A common situation that seems to come up in my games and in the Discord server: how do we deal non-lethal damage? I don’t want to kill the guy – I just want to knock him out!
By the rules, we see this in the 2e CRB, 3rd printing:
Player-heroes whose Endurance is reduced to zero drop unconscious, and wake up after one hour with 1 Endurance point.
(pg 69)Once a victorious battle is over, the Player-heroes often must deal with the dead and dying. If the information is relevant, the Loremaster can consider that adversaries that were taken out of combat reducing them to zero Endurance could be still barely alive when a fight has ended, and might even survive if rescued.
(pg 143)
From this, we can say that the baseline mechanic of “falling unconscious at 0 Endurance” can be reasonably extended to adversaries.
I play with the following considerations:
- The player-hero must declare their intent to deal non-lethal damage, render someone unconscious, or otherwise non-lethally subdue a foe (e.g., “I hit him with the pommel of my sword”, “I take the flat of my sword and whack him across the back of the legs to try to knock him down”).
- Piercing blows still count as piercing blows, so there’s risk when using weapons.
- Unarmed attacks (Brawling) are an option to reduce the risk of piercing blows.
- Grappling someone can be achieved using Brawling; narrate that they are grappling. A high-attribute opponent may require extra successes.
- Ranged attacks can’t take a non-lethal option.