As stated if you are blind in combat you are flat-footed, as long as that's your precise sense. If that's true why isn't it just in condition it's self? Now I do believe it's true but wanted to double check.
The other question is non-lethal damage still comes off your hit points as normal? If the creature had say 30 hit points and the bard punches the creature for d4 + Str, lets say 3 was the total, the creature is now as 27hp's with 3 being non-lethal or it wasn't enough to knock the creature out so it doesn't lose HP's. Or or it has has 30HP's and 27 non-lethal HP's. Again I believe it's the first option but I've been known to be wrong from time to time.
Yes, it is somewhat obnoxious that there is a chain of conditions that you have to go through to realize that being blind makes you flat-footed to everyone's attacks.
Being Blinded means that you can't see and "you can't detect anything using vision".
Which means that other creatures are Undetected to you. Which does list the flat-footed condition as one of its effects.
------
As for nonlethal damage - yes, it is still just damage. Some creatures are immune to it. But it reduces HP just like any other damage.
There are some differences regarding death and dying. But they are a bit strange. The difference only happens if the last hit was nonlethal.
If a creature has 30 HP and someone does 27 nonlethal damage and afterwards someone else does 4 piercing damage, then the creature is still dying.
If instead a creature has 30 HP and someone does 27 piercing damage and afterwards someone else does 4 nonlethal damage, then the creature is only knocked out.
First, the blinded question
1. If you are blinded, you can't perceive things with sight.
2. If you can't perceive a creature with a precise sense, it is (at best case) Hidden to you.
3. If a creature is Hidden to you, you are flat-footed against it.
"You are flat-footed" isn't in the blind condition, because it wouldn't be true for creatures that could be blinded but have some other way for creatures they can't see to be Observed or Concealed, not Hidden.2E has tried to build rules on top of each other for consistency, instead of treating everything as separate. In this case, it's that a creature that is Hidden from you because you are blinded is no different than a Creature Hidden from you because it decided to Hide behind something, and did so successfully, or one that is invisible.
Now the other
Yes, nonlethal damage reduces hit points normally. The only difference is in what happens when it's the damage that takes you to zero.
|
Nonlethal isn't a damage type, it's a trait on the attack you are using.
If something is immune to nonlethal attacks, like constructs, then the attack does nothing. This means you can't punch a construct unless you punch really hard.
If an attack reduces a creature's HP to 0 and has the nonlethal trait, the creature is unconscious instead of dead.
If you want to add the nonlethal trait to a strike that normally doesn't have the trait, you can do so by taking a -2 penalty to that strike. You can not add this trait to non-strike attacks in this way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nonlethal isn't a damage type, it's a trait on the attack you are using.
That is true, and is a more accurate way of stating things.
The distinction is generally fairly minor though. Less of a confusion than Precision damage.