Nonlethal Damage: Better way to do it?

[Cieyrin]

Good evening,

I'm futzing with modding Pathfinder for a new campaign and I'm looking at the concept of nonlethal damage and knocking someone out without permanent damage. I don't know about your experience but keeping track of a separate pool of damage taken and seeing where my current hp and nonlethal meet just feels clunky and tedious, yet if I look at how D&D 5e changed it, it's just a choice to knock someone out after stabbing them repeatedly, which while easier, isn't realistic.

Does anyone use some other method for capturing foes alive? I was kinda thinking that, as characters typically take a penalty to try to head trauma someone into losing consciousness, that sounds like a combat maneuver of some sort, so maybe that would work better for less bookkeeping but I'm open to suggestions and comments.

[KarlMarx]

What I might propose is that, either generally or for some weapons, Critical Hits and damage in excess of a certain amount--either fixed, or base HP, or current HP--has a chance of knocking out the victim. The issue is, I'm not sure if there's any way to efficiently rule it that isn't clunkier than the nonlethal damage system and that scales efficiently--calculating HP percentages is a tedious business, and even more so to try to figure out how saving throws should work.

The issue with knockouts as a combat maneuver is that, depending, there are too many ways to cheese it. If a success is a one-hit "kill", there is too much to be gained by fishing for success. At a low-optimization table it might work, but I'd be hesitant to allow it to heavily optimized groups.

[Elricaltovilla]

I've often been a lazy GM and just ruled that there's no "non-lethal damage" instead, all damage is the same and when a character reduces an opponent to 0 or fewer hit points they have the choice to subdue them nonlethally, and just K.O. the target, leaving them at 0 HP and unconscious for whatever plot convenient amount of time I need.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

So just a thought if you've had trouble tracking both non-lethal and normal damage and tracking the meetup:

Track them both in whatever manner you track damage and track non-lethal on the side as your "cushion" where you go down without dying and can heal at the non-lethal rate. This may seem like the same amount of work, but by making non-lethal damage beneficial players have a strong motivation to track it along with their damage total.

You might consider a houserule where armor converts a few damage from each hit into nonlethal scaling with the Armor bonus of the armor. There could also be an armor enchantment that enhances this effect. This works great in combination with limited magic/magical healing as mundanes have a limited ability to bounce back between encounters.

[Gullintanni]

My version of non-lethal in a homebrew setting I once built was to include hit point pools that were separated into Vitality and Wounds.

Wounds were the sum total of all hit points gained at first level plus any hit points gained as a result of Constitution score modifiers. Vitality represented all other hit points gained through HD increases. Essentially, Vitality functioned as non-lethal damage, and that pool depleted before a character started taking Wounds. Once a character's Vitality had been depleted, the character would become fatigued. Any non-lethal attacks would continue to cause Vitality damage even when continued attacks would normally cause Wounds, and if the sum total of Wounds + Vitality damage reduced a character's hit points to zero, they would be knocked unconscious, unless the character's Wounds were also at zero, in which case the character was dead.

Critical hits didn't deal additional damage, but rather, dealt damage directly to Wounds instead, bypassing Vitality altogether. I'd also heavily modified most damage dealing spells such that the damage was typically lower, but it also bypassed Vitality.

[SangoProduction]

I've often been a lazy GM and just ruled that there's no "non-lethal damage" instead, all damage is the same and when a character reduces an opponent to 0 or fewer hit points they have the choice to subdue them nonlethally, and just K.O. the target, leaving them at 0 HP and unconscious for whatever plot convenient amount of time I need.

Yeah. I'd often do this too. Also saves me the issue of having a character reduced to [dead] a bit too fast, as if the fight is too difficult, well most people don't want bodies on their hands. Die to a group of hungry wolves though...might be a TPK.

[Cieyrin]

My version of non-lethal in a homebrew setting I once built was to include hit point pools that were separated into Vitality and Wounds.

Wounds were the sum total of all hit points gained at first level plus any hit points gained as a result of Constitution score modifiers. Vitality represented all other hit points gained through HD increases. Essentially, Vitality functioned as non-lethal damage, and that pool depleted before a character started taking Wounds. Once a character's Vitality had been depleted, the character would become fatigued. Any non-lethal attacks would continue to cause Vitality damage even when continued attacks would normally cause Wounds, and if the sum total of Wounds + Vitality damage reduced a character's hit points to zero, they would be knocked unconscious, unless the character's Wounds were also at zero, in which case the character was dead.

Critical hits didn't deal additional damage, but rather, dealt damage directly to Wounds instead, bypassing Vitality altogether. I'd also heavily modified most damage dealing spells such that the damage was typically lower, but it also bypassed Vitality.

I am planning to use Wounds and Vitality, so I do like your solution for knocking characters out without having to add a third pool to keep track of.