If two PCs are attacking a monster. The first pc does 14 damage non lethal. The monster's total hp is 16. The second pc attacks and does 4 lethal damage.
Nonlethal damage states if the nonlethal damage is greater than the targets current hp the target falls unconscious.
So 14 non lethal damage, after the lethal damage the creatures hp is at 12.
So am i correct in saying this monster falls unconscious but is not bleeding out because his wounds are not about his max hp?
You are correct, yes.
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Yes, but I see people mess this up a lot, so expect to see variation anyway.
One instance that incensed our table was a GM that ruled that if the last damage dealt to an NPC was lethal, and that brought it down, then it would die. It didn't matter to her if we'd been taking our nonlethal penalties to slug of 90% of its hit points if our spellcaster took it off its last legs with a magic missile.
Thinking over things, I think some of my GMs had a strong desire for the players not to capture enemies alive and had an agenda for ruling that they die.
Which is almost the opposite of my style -- I like having players take captives, since it's often a great way to feed them backstory they may have missed otherwise. Although I do remember a game where I had to start running my bandits as unrepentant cartoon villains, because every fight ended with a very long dialogue about seeking redemption and it was starting to slow the game down (hahah!).
They were interested in 'saving' people so I kept feeding them the occasional wayward sellsword, but I learned to space it out more ; )
Cool, thanks guys.
Just a note: If the non-lethal damage exceeds the targets maximum hitpoints (not current hitpoints) the excess is lethal damage.
Example: Target has a maximum of 20hp. It has suffered 24 nonlethal damage. 20 of that is nonlethal and 4 becomes lethal. Due to this you can critical with nonlethal damage and kill a creature.
- Gauss
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The non-lethal vs. lethal confuses me every time it comes up, and I know it shouldn't, since in college I got A's in both Statistics and Calculus.
It's not the math, it's just the concept, I suppose.
I recently ran a scenario where the party had to capture and bring back a huge, high-hp monster to resupply the local arena. Naturally, they chose non-lethal as their mode of subdual, but the problem was that the volcanic environment they had to transport it through was so hostile that the creature suffered lethal damage each hour.
So one member readied an action to smack the critter with non-lethal after the healer would attempt to cure the lethal, but the problem was they kept dancing around the 0hp mark, since cure spells heal both lethal and an equal amount of non-lethal. Luckily it had a high Constitution.
I'd never seen anyone cast Stabilize so much during a game.
I consider myself a competent GM, but I guarantee next time this comes up I'll be staring at the ceiling again. Which is frustrating to me, since others seem to understand it much better than I.
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Say a creature has 80 total hit points, and a con of 20. Just some easy numbers.
Hit it for 85 hit points of damage, and it is unconcious and bleeding out, but it can be stabilized.
Hit the creature for 105 hit points of damage, and it is dead.
Hit the creature for 85 non-lethal damage, and it is unconcious, having taken 80 non-lethal and 5 hit points of damage.
Those are the simple cases.
Hit the creature for 70 hit points and it is up and scary. Then, hit it for 20 non-lethal damage, and it is unconcious, but not bleeding, having taken 20 non-lethal and 70 hit points of damage.
Hit the creature for 70 non-lethal damage, and it is up and scary. Then hit it for 70 hit points, and it is unconcious, but not bleeding, having taken 70 non-lethal and 70 hit points of damage. Because the 70 non-lethal do not meet or exceed its total hit points, none of them 'wrap around' into hit points. Hit it once more, for 40 non-lethal and it dies. It dies because at that point it has taken 110 non-lethal damage, and 30 of that is more than its total hit points, so they become hit point damage. Thus the creature has taken 80 non-lethal, and 100 hit points of damage. The creature has 80 total hit points and a CON of 20, so 100 hit points of damage kills it.
Until the total amount of non-lethal damage exceeds the creature's total hit points, all the non-lethal damage does is make the creature go unconcious when the sum of the hit point damage and non-lethal damage exceeds the total hit points. Only when non-lethal damage exceeds the creature's total hit points does it 'wrap around' into hit point damage, and count towards killing the creature.
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If the above creature has taken 79 non-lethal damage, it will still take 100 hit points of damage to kill it. It can still take a lot. But one more hit point of damage or non-lethal damage will stagger it, and more than one will knock it out. It is just as hard to kill the creature as it was without the non-lethal damage, as it still requires 100 hit points of damage.
I think the problem I have is, from your example, if said creature took 70 points of non-lethal, and then another 30 points of non-lethal, it would die, but if the 30 points had been lethal instead, it would live, and just be unconscious. Conceptually that doesn't make sense to me.
OK...I was following DesolateHarmony, but this just confused me. =p
Which example are you talking about, as I can't see any where this is the case...
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I was just using his 80hp creature (with a Con of 20) as an example. My question is separate from anything he said, and is the crux of why non-lethal confuses me.
