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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Kagus]

I used to be an explorer like you, but then I took a javelin to the upper thigh.

[Egan_BW]

I suppose that if you wanted to disable someone without killing them, but only had access to ranged lethal weapons, you could just knock them down to negative hitpoints normally, then go and stabilize them. There's some potential to accidentally kill if you deal enough damage that they drop down from full to -10 or just instakill them due to massive damage rules or whatever, or if you can't stabilize them in time due to being too far away / fighting other enemies / have a bad medicine skill. But it has a potential to work. :v

[Persus13]

Yeah, if someone wanted to do that in a 5e game I ran, that's probably how I'd handle it

[Trekkin]

Yeah, if someone wanted to do that in a 5e game I ran, that's probably how I'd handle it

Drow poison would work more reliably, if more expensively.

[NullForceOmega]

It's not all that expensive, since every D&D player's waifu is drow, so they can just pay for a nice dinner and be good to go.

[delphonso]

I've generally tried to give my players an experience different from video games - and that's why I haven't used non-lethal damage much. If they're fighting an intelligent creature, my players know they can talk during combat - and if an enemy who isn't in a pure bloodrage is down to their last couple hit points, they're likely to bargain. I've had a lot of characters drop their weapons rather than take another arrow in the knee. Likewise, I've had characters see being captured as worse than death, and they go down swinging. In that case - we usually end up with something like that - dropping them to negatives and then stabilizing them. I'll even give them some lee-way on excessive damage (unless someone crits on the final hit, or something like that.)

The rules are valuable, as always, but can be worked around to make a more enjoyable narrative experience.

[Persus13]

Yeah, if someone wanted to do that in a 5e game I ran, that's probably how I'd handle it

Drow poison would work more reliably, if more expensively.

Yeah, if they want to go for ranged disabling on a regular basis, they should try to acquire some of that stuff. But barring that, the goal is to allow players to have a chance to disable folks from range, but making it somewhat risky to do so.

[Rowanas]

If you just apply the "HP as luck" to 3.5, it's fine, and all attacks are nonlethal until they are. Requires a bit of a rework though.  I personally prefer it, like Exalted 3rd has Withering attacks which drain initiative and Decisive attacks which deal proper meat damage.  All attacks are made in deadly earnest, but the dramatic differences are made crunch.

Especially since there's no degradation of performance for losing HP in DnD, it makes sense to visualise it all as near-misses and close calls which leave you less and less room to screw up, until inevitably someone gets that strike that puts you down (to or below 0).

[Mephisto]

Head on over to Shadowrun for the best in nonlethal takedowns. All you need is a load of capsule rounds, industrial quantities of DMSO, an equal amount of narcojet (or for more fun/less realism, DMSO says "any compound"; go with LSD instead), and an automatic weapon.

Or sub the capsule rounds and automatic weapon for a supersoaker.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Don't do this.

[Criptfeind]

Or, in my experience in shadowrun, if you want to take someone down with a nonlethal attack, just shoot them in the head with a relatively low caliber bullet. They'll basically just shrug the lethality of it off and only take stun damage.

[Rowanas]

Or, in my experience in shadowrun, if you want to take someone down with a nonlethal attack, just shoot them in the head with a relatively low caliber bullet. They'll basically just shrug the lethality of it off and only take stun damage.

It's one of my favourite things about SR.  Wear enough armour and you'll become immune to insta-death, but you can still be downed by pure action penalties.  It makes your recovery easier by reducing the damage type, which seems terribly reasonable.

[Criptfeind]

I think my big issue isn't the idea itself, just that the breaking point for bullet immunity isn't high tech armor but more along the lines of going to the gym for 2 hours a week.

[wierd]

Head on over to Shadowrun for the best in nonlethal takedowns. All you need is a load of capsule rounds, industrial quantities of DMSO, an equal amount of narcojet (or for more fun/less realism, DMSO says "any compound"; go with LSD instead), and an automatic weapon.

Or sub the capsule rounds and automatic weapon for a supersoaker.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Don't do this.

Eww. That would smell horrible.  Dimethyl Sulfoxide is ...  Well, let's just say it has a very unique, and unpleasant odor.

(pedants will be pedants, so here's this: YES, 100% pure DMSO is odorless. However, you are talking industrial quantities, suggesting industrial grade, not pharma or lab grade. That means a significant, and non-zero quantity of DMS, in the DMSO, and THAT stuff stinks to high heaven.)

[Rowanas]

I think my big issue isn't the idea itself, just that the breaking point for bullet immunity isn't high tech armor but more along the lines of going to the gym for 2 hours a week.

Hah, unless you're a troll, you cant' shrug off bullets that easily.  Almost any grade of corpsec will be packing sufficient dakka to break an unarmoured character.  A street level campaign might suffer from this a bit, where low-power pistols and subbies are the norm.

[Criptfeind]

Yeah, I mean, exactly, the higher tier dudes have guns that can actually hurt, but also presumably armor/beingatroll at that level enough to prevent the damage as well. But even at the lower tier of street thugs and such are running around with pistols that they can't even hurt each other with, it's bizarre.

It's a system where defense has outpaced offense, which feels really weird given it's otherwise sorta gritty and somewhat dark feel, not to mention how it's weapons are closely related to real life, so it feels super weird to be able to shoot anyone with a gun and not break the skin.