Non-lethal overkill?

[Zethex]

So I took several hits trying to do non-lethal damage to a Goblin with 3hp left, finally knocked him down with 13 non-lethal damage from my large Greataxe after a few tries that brought me low on hitpoints myself and then proceeded to tie him up and kill the rest of his friends.
When I came back to check if the Goblin woke up the DM said I'd made him into a functionally dead vegetable because I more than doubled his max health in damage, lethal or no.
Now I was a bit annoyed, because I thought not killing him is what I took the -4 on attack for, but on the other hand I have to admit that it does make kind of sense. I also suspect, from the way he thought about his answer when I said "but I did non-lethal damage", that he hadn't thought of this rule beforehand and also did it to protect the pre-made campaign module we're playing.

I'm not asking about RAW here (except if there is some precedent even there) but about RAI and what you think of such a ruling by the DM. I am also not looking for some kind of pity fest because, as I said, I can kind of see the logic behind it.

So I ask both DMs and players alike, what do you think?

[Red Fel]

So I ask both DMs and players alike, what do you think?

On the one hand, there is precedent. Dealing more damage than a creature has HP twice can be reasonably to kill them, even if that damage is non-lethal. For example, could you deal non-lethal damage to an ordinary ant without killing it? Similarly, there is overkill precedent; many tables employ a rule that if you deal more than a certain amount of damage, the target must succeed on a Fort save or snuff it right then and there.

On the other hand, the whole point of non-lethal damage is that you're trying not to kill something. That's why you take a penalty. I get that. But remember that there are some creatures that are just naturally susceptible to death. This tendency, which I call necrolepsy, is common among creatures like kobolds, goblins, and small crunchy bugs; there's not much you can do to avoid killing the little buggers. It's like "corpse" is their natural state.

I figure your DM might be deliberately mucking this about because, as you said, he wants to protect the module. I figure "functionally dead vegetable" is a poor solution; a better one would be "shattered most of his bones and ruptured several organs trying not to cut him," because it's funny and I'm twisted like that. Nonetheless, I think the DM's ruling, regardless of the reason, was a legitimate one.

Save your non-lethal for humanoids capable of conjugating their verbs. Next time, get the goblins with the pointy end.

[Inevitability]

If the DM uses a houserule without telling the player's, than the houserule shouldn't count.
Players assume to be playing by RAW, unless told otherwise.

If the DM wants to insert a houserule into his game, he's free to do so. He should tell the players beforehand, though.

[Urpriest]

Damage is the last thing you want to be "realistic" about in D&D. You've already accepted hit points, there's really no going back from there.

As for protecting the sanctity of the module, the module was written with intelligent, capture-able foes. Likely, the writers expected you to interrogate at least one of them, and it's going to make the rest of the adventure harder than it was supposed to be if you don't get that information.

[The Oni]

Save your non-lethal for humanoids capable of conjugating their verbs. Next time, get the goblins with the pointy end.

Hey man, that's racial profilin.' Just wait until the NAAGP hears about this!

[Azoth]

Sorry but as a DM I have never done the too much non-lethal damage kills the bugger anyway kind of thing. Worst I have done is put the enemy into a coma for a while, and that was because a charger decided to full power attack him with a merciful weapon. You beat someone for more than 10 times their max health...welcome to coma land because it is going to take him several days to heal that kind of damage.

[Phelix-Mu]

Because of the way healing and damage works, each hp is really worth just as much as the next (except for the point of lethal that separates active from helpless and the point separating helpless from dead). The way to know if the enemy is going to wake up soon is to calculate the time it will take for the nonlethal to wear off. "Coma" in the game mainly comes from ability damage/drain that reduces one's mental stats down to zero, not nonlethal damage.

But, this was a sloppy houserule. If you can beat someone into permanent unconsciousness, then that can probably be exploited. Don't know how, but it probably has something to do with spellcasting, knowing D&D.

[OldTrees1]

RAW:
Non lethal damage can kill but not in that way. Only non lethal damage from Temperature/Starvation/... will become lethal after a certain threshold.

RAI:
Non lethal attacks were intended to be non lethal

DM's ruling:
Sure. It makes sense. However I am disappointed in the DM only telling you the house rule after the fact.

