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Nonleathal damage is compared to your CURRENT hit points, so if you take 5points of nonleathal, and then enough regular damage is reduce your HP to 5, BAM you're staggered. One more point of nonleathal, bringing your total nonleathal to 6, or lethal, bringing your current HP to 4, and you fall unconscious.
Nonlethal damage stacks with lethal damage for the purpose of staggering you and knocking you unconscious. The first [your max HP] points of nonlethal damage don't count toward giving you the Dying condition or actually killing you.
Regular damage and non-lethal damage are not applied in the same way.
Regular damage is applied to your current hit points, reducing them. So if you have 15 hit points, and take 10 points of damage, you have 5 hit points remaining.
Non-lethal damage, however, starts at 0 and increases from there. If you have 15 hit points, and take 10 points of non-lethal damage, so still have 15 hit points. If at any time your non-lethal damage is greater then the number of hit points you have remaining, you fall unconscious.
So if you have 15 hit points, and take 10 non-lethal damage, nothing happens. But if you then take 10 points of lethal damage, your hit points are reduced to 5. As you now have more non-lethal damage then hit points (10 non-lethal vs 5 remaining hit points), you are now unconscious.
Generally speaking, anyone with the capacity to hit my armored, character class players is going to be carrying one. A 1st level Commoner with 0 BAB isn't going to be able to hit with those fists, try as he might.
Most NPCs that aren't children are going to carry a small knife for eating (forks and spoons are pretty modern inventions) and general uses.
I just use the stats for a small dagger with a reduced crit range (d3/x2). Lots of people will also have something akin to a club that they can use.
Farmers and stuff pretty much are always going to have something like a bill hook or glaive available.
Bar brawls generally will start out with fist or kicking action but pulling a knife or using an improvised weapon is pretty common.
Simply, am I right in assuming that:
nonlethal points < hp = no result
nonlethal = hp = staggered
nonlethal > hp = unconscious
Correct.
If lethal damage brings hp below nonlethal points, does that result in staggered, and 1 more point of nonlethal knocks them out?
If a character has more non-lethal damage then he has hit points remaining, he is unconscious. You can go straight from conscious to unconscious - you don't have to be staggered first.
A regular person, COULD take a -4 to attack and do LETHAL damage with his unarmed strike without having improved unarmed strike. It's basically like a haymaker, telegraphing your shot.
Usually see this kind of thing as the knock out punch, or kicking someone when they are down, or a haymaker when your buddy has the guy in a bear hug, which, why when people don't have weapons, breaking down to wrestling the assassin, and then taking the -4 to hi while your buddy holds him down is they way to go.
Assassin (9 hp) hits npc a with dagger, for 3 damage.
npc A (8 - 3 hp, =5) punches (uas) the assassin for 3 nonlethal
Just a side note, the assassin should have gotten an AoO here, and every round that NPC A attacked unarmed without Improved Unarmed Strike.
npc b (5hp) swings with a longsword, misses.
Assassin (9hp, 3 nonlethal "points") stabs at npc a, for 2 hp
npc A (5hp - 2) swings at assassin for 2 points of nonlethal.
npc b (5hp) attacks assassin with longsword and hits for 5 damage.So the assassin at 9hp takes 5 points of damage, putting him at 4hp. Since he has 5 nonlethal points, the longsword knocks him out? Or does he have to take another point of nonlethal to be out?
He's knocked out. The two kinds of damage are on separate "tracks." He took 5 nonlethal--that just gets recorded on the side. Then he takes 5 lethal, so that reduces his HP to 4. Now his nonlethal is higher than his HP, so he's unconscious.
Simply, am I right in assuming that:
nonlethal points < hp = no result
nonlethal = hp = staggered
nonlethal > hp = unconscious
Yep.
If lethal damage brings hp below nonlethal points, does that result in staggered, and 1 more point of nonlethal knocks them out?
No, they are just knocked straight out.
In the few games I have GMed, I have had most NPCs have a dagger, club, or an item nearby to use as an improvised weapon. Then again, I rarely have bar brawls or other occasions for NPC to fight off assailants. Most of my time is spent seeing what trouble the PCs are getting up to.
Sorry, but my gm skills are still weak. I know a grappled opponant would be flat footed, but would there be any other bonuses to hit? Could a pc (or npc) coux de gras a grappled opponant bare-handed? What about knock them out/choke them out? What about a pinned opponant?
Grappled does not give the flat footed condition - see core rule book p567. It gives a Dex penalty.
Pinned characters are flat footed - they can't do much to fight back, but you still can't coup de grace them instantly.
In a world where rats can grow as big as dogs and undead rise out of the gound - EVERYONE will be armed.
Most NPCs that aren't children are going to carry a small knife for eating (forks and spoons are pretty modern inventions) and general uses.
I just use the stats for a small dagger with a reduced crit range (d3/x2). Lots of people will also have something akin to a club that they can use.
Farmers and stuff pretty much are always going to have something like a bill hook or glaive available.
Bar brawls generally will start out with fist or kicking action but pulling a knife or using an improvised weapon is pretty common.
First time I ever heard of a Paleolithic invention being called "modern." Spoons are an incredibly old invention, even the current design predates the Christian era.
Forks are a bit newer, but go back to Roman or Greek origins. They didn't become popular in Northern Europe until relatively recently. There is even a mention of a fork (or at least a fork like object), three tined, in the Bible 1 Samuel 2:13.
"Are NPCs always armed?"
Simple answer - no, they are not.
Complex answer - whether or not an NPC is armed, at one time or another, is largely dependent on that persons role in whatever society they live in.