Non-lethal Damage Spillover

[Kazaan]

Non-lethal damage that exceeds the target's total HP is converted into lethal damage. In the case of a very low HP target, this lethal damage can be enough to outright kill on a good roll with the right weapons. Is there any way to "pull your punch" and deal less than the total damage you roll for? Because sometimes, you just want to knock the target out without killing them outright but if you happen to have 1d6 base damage with +5 str bonus and you roll a natural 6 vs a target with 4 HP... you just caved his head in with a finger flick.

[maouse]

Only if they have a 2 CON....

[Kazaan]

maouse wrote:

Only if they have a 2 CON....

Yeah... we were storming a guy's lair where he was taking orphans and training them as pickpockets and thieves and such. He sicked them on us but we didn't want to go all-out vs a bunch of little kids so, as a Monk, I declared non-lethal, flicked the kid in the forehead... I rolled 6 and he died outright. Then the cleric in our party put away his weapon and used his Holy Symbol of Desna for reduced damage, again declaring non-lethal... and brained the kid for another 1-hit kill.

Our GM didn't know of any particular rule for reducing damage. So is there a way to, say, eliminate strength bonus from the equation? Or, even better, to say that what you roll is the max damage you can deal but you can do less if you want?

[Fromper]

Your GM messed up. There's no way 6 points of nonlethal damage should kill any human with high enough constitution to be able to stand up and walk. It would only kill them if their HP and con score COMBINED were below 6.

[Puma D. Murmelman]

My character throws punches for 1d6+12. We dropped that rule.

[Kazaan]

Fromper wrote:

Your GM messed up. There's no way 6 points of nonlethal damage should kill any human with high enough constitution to be able to stand up and walk. It would only kill them if their HP and con score COMBINED were below 6.

What I meant was I rolled 6 on the dice. My damage is 1d6 and I have +5 Str modifier so the total was 11 damage. I'll double-check with him to see what their exact CON and HP was, but should we just make some kind of house-rule on the matter? If there's nothing official on the books, I was thinking at least something like the choice to not add damage bonus onto the dice roll or something of the sort.

[Harark]

I think your DM was miss-reading the rule. When you do nonlethal damage equal to the target's health they go unconcious. Any nonlethal damage after that becomes lethal damage. Meaning that you still have to deal their full hp of lethal damage.

Characters don't actually die when their hp drops to 0. They don't actually die until they reach their negative CON score.

(So assuming this is the "Edge of Anarchy" adventure, which was what the adventure sounds like...)

Those kids would have 3hp. You did 11 nonlethal damage. 3 - 11 = -8
So you did 8 points of lethal damage to the kid. Which drops him to a -5, if I got my math right. He's alive but you probablly broke his jaw.

Now I would assume the kids had more hp, cause 3hp is kinda ridculous. Say 6hp. 6 - 11 = -5
So then the lethal damage is only 5 points, meaning he still has 1hp left. He's unconcious but not seriously hurt.

Remember there are other ways to deal with the kids, such as grapples, trip, some dirty tricks possibly, etc. Of course you can always try diplomacy, they are kids after all.

Hope that helps.

[Kazaan]

@Harark

My GM has said that there is no "dying" for NPCs (which I now understand is more of a house-rule than an official rule). So I'll double-check the HP (but I think he did mention afterwards that they only had 3HP). I tried, but failed, an intimidate check against them and was already at less than half life due to a couple of acid bombs and one of the buggers shanking me in the kidney so I didn't really want to chance an AoO from a maneuver.

But yeah, this GM does tend to mis-read rules quite a bit...

[AvalonXQ]

Talk to the GM about his house rule. Having NPCs just die at 0 hp is fine, but it does make it almost impossible to subdue a low-level target with nonlethal damage. So ask if, for NPCs, he will modify the rule so only the next hit is nonlethal (that is, a single hit will just knock them straight to nonlethal = max hp, and any further hits on the unconscious character will be lethal).

[Happler]

Harark wrote:

I think your DM was miss-reading the rule. When you do nonlethal damage equal to the target's health they go unconcious. Any nonlethal damage after that becomes lethal damage. Meaning that you still have to deal their full hp of lethal damage.

Characters don't actually die when their hp drops to 0. They don't actually die until they reach their negative CON score.

(So assuming this is the "Edge of Anarchy" adventure, which was what the adventure sounds like...)

Those kids would have 3hp. You did 11 nonlethal damage. 3 - 11 = -8
So you did 8 points of lethal damage to the kid. Which drops him to a -5, if I got my math right. He's alive but you probablly broke his jaw.

Now I would assume the kids had more hp, cause 3hp is kinda ridculous. Say 6hp. 6 - 11 = -5
So then the lethal damage is only 5 points, meaning he still has 1hp left. He's unconcious but not seriously hurt.

Remember there are other ways to deal with the kids, such as grapples, trip, some dirty tricks possibly, etc. Of course you can always try diplomacy, they are kids after all.

Hope that helps.

Just playing around, I built an NPC using the Basic "skilled" NPC ability scores, and applied the "Young" template. It is possible to end up with a con of 7 and a HP (for a d6 NPC class like commoner) of 4, so the 3 does not surprise me that much. That should still not kill them though (I think that they end up at a -3, so "bleeding out", but not dead).

[Michael Sayre]

Kazaan wrote:

@Harark

My GM has said that there is no "dying" for NPCs (which I now understand is more of a house-rule than an official rule). So I'll double-check the HP (but I think he did mention afterwards that they only had 3HP). I tried, but failed, an intimidate check against them and was already at less than half life due to a couple of acid bombs and one of the buggers shanking me in the kidney so I didn't really want to chance an AoO from a maneuver.

But yeah, this GM does tend to mis-read rules quite a bit...

I can understand the no negative hp rule for NPC's as a houserule to make life easier for your GM, but he needs to take into account how that will affect the party in a situation like the one you described, or it will be MUCH more difficult than intended to navigate the situation without murdering the orphans.