My question is about when the party does that same thing over and over again. I don't want to roleplay twenty interrogations of goblins and kobolds.
My players are a bunch of murder hobos, so I'm actually jealous of your situation (just a bit!), but here are some ideas. I often play goblins and kobolds as cowardly creatures. They'll tell you anything you want, even if it's completely false information or steers them into danger. The only problem here is if your players don't learn from past mistakes (and don't roll insight checks). You can also take the approach of these enemies having the same information. After Goblin #4 tells them the same thing as Goblin #1, 2, & 3 they may get the hint that there isn't much more to learn and get just as bored as you are playing out these interrogations.
Also consider this: your players are using healing potions and spells to save enemy lives? That's a drain on resources, especially on long adventuring days with lots of encounters. When things get tight, my players are reluctant to use a healing potion on each other let along an NPC.
Something that can make sense is if you state that the injuries are too severe to be healed with any effectiveness. Another tactic you can use is have the enemy commit suicide by swallowing a poison or stabbing themselves to prevent giving out any information or being captured. This tactic may get old quick however and might cause you to change gears, you could alter the rules slightly and say that certain armor types are so bulky or protective that the ability to deal non-lethal damage is much harder. You could even adjust this by saying that dealing non-lethal damage requires passing a higher AC check. An example could be that in order to deal non-lethal damage to a creature you add 3 to there AC (base AC = 17 , non-lethal attack AC = 20). I hope that this helps and wish you luck.
I am betting your real concern is that your players have developed a pattern, which works for them, but is boring to you. At least, I've been there before.
Lots of great things have been suggested already, basically, you need to make taking prisoners unpredictable, right now it's an automatic win for your players. Once they realize taking a prisoner is not always awesome, they will get more selective.
As for the NPC you want to die after a short interaction, since you have a rules lawyer you will need to come up with something specific. A poison, magic effect, or trap can do it, that leaves them bleeding out and prevents healing. Feel free to leave the exact mechics fairly loose, you aren't under obligation to explain the mechic of why healing fails to your rules lawyer player, just describe the effects of healing being wasted to them with confidence so they know you know what you are doing.
10 D6 fire ball and common sense thought about how evil cults work solves this problem. secret organisations don't go round telling everyone everything, if they did they wouldn't stay secret for long, grunts know nothing of value to enemies who might capture them, group leaders may have information. group leaders will only die or be captured when absolutely necessary, they stand at the back a flee when in danger beyond that they're the fanatic members who are prepared to die before revealing information.
if captured then they activate their suicide pill,. speak a simple phrase or simple word and their false tooth explodes in a 10D6 fireball, attempts to remove the tooth to subvert this always causes it to explode. suicide pills in a fantasy world where poison cures are only a spell away really are a non starter. i had one campaign where a siege was happening and when the half orc spies in the city were captured, they would transform into slavering monsters with long claws go into a berserk frenzy regain 200 hp and start biting and scratching everything in sight, this infected those who failed a save with bubonic plague, the spy then lasted 10 rounds before burning up in a ball of fire, and leaving an echoing demonic laugh, another option is that the fanatic members undergo a transformation ritual before going on a mission it wears off after a week, they have no healing potions on them, they do have potions of cause wounds, which act for them like healing potions, normal positive energy heals actually cause their skin to blister and split while the energy causes them damage. (that one takes quite a lot of working out in my experience too) if you don't want to go to those length then simply have the captures person refuse to answer any questions at all unless your party is going to use physical torture methods, then the replies should all be false and the good aligned party members will be changing alignment as a result. physical torture is an evil act, paladins who do it are oathbreakers, clerics who do it will be abandoned by their gods. others who do it are going to gain a bad reputation. this leaves the option of using charms to get information, i refer you to the grunts know nothing, fanatics explode principle
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All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
First I'd say your encounters seem to be to easy. If your characters can have a long or short rest after each encounter - because the story has no time pressure - or encounters are not deadly enough, they have spare healing potions and spells all the time. They should be afraid to use the spell slots and potions to eventually not have them when they need them to survive. My player fear death, it's a real thing in our games and I think it makes resource management more important and fun.
