Willingly reduce damage

[Sorrol]

Dear reader,

Let's say someone on average deals 30 damage on an attack.

Then you're pitted versus enemies with 10 hp and 10 con.
You don't want to kill them, but just knock them unconscious.

Now if you were to chose to deal nonlethal damage, and you were to do 30 damage they'd outright die (10 nonlethal damage and they go unconscious, all extra damage is counted as lethal, resulting in -10 hp thus their death)

Is there any way you could potentially reduce your own damage (before or after rolling the damage roll)

Cheers,
Sorrol

[Murdock Mudeater]

Sorrol wrote:

Dear reader,

Let's say someone on average deals 30 damage on an attack.

Then you're pitted versus enemies with 10 hp and 10 con.
You don't want to kill them, but just knock them unconscious.

Now if you were to chose to deal nonlethal damage, and you were to do 30 damage they'd outright die (10 nonlethal damage and they go unconscious, all extra damage is counted as lethal, resulting in -10 hp thus their death)

Is there any way you could potentially reduce your own damage (before or after rolling the damage roll)

Cheers,
Sorrol

With magic, yes, easily. You can choose to cast lesser versions of your spells. You do have to plan on this before rolling damage, of course. So even with a lesser spell, if you critical, you could still screw this up.

There are some feats if you want to do this without magic. Best one I've seen is "Golden Legion's Stayed Blade" which allows you to reduce an attack's damage you dealt to a creature that put them to less than -1, to instead reduce them to -1 and leaves them stable. Requires BAB +3, but no other requirements. Despite the name, no mention about this one only working with melee weapons. This feat is from Champions of Purity, page 23.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Rules as written? Not really. There is a feat here.

However a totally reasonable house rule would be that most of your feats and powers apply optionally. Have weapon specialization? No need to use it (-2 damage). Have a strength of 26? No need to use all of it (-1 to -13 damage).

I'd force people to use the base dice of their weapon and any enhancement bonus it provides, but that's about it. You don't have to use all your strength when you do things or strength 20 characters couldn't pick up mugs without shattering them.

[Johnnycat93]

It's something simple enough that I'd probably just allow it based on the situation. I think a question that I think goes along with this: are bonuses optional. That is: is a fighter with weapon training required to include their bonus from weapon training everytime they attack or could they intentionally "go easy" and forgo them?

[Sorrol]

Thank you very much for all the answers guys :)

[Murdock Mudeater]

Oh, sort of on topic. There's a nifty feat for Abadar worshippers, called "Measured Response." With the feat, instead of rolling damage, you always deal exactly average damage. It wouldn't let you deal less damage, but you would be more certain how much damage you would deal with a given attack. So, in example, a heavy crossbow would always deal 5 damage (normally a d10). I think critical hits still multiply, so it doesn't solve that variable.

[Azothath]

(transition into homebrew...?)
From a Rules thread point of view - no. You cannot voluntarily reduce strength damage BTB.

It's a reasonable house rule to allow critters to modify their Str bonus by 3 steps (up to -6 ability score) down in combat(affecting to hits and damage) as a swift action, or maybe a negative Push (lol)... There isn't any way to modify random rolls (such as damage dice) unless you pull out GM powers, and most GMs are reasonably hesitant to do that.
In non-combat Str is scalable downwards (see post about not breaking mugs).

The most effective way is to use Grapple or unarmed strikes. Both (can) do non-lethal at no to hit penalty.
Otherwise there's special ammo, weapons(should be padded/practice weapons besides sap), feats and magic.

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The reason not to allow fully scalable Str damage only adjustments is; to balance with the existing -4 rule for non-lethal damage, to not make 10 a magic number, only high strength scores would benefit from scalable positive damage modifiers. Why pay 1000GP for Adaptive on a bow when a rule would let you do it for free?