 merciful flaming sap.
merciful makes all of the damage nonlethal. so how does the flaming nonlethal damage interact with DR / nonlethal or resist fire ?same conundrum comes up with a merciful fireball. if a creature in the AoE has DR/nonlethal, does it just ignore it all ? or do they need resist fire to ignore the nonlethal fire damage?
Choosing to deal non-lethal damage does not make the fire nonlethal. You could turn the fire off. (Plus how are you sneaking up on someone with a flaming stick?)
The merciful one would make it nonlethal. The 'nonlethal fire' is still energy, so subject to energy resistance, not DR. Do the same math as if it were lethal, just the actual damage dealt is nonlethal.
DR applies to the weapon damage.
Resist applies to flaming/fireball.
DR doesn't make you immune to non lethal damage (nothing in the rulebook about it) so you don't have to worry about that.
What's DR/nonlethal? Doesn't that mean something has DR against all physical damage except nonlethal?
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What's DR/nonlethal? Doesn't that mean something has DR against all physical damage except nonlethal?
they write it as DR N/- vs. nonlethal attacks.
like the Invulnerable Rager barbarian archtype:
At 2nd level, the invulnerable rager gains DR/— equal to half her barbarian level. This damage reduction is doubled against nonlethal damage.
ok, so just do the regular calculation and apply it as nonlethal.
so +1 flaming merciful longsword deals 1d8+1 +1d6 nonlethal , +1d6 nonlethal fire. if the target has DR 6/- nonlethal, they'd ignore 6 points of the nonlethal from the sword and merciful ability, but the 1d6 nonlethal fire will still apply.if the same barbarian were hit with a merciful fireball, they would take all the damage because its nonlethal fire damage, and still energy, so it bypasses DR.
but if an alchemist with the 10th level discovery Mummification or any standard undead, gets hit by a nonlethal fireball or a merciful weapon he wouldn't take any damage because he's just flat out immune to that damage type. ok i think i have my head on right today.
DR that function only against non lethal damage exists, but this is not the point. DR work against physical damage.
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thaat wasn't the question, but thanks =D.
the question was only merciful + energy damage vs. DR nonlethal.there's other instances of DR specific for nonlethal out there. Invulnerable Rager was just the easiest to reference.
The way you had phrased your post made it sound like you thought that you needed some kind of special DR to resist nonlethal.
The above posters covered the rest pretty well, but to rephrase:
Nonlethal is basically a modifier to another damage type. If you resist the damage type it is modifying, you resist the nonlethal form just as easily. If you're vulnerable, you're just as vulnerable to the nonlethal form.
DR applies against nonlethal from physical sources (merciful is extra weapon damage, so it takes the weapon's damage type). Energy resistance applies against nonlethal from energy sources (such as a flaming merciful weapon's fire damage). In other words, becoming nonlethal does not affect your ability to resist it.