[Secon deleted because it was wrong]
Third, let it not be a winning strategy. Humans, Goblins and Kobolds lie a lot to survive if they must. Often they even think the lie is the truth, their master or leader won't tell them everything.
Forth, I don't know if the interrogations are violently or not. Like cutting of ears and fingers and stuff. But if they are, you can tell your players that you do not want to be the a DM that has to let them have lengthly torture scenes all the time. They must understand it's not your job to satisfy anybodies violent fantasies. Torture is surely different to an action scene critical hit description or similar. - To take the torture our, you could let them state their questions an have an intimidation/persuation roll (ideally hidden) and then tell them what the thing knows, not knows or lie. A hidden rolled failed intimitdation to get info can not be turned with insight, the character thinks he really played the bad guy and got an answer. + You don't have to play it out much for unimportant npcs. And reroll is not allowed except they have follow up questions. Also let time pass, time they don't really have...
Fifth, talk in private to goodly characters. A good Paladin, Ranger or Cleric will not stand there and just watch the chaotic neutral Rouge skinning a Kobold or let alone a human. If they intervene it is a good time to give Inspiration. If they don't it should have consequences. Their Order, God or other people will know about it.
Sixth, let the tortured always lie. The reponse to torture are lies. That's the moral of your game world.
Seventh, use more non communicative enemies. Do some sessions with hard to interrogate beasts or little to no encounters. So they might learn to solve problems differently.
Eight, if all these subtle methods don't help, talk openly to them that this is no fun playing style for you as DM. You have this right.
If nothing helps. Get other players. You should have some fun to.
Edit: Much of this has been said already. I should have read the whole thread first. But here and there I added a new idea I think.
Man, I wish I could get my players to stop killing everything. They've developed a real fetish for beheading every enemy they find that has a name, when they were supposed to grill those people for information. Admittedly, carrying around the heads of their enemies has actually proved useful as a distraction on at least two occasions, but still...
I wonder why there are so many players doing such stuff. I am pretty sure they would not want to read books or see a movie about a bunch of "heros" running around with stinking, infectious, rotten heads. They want to read books about Drizzt or other real heros, not about psycho killers. Not even in the warhammer universe such things are done, they kill their enemies and are done usually and if crazy things happen then only by the evil foes. - And I'm pretty sure I don't want to play with players doing psychotic acts of violence on a regular basis a second time.
I wonder why there are so many players doing such stuff.
it's impossible to justify as a non evil action outside some particular primitive cultures so if lots of people are doing it they should either be changing alignment to evil or be from one of those particular cultures. other wise it's yet another example of bad DMing, by people not actually applying alignment as a property of peoples character correctly. i used to have a barbarian fighter in one of my old campaigns who would eat pieces of his vanquished foes because as part of his animistic culture his belief was that in doing so he absorbed some of their power. himself, he was also a head hunter and would shrink the heads as trophies. again culturally based around gaining power from those who you vanquish. with that he was allowed to not be evil, his personality was based around defending the weak from the horrors of what's out there in the wilds.
you couldn't justify it as an action performed by a non evil person from the sword coast though. it's simply outside cultural bounds.
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All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
My suggestion would be to let your npcs adapt to your players' actions.
If the party continues to interrogate people, let them get a name for it and have npcs adapt. Suicide pills are a bit heavy handed but you could incorporate some level of interrogation training into the cult / goblin gang / bandit group. That way when the party tries to interrogate a fresh member of said group they get a tirade of insults, laughter and told "You won't crack me like your cracked *insert previous captive*. We know your ways and there's nothing you could do to me that's worse than I'll get if I talk."
But the best thing you can probably do is just play it out in a believable way. Give out information. If they've managed to capture someone who has meaningful enough information for it to be a problem to your plans, then reward them for it. Go down that rabbit hole of improvisation and see where it takes you.
