Vital Strike and Bleed damage non lethal question

[Jeff Clem]

Can vital strike and bleed damage non lethal following the rules?

[Imbicatus]

Vital Strike can absolutely be non-lethal.

Bleed is a little more tricky. The Hamatulatsu Master Monk specifically can do non-lethal bleed damage, but no other source for bleed calls it out as being non-lethal.

Even non-lethal bleed can be deadly if not cured, because once your nonlethal damage total is greater than your total hitpoints, additional nonlethal is treated as lethal.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

A merciful wounding weapon will inflict non-lethal bleed too.

[Jeff Clem]

Ya maybe a weapon with the merciful weapon ability might do the trick.

Merciful

Price +1 bonus
Aura faint conjuration; CL 5th; Weight —
DESCRIPTION
A merciful weapon deals an extra 1d6 points of damage, but all damage it deals is nonlethal damage. On command, the weapon suppresses this ability until told to resume it (allowing it to deal lethal damage, but without any bonus damage from this ability).

Any thoughts?
Good direction FW

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Jeff Clem wrote:

Any thoughts?

Could you go into more detail about what you're looking to achieve?

[Jeff Clem]

I'm just trying to make an huge nonlethal damage dealer but can fall back on dealing regular damage if the need arise.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Yeah, merciful is great for that. You can even stick flaming (etc) on it and the fire damage will still be nonlethal.

If you're also a spellcaster there's the similar Merciful Spell metamagic feat, which doesn't raise the spell level at all.