Ok, just checked my rulebook (second printing 2009) and from what I can tell knocking people out with nonlethal damage ignores the Diehard feat, Orc Ferocity racial trait, and presumably a couple of other abilities.
What am I missing?
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That there are a lot of creatures immune to nonlethal damage, that most nonlethal weapons have poor damage stats, that to use a non nonlethal weapon without a -4 penalty you need to burn a feat/trait, and that after all of that you only gain the ability to bypass certain things like Die Hard, Orc Ferocity, and a couple of other weakish abilities that are only useful in a pinch.
Of course, if you can do nonlethal with no penalties, and know that your enemy is not immune or resistant to nonlethal damage, it becomes pretty sweet as unless you kill it with nonlethal damage you won't run into problems with killing people[which is an issue in some parts of the world].
You're also missing that a dead opponent is usually gone forever as a threat. An unconscious one is an ongoing problem. What do you do with them? How do you keep them contained/imprisoned? Can you interrogate them? Send them to the local authorities? Dead men tell no tales...until you cast speak with dead, but tend to cause fewer headaches.
You're also missing that a dead opponent is usually gone forever as a threat. An unconscious one is an ongoing problem. What do you do with them? How do you keep them contained/imprisoned? Can you interrogate them? Send them to the local authorities? Dead men tell no tales...until you cast speak with dead, but tend to cause fewer headaches.
Slit their throats afterwards, when they're defenseless. I was more looking at nonlethal as a way to ignore defenses and abilities that kick in at 0 hp or below.
Another problem is healing. When healed, an equal amount of non-lethal damage is healed as lethal. Make sure all of your party is doing non-lethal. Otherwise it heals really fast!
I made a bounty hunter character back in 3.0 that used trip feats and a merciful vicious greatsword. Since the majority of my opponents were escaped humanoid convicts, it worked quite well. Outside of that niche, too many things scoff at nonlethal.
I had just seen Nanoha, so I made a character that could "befriend" people. :P