If players have a standard operating procedure, there is no reason to play it out every time. If they always search doors for traps (unless running!) you only need to roll for a few. If they always cast booming blade on attacking - they only need to mention when they don't. If they always search bodies for loot...yeah, that's a given - just tell them what they find. Or which corpse suddenly re-animates! If they always interrogate prisoners, you can gloss over most of that too.
What is understood need not be discussed. (Or at least not in mind-numbing depth.)
But players wanting more information about your campaign world is a good sign. When they stop asking, that's the time to ask for advice!
My house rule for non lethal damage is that you get disadvantage on the attack when attempting it. This means you probably want to wait until you are sure they are a blow or two from zero hp, and are confident enough of victory to double the chances of missing. Knocking people unconscious is not as easy as Hollywood would have you believe!
These are great points although my current group are extremely slow when it comes to combat so to try and factor in some kind of technical rule to non-lethal damage would probably slow things down for us further. Generally when I hear mention of the players intending to keep the target alive I'll just treat the target like I would a player character and have them roll death saves when they hit zero HP. Then it's up to the players to either stabilise the target or heal it. I do tend to RP the npcs in such a way that there are hints as to what they might be willing to reveal through interrogation. If they're willing to fight to the death, they've probably not got much to reveal in a standard interrogation. But if the players think up some interesting spin on the usual interrogation I'll certainly let it bare fruits.
And as mentioned about, giving out information by means of a story event, especially one instigated by the players, should be seen as a gift.
A non-lethal attack still renders the target unconscious for presumably 1d4 hours.
If they spend spellslots / potions, that's a cost they're spending that should have some weight to it.
We were overdoing an interrogation at one point, and out subject passed out... which made perfect sense as they were physically and emotionally traumatized form a battle leading into an interrogation.
And if the enemy is a grunt, they won't know too much of value. If they're higher up in whatever order, it's likely honor, fear or simple spite in the face of death would be motivation enough to not spill the beans.
Generally when I hear mention of the players intending to keep the target alive I'll just treat the target like I would a player character and have them roll death saves when they hit zero HP. Then it's up to the players to either stabilise the target or heal it.
This is unnecessarily complicated imo and you are also actively encouraging your players to heal the enemy. If that's truly a behavior you would like to see less of, the easiest solution is to stop having the NPCs make death saving throws.
There's no "non-lethal damage" in 5E (let alone a -4 penalty like the poster above mentions), however a player can specify that they are intending to knock an enemy unconscious in melee, no attack penalty, no disadvantage, no need to declare it in advance:
Knocking a Creature Out
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.
Why aren't those rules good enough? Why complicate it further?
@jexthomas No worries, and that's a fair point about the over complication. I wouldn't roll the death saves publicly and I would just use it as a way of deciding the npcs fate for me. Even a fake roll would suffice if I'm particularly trying to avoid interrogation, it's just so that the party doesn't feel i've flat ruled it and that their actions / intentions were inconsequential.
I still think the best thing to do is to go with what the players want to do, but just make sure something different happens with each interrogation. I often like to spin the situation and think about what the party would do in the npcs situation. They'd probably make a rescue attempt if one of their members got captured.
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.
Why aren't those rules good enough? Why complicate it further?
Those rules aren't plausible enough for me; I believe that physically it is far easier to kill someone than it is to knock them unconscious.
House rules are for times when your vision and the game authors' vision don't align 100%. 5th Edition rules are beautifully streamlined - but that means they left a lot of potential systems out. I see it as my duty to fill in the areas that are important to the group that I DM for.
But you are right to ask "Why complicate it further?" That should always be the first question before coming up with a house rule. (Or more accurately : "Why change a rule that has been playtested by 1,000s of players?")
Those rules aren't plausible enough for me; I believe that physically it is far easier to kill someone than it is to knock them unconscious.
