Fifth Edition Assumes Murder Hobos

One of the core characteristics of the Feodris campaign is the tension between the game mechanics of D&D 5th Edition and the player characteristic jokingly referred to as “murder hobos.” Elements of the game world like the Song of Harmony and Murdercrows were created specifically to address the tendency for D&D adventuring parties—even ones populated exclusively by Good-aligned characters—to indiscriminately kill their combat opponents. These inclusions have ripple effects on the game, as evidenced in no small part by the ever-expanding Spells page which offers clarifications on which spells in a high-magic world that values life so keenly are considered incompatible with the principles of that society.

But, as with all fiddlings that toy with the core assumptions of the game rules, the ripple effects carry out from there. If all PCs are not supposed to act like murder hobos, what happens when they get into a fight with creatures protected by the Song of Harmony? Are they expected to just let violence happen to them? What’s the point of all these weapons and dope class features that are meant to facilitate copious ass-kicking if they can’t be used for fear of reprisal?

Why This Needs a House Rule

Initially, my assumption was that 5e’s options for non-lethal combat would cover these questions and concerns. Except, as it turns out, 5e is rather mum on the subject of non-murder-hobosity (it’s a word now, just roll with it). The extent of how to handle not killing an enemy combatant is covered on page 198 of the PHB and included in the SRD:

Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

The emphasis in there is mine, to point out something that brought all this to my attention while playing Baldur’s Gate 3: ranged attacks and non-melee spell attacks can’t be used, RAW, to deal non-lethal damage. So Rangers, some Rogue and Fighter builds, and most Spellcasters have a very limited number of options when it comes to contributing to combat without dealing lethal damage.

In a campaign world in which spellcasting is already subject to a lot of nuances and limitations regarding which spells are even selectable or castable (from a practical sense), it might be that this is a bridge too far in nerfing pure caster classes. In addition, I’m not entirely sure why a spiked flail can be used to knock an opponent unconscious but a crossbow bolt cannot in the Knocking a Creature Out official ruling.

There is also an additional question that arose during a recent session which revolves around how non-lethal damage is applied toward Player Characters, particularly in the context of the Fighting For Life house rule. The aim here is to create a clearer framework for how combat that is meant to operate within the limitations of the game world and its laws and customs should be adjudicated, to avoid confusion or bad feels in the heat of combat.

The House Rule

A creature may declare an attack as non-lethal, provided the damage type being dealt is one of the following types:

• Bludgeoning
• Force
• Lightning
• Piercing
• Psychic
• Radiant
• Thunder

This declaration can be made the instant the damage is dealt (i.e. once its known whether the damage would otherwise be fatal or not). However, once declared as lethal or non-lethal or once the damage’s effects have been described, it cannot be changed.

Creatures suffering non-lethal damage that brings their hit point total to below 0 gain a special condition called Knocked Out. If the non-lethal damage exceeds the creature’s maximum hit points, they gain a different condition called Comatose.

House Rule in Detail

The intention of the house rule is to provide a means by which players can exert their agency over the effect their character’s attacks will have without completely ruining suspension of disbelief (e.g. by having an acid attack that melts just enough of a creature’s face to knock it unconscious but not kill it). The core assumption in here is that characters who have trained within the bounds of Feodris to use their abilities understand that restraint is a core component of what they practice. Learning to manage your (illegal!) Shocking Grasp spell so that it becomes more of a taser than a rip of lightning through someone’s heart is core to avoiding running afoul of the law. Martial combatants likewise understand how to subdue enemies with their chosen weapons rather than murder them outright because that’s a core facet to self-defense that doesn’t result in you being locked in jail for the rest of your life.

The damage types listed above are intentionally selected, but they are not a perfect cross-section. You could easily make arguments that some types might be better suited for this kind of capability/restriction than others. You might think Cold damage would be better than Psychic as a possible non-lethal option. Or you might think it’s impossible to deal non-lethal damage when piercing with a ranged missile attack. Unfortunately, D&D is a game of abstractions and we have to find a spot to apply the abstract notions. I settled on this particular list because it feels most in keeping with the spirit of the RAW Knock-Out rules and it nicely divides the possible damage types nearly in half: seven of the thirteen damage types can be used non-lethally leaving six that can only deal lethal damage. Moreover, of those non-lethal types, they represent a good range of common damage types for melee, ranged, and spell attacks but they don’t just make all melee weapons non-lethal, affecting pure spellcasters unequally. That feels like a reasonable compromise.

In one particular case, radiant damage was selected because it’s frequently used as a counter-balance to necrotic damage (see Spirit Guardians for an example), even though flavor-wise radiant damage is often described as having heat-like properties which might otherwise have suggested its proximity to fire damage should classify it as always lethal.

New Conditions

The Non-Lethal Combat house rule contains two new conditions, defined below

The Slashing Damage Addendum

In general for 5th Edition, for game balance purposes, weapons cannot arbitrarily modify their damage types. Sure, it’s technically possible to stab someone with a longsword which should be counted as piercing damage, but because damage resistances and immunities are so common in 5e, the damage is abstracted to always be slashing. However, by adding this house rule to the mix, the interactions of damage types goes a step beyond balancing NPC resistance lists and becomes a potential crippling limitation for certain types of weapons.

