Hi.

I only have the core set, so this may be addressed in some supplement, but I was wondering if there was some way to go about dealing non-lethal damage? I was thinking of just allowing it with a few misfortune using any weapon, and maybe with fortune if the player actually has a club.

Has this ever come up for anybody?

There are no rules for non-lethal damage is this game. One way to go about it is trying to reproduce the effects of the NPC action card Subdue (Reckless side). On a succesful hit you cause Fatigue instead of Wounds. Remeber that if Fatigue = 2xToughness, the character falls uncouncious. This is difficult to apply to NPCs since most of them (aside from Nemesis) suffer Wounds instead of Fatigue, therefore it will need some work in that case.

Cheers,

Yepes

House Rule: Just rule that you don't cause a critical when they're knocked unconscious from wounds caused by a non-deadly attack (e.g. punching, sap, club wrapped in cloth, bag of coins, etc.). Chaos star effect of course will negate that and cause the critical though

Pretty simple to house rule this sort of thing and that's how we've played it for the past 4 years.

Official Rule: There is also the Subdue special action from the Soldier NPC (see the NPCs in the Bestiary or Creature Guide for details on this action) which could be made into a "Perform Stunt" or just allowed as an action for the player characters to choose.

Additional discussion on this topic here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=167&efcid=46&efidt=659803#823673

jh

I wouldn't go the route of converting wounds into fatigue. Four reasons:

1. PCs are KO'd by fatigue faster than they are by damage. With toughness 3, it takes 13 wounds to KO you, but only 7 fatigue to do so. Converting normal damage into fatigue doesn't make it "softer", it actually makes it more immediately debilitating.
2. Most NPCs don't actually take Fatigue anyway. Their fatigue is converted into damage, so converting damage into fatigue to make it non-lethal ends up in a weird paradox that ultimately only complicates things.
3. Normal wounds heal super-fast in Warhammer 3rd. An average human will recover from 3 to 6 wounds per day without any medical attention (just a good night's rest), which is roughly 25% to 50% of the number or wounds it takes to KO them. First Aid and Medicine checks can greatly improve this healing rate. If you're KO'd but not actually killed, you'll be fully healed in 3 or 4 days, even without medicine or magic.
4. Only Critical wounds count for determining if you die or not, and it takes several of them to do it. 4 total to kill an average human who's been KO'd. Most crits are caused by things the players can self-limit to one extent or another. (If you want to reduce the crits you're inflicting, simply use your comets for redundant successes and always spend boons on non-crit effects first.)

For my group, I made a Condition card called " Pulling Your Punches ". It's voluntary, and only uses a Condition card so that we'd have a visual reminder of how it works. The card effect reads: " Add a Misfortune die to your attacks. Unless you roll a Chaos Star, your attacks do not cause criticals (including the one normally inflicted when a target is KO'd) ."

I considered all sorts of ways to complicate that card further and make it more "realistic", but found this to be elegant and functional. Taking care not to kill your target should logically be harder than attacking normally, but not so hard that the PCs are always better off just killing everyone. Note that as written, the condition works equally as well for punches, pommel strikes, or even shooting someone in a non-vital area. Apply common sense as needed.

That's a good method, but I think I'd throw a minus to damage on there. Another option would be to make criticals at 4 eagles, then PCs would actually have to declare that they weren't going to use all those extra white dice (which would be the equivalent of pulling punches).

jh

Honestly, the wound system is so temporary as is that you can use the system as is for "non-lethal" damage by just ignoring critical wound results.

I had to test out my theory in last night's game, so I had a mutant get knocked unconscious. It wasn't but 5 seconds and one player responds, "Ok, we're going to tie him up and take him to the blacksmith's shop…"

Now, since I hand out corruption points for /any/ evil action on the part of the PCs, they're leery about getting carried away with burning down whole towns and murdering children, but certainly torturing captured mutants has not yet kicked in.

I generally find it easy enough to hand out fatigue and stress enough to knock most players out cold after a decent few rounds.

All of those ideas sound great, thanks!

I'll try them out and eventually flesh out a way that works how I want it to.

Emirikol said:

Just because we *inadvertantly* razed villages in three consecutive adventures doesn't mean we are malevolent… just incompetant!

Chaos stars izza' beeyotch aint they!

I also did a "Subdue" action card for PC's, only usable in Green stance and applies more misfortune to the action the lower the CR value of your weapon (e.g., subdue with a knife hard than subdue with a staff or club).

A key point is that this is "an action choice" itself. You don't subdue using your "super great kill em all action card" nor using your magic dart or fireball etc.

It guarantees that when an NPC drops from wound loss they are not dead (well there's chaos star of course...)

Otherwise I have NPCs die when losing all wounds.

Design/narratively, you have to "work" at having prisoners to question.