I don't think that's true at all. In real life the human body can sustain horrific wounds and still be kept alive with the correct medical care. I would say that it's uncommon for someone to die outright from injury, it's most common that they will gradually bleed out or even die much later in hospital. It would require concerted effort to kill someone on the spot. I'm not suggesting they'll necessarily be "knocked unconscious" as unconsciousness is a bit of a fallacy in many regards, but they would certainly be incapacitated long before they die. (This obviously doesn't apply to major injury such as being crushed by a building or decapitation, but it's pretty common for people to survive multiple gunshot wounds or severe stabbings.)
That is a little off-topic but personally I feel that if the players want the enemy kept alive they should probably have a pretty good chance of doing so. In my last session I put 3 thugs against the party and it became clear the intention was to keep them alive for questioning. Our tabaxi hunter decided to scale a building and fire down on one of the thugs, scoring a critical hit which reduced the targets hitpoints well below zero. I decided the arrow had pierced him at the collarbone from above and that he died instantly. Meanwhile our bloodhunter rugby tackled the other thug "knocking him out" but certainly keeping him alive.
I guess the easiest thing to do is to simply make a calculated decision on whether the npc can be saved based on the manner by which they are defeated.
Our tabaxi hunter decided to scale a building and fire down on one of the thugs, scoring a critical hit which reduced the targets hitpoints well below zero. I decided the arrow had pierced him at the collarbone from above and that he died instantly. Meanwhile our bloodhunter rugby tackled the other thug "knocking him out" but certainly keeping him alive.
Important note, in order to deal non-lethal damage, it has to be done with a melee weapon attack. Spells, ranged weapons, and traps cannot deal non-lethal damage, but they can incapacitate enemies in other ways (i.e. glue trap, paralysis poison, sleep spell, etc.).
Our tabaxi hunter decided to scale a building and fire down on one of the thugs, scoring a critical hit which reduced the targets hitpoints well below zero. I decided the arrow had pierced him at the collarbone from above and that he died instantly. Meanwhile our bloodhunter rugby tackled the other thug "knocking him out" but certainly keeping him alive.
Important note, in order to deal non-lethal damage, it has to be done with a melee weapon attack. Spells, ranged weapons, and traps cannot deal non-lethal damage, but they can incapacitate enemies in other ways (i.e. glue trap, paralysis poison, sleep spell, etc.).
Is that really important though? What about pinning an enemy to a wall through the shoulder with an arrow? Or a sputtering goblin boss who's been burnt nearly to a crisp by a fireball but still has the breath to insult the party as he lies on the edge of death.
I think it's more important to note that you should do what seems right for the good of the story.
Those rules aren't plausible enough for me; I believe that physically it is far easier to kill someone than it is to knock them unconscious.
I don't think that's true at all.
It is 100% true.
I may be wrong in my beliefs, but my statement above is factual. The rules 'feel' wrong to me as I believe knocking someone out is harder than killing them. D&D is about my experience and the shared reality I have with the other players. Real world facts be damned! :D
But your comment has made me think about 0hp. It seems that everybody accepts that at 0 hp you either fall unconscious or die. Maybe we should view it as being so wounded that you no longer have the will/capacity to continue fighting. Except then you need rules for combat ending wounds that still allow you to run away. And people of "such singular focus" (Russian accent required) that they can "do a bear" and fight on below 0HP. ("One does not simply fall unconscious." - Boromir). Monty Python's Black Knight was obviously the comedic end of the scale, but injuries are a scale of magnitude, not just positive/negative hps. The trouble is, you need a more complex system for that and....well, see my comment above about "beautifully streamlined."
Given how powerful healing is in most D&D worlds, you are probably right - the chances of accidentally killing someone are pretty slim if there is a cleric type nearby.
I'll probably keep my house rule though, as it has a mechanical cost to gain a game advantage. (I play D&D as a game firstly, and all the other good stuff as secondary.)
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Roleplaying since Runequest.
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My players are a bunch of murder hobos, so I'm actually jealous of your situation (just a bit!), but here are some ideas. I often play goblins and kobolds as cowardly creatures. They'll tell you anything you want, even if it's completely false information or steers them into danger. The only problem here is if your players don't learn from past mistakes (and don't roll insight checks). You can also take the approach of these enemies having the same information. After Goblin #4 tells them the same thing as Goblin #1, 2, & 3 they may get the hint that there isn't much more to learn and get just as bored as you are playing out these interrogations.
