Now mooks and unimportant NPCs can be quickly cleared away without me having to track five to fifteen different resolve tracks every battle, while important NPCs have staying power. And if my Players are aiming to knock an opponent out, I don't have to say, "Whelp! He was an NPC, so that last bit of damage killed him. Oh well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
This is where I'm at as well - mooks, most creatures, and unimportant npcs will now die automatically at 0 hp unless my players have indicated that they want to take someone alive at some stage in the combat. And even then the onus is on them to be doing things within their power to not be killing their enemies with lethal damage - this way, even if a single point of lethal damage is going to send the creature or NPC's soul careening towards the Boneyards, I can adjudicate "well, since you did try not to kill him, you have three rounds to stop him from dying".
Where as an important NPC or villain will always get their 3 rounds of dying unless either that NPC has taken steps to ensure their death at 0 hp or that NPC must die in order for the plot to continue.
Scenarios where you get in a fight, don't really have time to pick and choose or worry about nonlethal but hope you can stabilize someone after combat's over so you can interrogate them? That's gone, because whether or not someone lives or dies is just me making a GM call with no underlying framework I can reference.
But it's not gone, because as the GM you can say that every NPC has their three rounds before death as per the rule on pg 250. It's no more or less arbitrary than Pathfinder's rather clunky system of having to rush to stabilise someone before they've failed their averagely difficult check with massive penalties based off of their negative health points.
That was probably true in Pathfinder, but in Starfinder that's not quite as true. Considering they added stamina to differentiate some abstraction, then the whole Massive Damage rule, and how you can restore HP with medical treatment directly...It may not be solidified what the value of 1 HP is (Yes that is still Abstract) but it's clear being shot is actually being shot now.
Hmmm. Yes, I need to rethink how to think about it.
HP is now truly meat points, but I would say they are still ONLY meat points. HP is still not heart points.
What do I mean with that? Well, damage done to your HP now actually hits your person ... but only your person. Two high level soldiers stabbing at each other into their large HP pools is now actually two people cutting and stabbing into each other, but that is still not each hit striking at vitals.
That last hit is still the attack that affects your vitals. Everything else still wounds you, but superficially. Even with HP as meat points, "each attack from my knife slits his throat" is still not accepted by the system.
What about Wounding/severe wounding crits? You may still be standing, but the attack definitely hit something important.
Sure, it is very specific rule that calls it out.
Although, a mean person would ask that does that mean nothing else but crit hits from plasma swords are allowed to cut hands.(The answer is no, but still.)
Dark Heresy had its crit table system made specifically to make finishing shots a codified system. So you really knew when people died, because when they took that fatal bullet, you knew. Body goes sploosh.
And if you’ve got party members with a rank in engineering and medicine, they can craft you a new cybernetic prosthetic arm and install it for you right from level 1.
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One fact and one opinion:
1) It's much easier to deal non-lethal in SF because literally any weapon can be used for non-lethal. Non-lethally shooting someone with your rifle, or non-lethally lobbing a frag grenade are 100% valid options in Starfinder.
2) I personally find the "NPCs are immediately dead unless the GM decides they have 3 rounds to live" thing to be too fiat-y for my tastes. I much prefer the PF system where the dice decide who lives and who dies. I understand Paizo is aiming to reduce bookkeeping and avoid making the GM roll stabilize checks for downed enemies, but having those crunchy rules is one of the appeals of playing Pathfinder. I feel that by dumbing down the rules in this way, Paizo is losing some of its key differentiation vs other RPGs; one beauty of Pathfinder is "yeah, there's a rule for that." If I wanted a handwavey system that relies on GM fiat for something as common and crucial as who lives and who dies, I would look elsewhere, I come to Paizo for the crunch and I'm just feeling disappointed. Simplifying the game for new players is great, but the GMs should be expected to have a higher level of system mastery, so making rule changes that only simplify things for the GM while sacrificing what I consider to be the spirit of the system, which is "There are rules for everything and the dice get to decide what happens", is a shame.
If you want to take someone alive, don't let your friends shoot them with lethal weapons, even just a little bit.
This. Problem solved. moving on...
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The crunch is that they are dead. The fiat is that the GM has the ability to give you a break.
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The crunch is that they are dead. The fiat is that the GM has the ability to give you a break.
Its not quite that simple. The crunch is that it is up to the GM :-)
"If it is ever important to know exactly when a monster dies, such as
if you want to capture the creature alive, the GM can decide that
a monster reduced to 0 or fewer Hit Points with lethal damage
dies in 3 rounds unless it takes any additional damage or receives
healing. If a monster or NPC has Resolve Points, the GM can choose
whether the monster dies at 0 HP or if it uses the normal rules for
dying and death."
That is, admittedly, a terrible state of affairs for PFS. Something that important should NOT be left to GM judgement in PFS as it forces far too much table variation
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If it is important enough to be a vital for SFS then it should be noted in the scenario.
I think that SFS should just make a general ruling. Personally, I'd prefer that the PCs (or the PC that puts in the killing blow) just get to decide if the NPCs die after 3 rounds or immediately. But I think having a clear ruling is much more important that what that ruling is
If it is important enough to be a vital for SFS then it should be noted in the scenario. I mean they've already done the opposite with the Adventure Paths "this character just dies" is one of the first things they do, so as to avoid needing GM judgement on vital plot points.
I don't do Society play...how does that work in PFS with those powers that can bring back the recently dead? (Breath of Life, for example) Seems like that would throw a wrench in it.
I meant more unrealistic in that "beat up" is using the stun setting on an electricity arc pistol so I'm basically tasing the guy for 99% of his HP, only to have a person apply a paper cut and have him be 18 seconds away from death...
If you are going to make extreme examples, this is still more logical than frying someone with repeated plasma cannon attaccks, just to make him unconscious because you tassed him once eighteen seconds before you started to pour plasma over him several times in a row.