In some cases you’d want to do it, like “persuading” but not killing and etc.
I think I’ll do it. It is supposed that you have more control over your powers and not less.
The same goes for physical attacks, with a weapon inflicting multiple dice (Devastating attacks from ABP or rune) you should be able to use lesser dice, i.e. instead intention of dealing max damage shooting the leg for making the target to change its mind.
Thanks.
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I think I’ll do it. It is supposed that you have more control over your powers and not less.
The same goes for physical attacks, with a weapon inflicting multiple dice (Devastating attacks from ABP or rune) you should be able to use lesser dice, i.e. instead intention of dealing max damage shooting the leg for making the target to change its mind.
Thanks.
The latter is taking a -2 penalty to deal non-lethal damage. Perfectly RAW.
The latter is taking a -2 penalty to deal non-lethal damage. Perfectly RAW.I think I’ll do it. It is supposed that you have more control over your powers and not less.
The same goes for physical attacks, with a weapon inflicting multiple dice (Devastating attacks from ABP or rune) you should be able to use lesser dice, i.e. instead intention of dealing max damage shooting the leg for making the target to change its mind.
Thanks.
It’s not, you may want to deal damage without making target unconscious. It is not the same 3d10 making the target unconscious than 1d10.
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Then just punch them. It's 1d4+str damage assuming you don't have handwraps, plus it's nonlethal without taking a penalty.
If you're looking for a cantrip that does a small amount of damage and can't kill, use Daze. There's already answers for most of the complaints people have about the rules, you just have to read the rules to find them.
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If the party is fighting level -1 people when they're level 10 or something, the GM is just being mean. That's not a real fight and it should never go into encounter mode. Just let them KO them without rolling anything, or have them make an Athletics check to restrain them or something.
If the party is fighting level -1 people when they're level 10 or something, the GM is just being mean. That's not a real fight and it should never go into encounter mode. Just let them KO them without rolling anything, or have them make an Athletics check to restrain them or something.
Why?
I know many tables play these games like if was a videogame, or on rails following a "narrative". But for those who play like a RPG anything can happen.
Maybe you want to make believe others that you are paired skilled with an opponent in a show. So you should be able to adjust your skills to lower at any moment, damage dice count and attack bonus.
Probably when making rules the creators bypass some of these possibilities according to what mentioned before, thinking that in that line you always want to be at full power, because what could be the reason for not?
But, as mentioned before:
Many players and GMs believe that you should be able to do this, and many will house rule this as an option, but it is strictly against the Rules as written.
We can see that "many" play it as RPG, noticing those deficiencies. If not what would be the reason to change it?
After looking some communities, I am convinced that many discussions about what is fine or not are really about how each table plays the game, that changes much how affects some rules.
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The rules assume that you want to squeeze the best effect out of your abilities, because that's what happens in the vast majority of encounters; adding exceptions for everything would make the rules too long and clunky.
In most situations, it makes perfect sense to be able to underperform if you want; as a GM I usually check what the player wants to achieve, and if it's not some stinky cheese, there's no reason why I shouldn't allow it.
Absolutely. But sometimes would be preferable that rules to be written different, i.e. in this case change "heightened automatically" to "can heighten up to".
Usually not a problem but some can get the rules like a Holy Bible and if you change some things can complain you are changing also the balance. The case of maybe a problematic player arguing "with the rules at its side". Rare case but if rules are written to avoid it, the better.
I'd say that the rules are strict because they don't want to explicitly allow players to exploit loopholes; everything non-standard has to pass through the GM's approval.
I agree that in this case, and probably a few other specific ones, allowing the player to cast a lower-level version of the spell can't really hurt the game, and also wouldn't require writing additional text (as your example shows).
There is the classic example of Enlarge: the level 4 version doesn't give you an option, your target becomes huge instead of large, and this can be detrimental sometimes. While changing the wording of the spell would solve the issue, changing the core rule itself would prevent a number of cases like this without requiring double-checks everywhere.
On the other hand, things like intentionally missing an attack, or targeting an ally to trigger a critical effect (and still wanting to do minimum damage, or something), can definitely lead to unintended and unbalanced consequences. I wouldn't say something like: "When you hit, you can choose to deal up to this much damage" in the rules, because while it could make some sense narritively, its game-breaking potential is much higher. So, ask your GM.
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If the party is fighting level -1 people when they're level 10 or something, the GM is just being mean. That's not a real fight and it should never go into encounter mode. Just let them KO them without rolling anything, or have them make an Athletics check to restrain them or something.
The Party was level 1. But the crit (Nat20) dealt Massive damage, which does not care about non-lethal and kills the opponent right away. And it happened on the two opponents (twin brothers) we were trying to subdue.
Will of the deities, I say.
the crit (Nat20) dealt Massive damage, which does not care about non-lethal and kills the opponent right away.
Nonlethal doesn't care about Massive Damage either. So saying that Nonlethal damage doesn't kill an opponent no matter how much damage it does (even if it would exceed the threshold of Massive Damage) is also rules-legal.
Which one you go with in your game is up to you.
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If the party is fighting level -1 people when they're level 10 or something, the GM is just being mean. That's not a real fight and it should never go into encounter mode. Just let them KO them without rolling anything, or have them make an Athletics check to restrain them or something.Why?
In the encounter building rules in the CRB it explains the following:
Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat.
A Trivial encounter has a budget of 40xp or less. If you have a party of 4 level 10 characters, a trivial encounter would be 4 level 6 enemies. For example, a level 10 caster would likely have an unarmored AC of approximately 26 with +3 dex, while a Babau hits at +17. With an armored Martial PC, that's AC28. Meanwhile the Babau has an AC of 24 while martials have a +20 to hit. And this isn't even going into save DCs. The party will make quick work of those 4 level 6 enemies.
Now imagine if those enemies were even lower level? It wouldn't even be fun for them to tear through something they crit on a 2, and dies to massive damage on a minimum damage roll.
The rule of thumb is, if the creature's level is under APL -4, it's not a fight, so don't run it in encounter mode.
If the party is fighting level -1 people when they're level 10 or something, the GM is just being mean. That's not a real fight and it should never go into encounter mode. Just let them KO them without rolling anything, or have them make an Athletics check to restrain them or something.Why?In the encounter building rules in the CRB it explains the following:
Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat.A Trivial encounter has a budget of 40xp or less. If you have a party of 4 level 10 characters, a trivial encounter would be 4 level 6 enemies. For example, a level 10 caster would likely have an unarmored AC of approximately 26 with +3 dex, while a Babau hits at +17. With an armored Martial PC, that's AC28. Meanwhile the Babau has an AC of 24 while martials have a +20 to hit. And this isn't even going into save DCs. The party will make quick work of those 4 level 6 enemies.
Now imagine if those enemies were even lower level? It wouldn't even be fun for them to tear through something they crit on a 2, and dies to massive damage on a minimum damage roll.
The rule of thumb is, if the creature's level is under APL -4, it's not a fight, so don't run it in encounter mode.
Sorry but I continue not understanding what have that to do with role-playing.
What that describes is just the go-go-go method of playing, all ahead and anything around the combat.
I just described a case in which you could want to limit your own skill in my post, that has nothing to do with encounters or anything like that close way to play. Even if you don't play in encounter mode, you have to apply values to show the result, simulating the combat.