To manage this, the house rule includes the following addendum:

1. Melee weapons which deal slashing damage may be modified to use bludgeoning damage at a penalty of half damage (rounded down after modifiers, to a minimum of 1) if the wielding character has proficiency with that weapon type. This represents strikes with the flat of a blade, pommel/guard strikes, etc. Damage modified in this way is always considered non-lethal damage.

Clarifications and Definitions

Knocked Out Condition

When a creature is Knocked Out, they fall unconscious and are stable. However, this condition is temporary. When a creature is Knocked Out, they will regain consciousness after 1d10 rounds of combat (or 1d10 * 6 seconds if not in combat). When a creature regains consciousness, it has 1 hit point.

Comatose Condition

Knocked Out creatures can still take sufficient “non-lethal” trauma to be put into serious jeopardy. If non-lethal combat damage exceeds their hit point maximum, that creature falls into a coma. They fall unconscious and are stable, but rather than regaining consciousness after 1d10 rounds, they remain unconscious. If they do not receive care within 1 hour, the creature dies. If they receive care and can be actively monitored, the creature will remain alive but unconscious for a number of days equal to their Constitution modifier (or 1 day if the modifier is negative). After that time elapses, the creature must make a RAW death saving throw once at the start of each day, surviving another day for each successful death save. If the death saving throw is a 20, the creature awakens.

Healing kits, mundane medicines, and Goodberries cannot revive a comatose creature. Only magical healing or a 20 on the death saving throw can restore a comatose character.

Lethal Stacking

Lethal damage, under this house rule (and the RAW it was based on), only matters for discrete sources of damage that would knock a creature’s HP to zero or less. Players do not necessarily need to declare the lethality of each of their attacks. As an example, a creature with 20 hit points which suffers 19 points of lethal damage (e.g. fire damage) and then 1 point of non-lethal damage (e.g. bludgeoning) is still knocked out.

However, if the reverse were true, and that same creature suffered 19 points of declared non-lethal bludgeoning damage followed by 1 point of fire damage from a separate attack, the fire damage attack would still be considered lethal.

DM Notes: The primary purpose of this is to avoid unnecessary overhead in tracking damage lethality. It is tempting to apply a rider here such as, “50% of all damage inflicted must be declared as non-lethal or the target creature dies anyway or becomes Comatose…” But it would simply be too much to manage and there aren’t any tools available to make it easier. As such, the only attack which matters is the final blow.
This can also be easily managed on the DM side by replacing the common question, “How would you like to do this?” with something more like, “Are you going to end them?” when an eligible attack could be delivered non-lethally.

Multi-Typed Attacks

It is possible for certain effects to split the damage from a single attack into multiple damage types (for example, the Elemental Weapon transmutation spell). As long as one of the damage types can be applied non-lethally, the entire attack is considered to be eligible to be carried out with non-lethal damage.

Examples

• Micha has a Ring of Acidity, which gives her melee weapon attacks a +2 acid bonus damage. She swings her greatclub at a goblin with 1 hit point remaining, dealing 3 bludgeoning damage and 2 acid damage, bringing the goblin’s HP below 0. She needs this goblin alive for questioning, so she chooses non-lethal damage because the club deals bludgeoning damage. The goblin’s max hit points is 6, so the 5 damage doesn’t exceed and the goblin is Knocked Out. The DM rolls a 3 on 1d10, meaning the goblin will recover in 3 rounds (or 18 seconds).
• Grady’s party mate, Krokus, casts Elemental Weapon on his longsword, adding fire damage to his attacks. Grady hacks away at a Town Patroller with 5 hit points who’s been hassling him, rolling a critical hit and dealing 16 slashing damage and 4 fire damage for a total of 20. The Town Patroller only had 12 hit points max, so this attack brings them down to -15, which exceeds their max. Even if Grady could choose non-lethal damage (which he can’t because both slashing and fire damage can’t be non-lethal), the Patroller would still be Comatose after this attack. Unfortunately, in this case, Grady has committed a murder—against a law enforcement officer, no less!

Generosity Rule

The intent of this rule is to manage the abstraction of non-lethal combat with a bit more specificity than provided by the rules as written. But it is also to provide players a reasonable means to handle combat situations in ways that don’t require them to completely redefine their character classes, features, and available actions. In a campaign with an emphasis on non-lethal combat and no house rules, it would be tempting to force spellcasters with crowd control or AoE effects to act first in initiative order to “soften up” mobs and force melee combatants into a “clean-up duty” role where they run around delivering final blows just to avoid murder-hobosity. In other words, we want characters—and PCs in particular—to be able to play the game without a constant struggle against the game mechanics that forces them to run afoul of the in-game law.

As such, the spirit of this rule is such that if a player can make a reasonable case as to why a particular attack could be made non-lethally, even if it deals a damage type that is considered by this rule to be lethal-only, the DM should default to allowing that effect to work. It’s worth remembering that there are already a lot of restrictions on spellcasters with regards to the spells they can choose and the ones they can safely cast in public settings. None of the purpose of all this is to heavily nerf pure caster classes.

HR07, Active, v1.0.0