I'm running Rise of the Runelords and I want Lyrie's cat Skivver to attack a PC Sorcerer's thrush if the opportunity presents itself.
Problem is, the cat can't damage anything (claw damage 1d2-4, bite damage 1d3-4). But cats kill birds all the time right?
Any suggestions on how to adjudicate this? Thanks!
Minimum damage is still 1, so depending on level you might be able to kill it still. Could have its owner cast some buffs on it, like Greater Magic Fang. Or give it an Agile Amulet of Mighty Fists collar.
Minimum damage is still 1, so depending on level you might be able to kill it still. Could have its owner cast some buffs on it, like Greater Magic Fang. Or give it an Agile Amulet of Mighty Fists collar.
Not quite.
Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of nonlethal damage.
My mistake.
Crits (and Coup de Grace) are defined as so PENALTIES shouldn't apply twice, meaning 1d3-4 = 2d3-4 on a Crit which can deal more than 1 lethal damage.
Unless you're just doing this for comedy, you probably want to use something like a touch attack spell or Enlarge Person/Bull's STR or other buff spells cast on the Familiar to make it worthwhile to interrupt combat to resolve the Familiar's turns.
Looking at the rules for nonlethal damage, there are two bits of info that seem relevant here. First, the part that is fairly easy for us to agree upon:
If a creature's nonlethal damage is equal to his total maximum hit points (not his current hit points), all further nonlethal damage is treated as lethal damage
So that is a way for the cat to accomplish the job, although it would take a while since the familiar has half the PC's hp. That means that it would basically need to deal the PC's worth of hp (1/2 nonlethal, then 1/2 lethal) to get the familiar into range of dying. Slightly easier since the second half would be made entirely of coup de graces, and the familiar might eventually just roll terribly on one of those saving rolls and die (it will fail that DC 12 eventually)
The other bit of information, which is more open for interpretation, is this:
Lethal Damage with a Weapon that Deals Nonlethal Damage
You can use a weapon that deals nonlethal damage, including an unarmed strike, to deal lethal damage instead, but you take a –4 penalty on your attack roll.
So you could interpret that as saying that the cat could deal lethal damage if it took -4 to its attack rolls. But that would only switch it from one nonlethal to one lethal though, and the miss chance means it would take even longer to get the right amount of damage in.
Good catch, and on Coup de Graces the to-hit doesn't matter so you might just want to do that.
Plenty of 'buffed' scenarios could also have the normal damage doing non-lethal but some 'rider' damage being lethal (flaming, etc).
Interesting reading, Quandary; I've never played it that way but a closer parsing of the rules does indeed yield that result. I'll have to tell all the 8- and 9-Strength members of my PC groups about that one.
Yeah, it's kind of weird, but it makes sense in that a Crit shouldn't be able to make you do LESS damage than a regular hit, and even if the negative damage mod < weapon dice it still isn't irrational for the negative damage mod to not be applied.
Also note that you don't really have to total all mods together before multiplying... So if you have some negative mods and some positive mods that total to a smaller positive amount, you should be able to multiply all the positive mods but not multiply the negative ones. To note though, the 'multiplying damage' section just references multiplying 'modifiers' not 'bonuses', but since it's coherent and makes sense and the Crit section specifically says 'bonuses' I will go with that.