Also consider this: your players are using healing potions and spells to save enemy lives? That's a drain on resources, especially on long adventuring days with lots of encounters. When things get tight, my players are reluctant to use a healing potion on each other let along an NPC.
Something that can make sense is if you state that the injuries are too severe to be healed with any effectiveness. Another tactic you can use is have the enemy commit suicide by swallowing a poison or stabbing themselves to prevent giving out any information or being captured. This tactic may get old quick however and might cause you to change gears, you could alter the rules slightly and say that certain armor types are so bulky or protective that the ability to deal non-lethal damage is much harder. You could even adjust this by saying that dealing non-lethal damage requires passing a higher AC check. An example could be that in order to deal non-lethal damage to a creature you add 3 to there AC (base AC = 17 , non-lethal attack AC = 20). I hope that this helps and wish you luck.
I am betting your real concern is that your players have developed a pattern, which works for them, but is boring to you. At least, I've been there before.
Lots of great things have been suggested already, basically, you need to make taking prisoners unpredictable, right now it's an automatic win for your players. Once they realize taking a prisoner is not always awesome, they will get more selective.
As for the NPC you want to die after a short interaction, since you have a rules lawyer you will need to come up with something specific. A poison, magic effect, or trap can do it, that leaves them bleeding out and prevents healing. Feel free to leave the exact mechics fairly loose, you aren't under obligation to explain the mechic of why healing fails to your rules lawyer player, just describe the effects of healing being wasted to them with confidence so they know you know what you are doing.
Again, thanks for all the input everyone!
10 D6 fire ball and common sense thought about how evil cults work solves this problem.
secret organisations don't go round telling everyone everything, if they did they wouldn't stay secret for long, grunts know nothing of value to enemies who might capture them,
group leaders may have information. group leaders will only die or be captured when absolutely necessary, they stand at the back a flee when in danger beyond that they're the fanatic members who are prepared to die before revealing information.
if captured then they activate their suicide pill,. speak a simple phrase or simple word and their false tooth explodes in a 10D6 fireball, attempts to remove the tooth to subvert this always causes it to explode.
suicide pills in a fantasy world where poison cures are only a spell away really are a non starter.
i had one campaign where a siege was happening and when the half orc spies in the city were captured, they would transform into slavering monsters with long claws go into a berserk frenzy regain 200 hp and start biting and scratching everything in sight, this infected those who failed a save with bubonic plague, the spy then lasted 10 rounds before burning up in a ball of fire, and leaving an echoing demonic laugh,
another option is that the fanatic members undergo a transformation ritual before going on a mission it wears off after a week, they have no healing potions on them, they do have potions of cause wounds, which act for them like healing potions, normal positive energy heals actually cause their skin to blister and split while the energy causes them damage. (that one takes quite a lot of working out in my experience too)
if you don't want to go to those length then simply have the captures person refuse to answer any questions at all unless your party is going to use physical torture methods, then the replies should all be false and the good aligned party members will be changing alignment as a result. physical torture is an evil act, paladins who do it are oathbreakers, clerics who do it will be abandoned by their gods. others who do it are going to gain a bad reputation.
this leaves the option of using charms to get information, i refer you to the grunts know nothing, fanatics explode principle
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
First I'd say your encounters seem to be to easy. If your characters can have a long or short rest after each encounter - because the story has no time pressure - or encounters are not deadly enough, they have spare healing potions and spells all the time. They should be afraid to use the spell slots and potions to eventually not have them when they need them to survive. My player fear death, it's a real thing in our games and I think it makes resource management more important and fun.
[Secon deleted because it was wrong]
Third, let it not be a winning strategy. Humans, Goblins and Kobolds lie a lot to survive if they must. Often they even think the lie is the truth, their master or leader won't tell them everything.