It would make more sense to me if the rules stated that a creature could take TWICE its Max HP in non-lethal damage (plus Con score) before it died.
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I think the problem I have is, from your example, if said creature took 70 points of non-lethal, and then another 30 points of non-lethal, it would die, but if the 30 points had been lethal instead, it would live, and just be unconscious. Conceptually that doesn't make sense to me.
Sorry, Nefreet, but that isn't correct. If the creature took 70 non-lethal damage, and then took thirty more non-lethal, he would be at 80 non-lethal and 20 hit points of damage, unconcious, and stable, and able to sustain about 80 more hit points
(Checking my earlier post for correctness now.)
Edit: In my earlier example, with 70 non-lethal damage, and 70 hit points of damage, the creature is still up and functioning. If it took a further 30 hit points of damage, it would die, at 100 hit points of damage getting to the negative CON mark. If it took 30 non-lethal damage, however, it would only be unconcious and bleeding out. That would be 80 non-lethal damage and 90 hit points of damage total. -10 hit points, but not all the way to minus CON.
I think the problem I have is, from your example, if said creature took 70 points of non-lethal, and then another 30 points of non-lethal, it would die, but if the 30 points had been lethal instead, it would live, and just be unconscious. Conceptually that doesn't make sense to me.Sorry, Nefreet, but that isn't correct. If the creature took 70 non-lethal damage, and then took thirty more non-lethal, he would be at 80 non-lethal and 20 hit points of damage, unconcious, and stable.
(Checking my earlier post for correctness now.)
OK, yeah, then it's this.
I keep 2 separate tallies for creatures being hit like this.
Non-lethal can't go any higher than the creature's hit points. Anything over that goes to the lethal total.
Once the lethal total hits HP+CON, the creature dies.
If lethal + non-lethal > HP, then the creature is unconscious.
So, assuming M = maximum hitpoints, D = death from non-lethal damage, and C = constitution score, then the following formula would be correct?
D = 2M + C
If everything done is non-lethal, then yes.
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Non-lethal damage by itself cannot cause death. Only when it 'overflows' or 'wraps around' into hit points can it do so.
So, Nefreet, your concept of 2M + C in non-lethal damage causing death is fundamentally correct, but the intervening step converts, as Sniggevert said. Keep the two tallies and things make much more sense.
I always keep two tallies, and I think that is what's been confusing me.
I'll try just keeping one and see if that helps.
That really will only work if everyone is only doing non-lethal...
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It's been my observation that parties use either all non-lethal or all lethal when it comes to combat. If they're trying to subdue someone, it's all non-lethal, and if they're not, it's all lethal.
The only time this mix of lethal/non-lethal ever came up was in the scenario I mentioned earlier, which just became a hilarious game of "one round he's up, the next round he's not".
The non-lethal vs. lethal confuses me every time it comes up, and I know it shouldn't, since in college I got A's in both Statistics and Calculus.
It's not the math, it's just the concept, I suppose.
I recently ran a scenario where the party had to capture and bring back a huge, high-hp monster to resupply the local arena. Naturally, they chose non-lethal as their mode of subdual, but the problem was that the volcanic environment they had to transport it through was so hostile that the creature suffered lethal damage each hour.
So one member readied an action to smack the critter with non-lethal after the healer would attempt to cure the lethal, but the problem was they kept dancing around the 0hp mark, since cure spells heal both lethal and an equal amount of non-lethal. Luckily it had a high Constitution.
I'd never seen anyone cast Stabilize so much during a game.
I consider myself a competent GM, but I guarantee next time this comes up I'll be staring at the ceiling again. Which is frustrating to me, since others seem to understand it much better than I.
What, the players didn't bring any drugs or tranqs for this sucker?
I'd think it'd be easiest if non-lethal damage was, y'know, non-lethal. You can't kill anybody with it ... because it's non-lethal.
Non-lethal is damage from untrained punches and the like. However, even such minor damage can add up if enough is done. It just takes a great deal more to kill.
That's when you're doing this:
Dealing Lethal Damage: You can specify that your unarmed strike will deal lethal damage before you make your attack roll, but you take a –4 penalty on your attack roll.|
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Here's an example from a scenario I ran in PFS. NPC we approach is at -9 hp and stable with a con of 12. So 3 away from death but stable. My PC wakes him with smelling salts and he is belligerent and generally not helpful. I take the butt of my weapon to do non lethal damage to knock him out. My GM asks me to roll dmg...I roll a 6 and he tells me the NPC is dead. I would technically have to do his total HP +3 worth of damage to kill him. I think the GM misunderstood the rules but whatever. My PC killed a guy on accident so he didn't go all A-hole on me and make me get atonement. Is my thought correct and if he had say 12 HP max that I would have needed to do 15 NL damage to kill him and not 3.