[Slipperychicken]

Personally, I like the idea of "non-lethal overkill" (if that's what we're calling it). Knocking someone unconscious is a very serious matter, especially if you're doing it via blunt force: it's possible to cause brain trauma or to break spines and ribs. Accidental deaths from such incidents are frequent enough to make people IRL start calling such techniques "less-than-lethal" because "nonlethal" is misleading.

For a houserule, I have an idea: When you would be knocked unconscious by nonlethal damage dealt by an attack or other hostile effect (yeah, I know this wording needs work), you need to make a Fortitude save DC 10. If you fail this check, that attack deals lethal damage instead.

[EDIT: fixed some redundant wording]



I'm not asking about RAW here (except if there is some precedent even there)

Well, every point of damage healed via magic also heals nonlethal, so you should only need to heal the goblin up ~10-11 points. The GM might have meant that the goblin isn't waking up until you heal him for all that nonlethal damage, as it would take him roughly 11 hours to heal all that nonlethal damage naturally.

[Zethex]

Hmm yeah, we could maybe have healed the Goblin with magic. Problem is that none of us are healers. Of course I could have taken the Goblin with me to town and asked a local healer to do the job, but I am the party barbarian and trying to hit him for non-lethal for a third time after missing twice was already almost out of character. Going that extra mile to pay for healing when no one else (including the Chaotic Good guys) seems to care would be too much IMHO. I'll just do it smarter next time.

[NichG]

I've played in a lot of campaigns where they had the rule that when you fully wrap someone's hitpoints with non-lethal damage, the rest converts to lethal. So if you did 10+twice the creature's hp in damage in one shot, you'd kill it. These campaigns also had the rule though that you could decide to 'hold back' a portion of your Strength modifier to damage (or Dex or whatever stats you got to damage) in order to try to control the amount of damage you did.

In the one campaign in particular I'm thinking of, this was played up to big effect because the scale of the game went well into epic, and occasionally we had to be really careful to gauge just how fragile the puny mortals we were dealing with were or we'd accidentally kill them when we meant to just give a show of strength as a demonstration or a message to back off. There was at least one time where my character had to pull off a quickened, silent Last Breath to prevent a bar brawl from turning very ugly when another PC let loose with his full strength at 'non-lethal'.

Of course in this campaign, 'full strength' could have been a few thousand damage, so its not wrapping around twice, its wrapping around 10+ times.

[VoxRationis]

It's not quite RAW, but your DM has a point. If you're using a massive greataxe against a tiny goblin, it's easy to hit something delicate even if you're trying not to. People die from boxing matches. The idea that you can deal an indefinite amount of damage but just have it be automatically incapable of killing them is silly.

[nedz]

I run death at -Con, but even assuming death at -10: 13 HP lethal damage to a creature with 3 HP is only just dead. I don't think that this is a reasonable DM ruling: you were trying hard not to kill him, hard enough to take a -4 to hit.


But, this was a sloppy houserule. If you can beat someone into permanent unconsciousness, then that can probably be exploited. Don't know how, but it probably has something to do with spellcasting, knowing D&D.

Whelm, Vow of non-violence/Vow of Peace allows you to accidentally kill and not fall.

[Ranting Fool]

I added this sort of house rule before our current campaign but never really but any solid rules down (an oversight) mainly because in one of the last sessions of the old campaign one of the characters did a charging powerattack/pounce combo which critted a level 1 mook for some silly amount and the players mostly went "Should his head be flying off somewhere that way"

Doing 100+ damage to a Goblin that has 5hp is a bit of overkill. :smallbiggrin: said goblin was captured and alive once healed up but we agreed to look into this once we started a new campaign.

[HaikenEdge]

These house rules seem to completely negate the point of the Nonlethal Substitution metamagic feat; what's the point of turning a spell into a nonlethal spell, when, if you roll high on the damage, it could well kill your target anyways?

[Slipperychicken]

These house rules seem to completely negate the point of the Nonlethal Substitution metamagic feat; what's the point of turning a spell into a nonlethal spell, when, if you roll high on the damage, it could well kill your target anyways?

Because it means you have a decent chance to take him alive if you're careful. The alternative is all but guaranteeing that he dies.

It's like saying "What's the point of using tasers, rubber bullets, and beanbag rounds if they could potentially kill the target anyway?".