Forth, I don't know if the interrogations are violently or not. Like cutting of ears and fingers and stuff. But if they are, you can tell your players that you do not want to be the a DM that has to let them have lengthly torture scenes all the time. They must understand it's not your job to satisfy anybodies violent fantasies. Torture is surely different to an action scene critical hit description or similar. - To take the torture our, you could let them state their questions an have an intimidation/persuation roll (ideally hidden) and then tell them what the thing knows, not knows or lie. A hidden rolled failed intimitdation to get info can not be turned with insight, the character thinks he really played the bad guy and got an answer. + You don't have to play it out much for unimportant npcs. And reroll is not allowed except they have follow up questions. Also let time pass, time they don't really have...
Fifth, talk in private to goodly characters. A good Paladin, Ranger or Cleric will not stand there and just watch the chaotic neutral Rouge skinning a Kobold or let alone a human. If they intervene it is a good time to give Inspiration. If they don't it should have consequences. Their Order, God or other people will know about it.
Sixth, let the tortured always lie. The reponse to torture are lies. That's the moral of your game world.
Seventh, use more non communicative enemies. Do some sessions with hard to interrogate beasts or little to no encounters. So they might learn to solve problems differently.
Eight, if all these subtle methods don't help, talk openly to them that this is no fun playing style for you as DM. You have this right.
If nothing helps. Get other players. You should have some fun to.
Edit: Much of this has been said already. I should have read the whole thread first. But here and there I added a new idea I think.
Man, I wish I could get my players to stop killing everything. They've developed a real fetish for beheading every enemy they find that has a name, when they were supposed to grill those people for information. Admittedly, carrying around the heads of their enemies has actually proved useful as a distraction on at least two occasions, but still...
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I wonder why there are so many players doing such stuff. I am pretty sure they would not want to read books or see a movie about a bunch of "heros" running around with stinking, infectious, rotten heads. They want to read books about Drizzt or other real heros, not about psycho killers. Not even in the warhammer universe such things are done, they kill their enemies and are done usually and if crazy things happen then only by the evil foes. - And I'm pretty sure I don't want to play with players doing psychotic acts of violence on a regular basis a second time.
it's impossible to justify as a non evil action outside some particular primitive cultures so if lots of people are doing it they should either be changing alignment to evil or be from one of those particular cultures. other wise it's yet another example of bad DMing, by people not actually applying alignment as a property of peoples character correctly.
i used to have a barbarian fighter in one of my old campaigns who would eat pieces of his vanquished foes because as part of his animistic culture his belief was that in doing so he absorbed some of their power. himself, he was also a head hunter and would shrink the heads as trophies. again culturally based around gaining power from those who you vanquish. with that he was allowed to not be evil, his personality was based around defending the weak from the horrors of what's out there in the wilds.
you couldn't justify it as an action performed by a non evil person from the sword coast though. it's simply outside cultural bounds.
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
My suggestion would be to let your npcs adapt to your players' actions.
If the party continues to interrogate people, let them get a name for it and have npcs adapt. Suicide pills are a bit heavy handed but you could incorporate some level of interrogation training into the cult / goblin gang / bandit group. That way when the party tries to interrogate a fresh member of said group they get a tirade of insults, laughter and told "You won't crack me like your cracked *insert previous captive*. We know your ways and there's nothing you could do to me that's worse than I'll get if I talk."
But the best thing you can probably do is just play it out in a believable way. Give out information. If they've managed to capture someone who has meaningful enough information for it to be a problem to your plans, then reward them for it. Go down that rabbit hole of improvisation and see where it takes you.
If players have a standard operating procedure, there is no reason to play it out every time.
If they always search doors for traps (unless running!) you only need to roll for a few.
If they always cast booming blade on attacking - they only need to mention when they don't.
If they always search bodies for loot...yeah, that's a given - just tell them what they find. Or which corpse suddenly re-animates!
If they always interrogate prisoners, you can gloss over most of that too.
What is understood need not be discussed. (Or at least not in mind-numbing depth.)
But players wanting more information about your campaign world is a good sign. When they stop asking, that's the time to ask for advice!
My house rule for non lethal damage is that you get disadvantage on the attack when attempting it. This means you probably want to wait until you are sure they are a blow or two from zero hp, and are confident enough of victory to double the chances of missing. Knocking people unconscious is not as easy as Hollywood would have you believe!
Roleplaying since Runequest.
These are great points although my current group are extremely slow when it comes to combat so to try and factor in some kind of technical rule to non-lethal damage would probably slow things down for us further. Generally when I hear mention of the players intending to keep the target alive I'll just treat the target like I would a player character and have them roll death saves when they hit zero HP. Then it's up to the players to either stabilise the target or heal it. I do tend to RP the npcs in such a way that there are hints as to what they might be willing to reveal through interrogation. If they're willing to fight to the death, they've probably not got much to reveal in a standard interrogation. But if the players think up some interesting spin on the usual interrogation I'll certainly let it bare fruits.
And as mentioned about, giving out information by means of a story event, especially one instigated by the players, should be seen as a gift.
A non-lethal attack still renders the target unconscious for presumably 1d4 hours.
If they spend spellslots / potions, that's a cost they're spending that should have some weight to it.
We were overdoing an interrogation at one point, and out subject passed out... which made perfect sense as they were physically and emotionally traumatized form a battle leading into an interrogation.
And if the enemy is a grunt, they won't know too much of value. If they're higher up in whatever order, it's likely honor, fear or simple spite in the face of death would be motivation enough to not spill the beans.
This is unnecessarily complicated imo and you are also actively encouraging your players to heal the enemy. If that's truly a behavior you would like to see less of, the easiest solution is to stop having the NPCs make death saving throws.
There's no "non-lethal damage" in 5E (let alone a -4 penalty like the poster above mentions), however a player can specify that they are intending to knock an enemy unconscious in melee, no attack penalty, no disadvantage, no need to declare it in advance:
Why aren't those rules good enough? Why complicate it further?
Edit: Sorry S_P, I got you mixed up with the OP.
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
@jexthomas
No worries, and that's a fair point about the over complication. I wouldn't roll the death saves publicly and I would just use it as a way of deciding the npcs fate for me. Even a fake roll would suffice if I'm particularly trying to avoid interrogation, it's just so that the party doesn't feel i've flat ruled it and that their actions / intentions were inconsequential.
I still think the best thing to do is to go with what the players want to do, but just make sure something different happens with each interrogation. I often like to spin the situation and think about what the party would do in the npcs situation. They'd probably make a rescue attempt if one of their members got captured.
Those rules aren't plausible enough for me; I believe that physically it is far easier to kill someone than it is to knock them unconscious.
House rules are for times when your vision and the game authors' vision don't align 100%.
5th Edition rules are beautifully streamlined - but that means they left a lot of potential systems out. I see it as my duty to fill in the areas that are important to the group that I DM for.
But you are right to ask "Why complicate it further?"
That should always be the first question before coming up with a house rule. (Or more accurately : "Why change a rule that has been playtested by 1,000s of players?")
Roleplaying since Runequest.
I don't think that's true at all. In real life the human body can sustain horrific wounds and still be kept alive with the correct medical care. I would say that it's uncommon for someone to die outright from injury, it's most common that they will gradually bleed out or even die much later in hospital. It would require concerted effort to kill someone on the spot. I'm not suggesting they'll necessarily be "knocked unconscious" as unconsciousness is a bit of a fallacy in many regards, but they would certainly be incapacitated long before they die. (This obviously doesn't apply to major injury such as being crushed by a building or decapitation, but it's pretty common for people to survive multiple gunshot wounds or severe stabbings.)
That is a little off-topic but personally I feel that if the players want the enemy kept alive they should probably have a pretty good chance of doing so. In my last session I put 3 thugs against the party and it became clear the intention was to keep them alive for questioning. Our tabaxi hunter decided to scale a building and fire down on one of the thugs, scoring a critical hit which reduced the targets hitpoints well below zero. I decided the arrow had pierced him at the collarbone from above and that he died instantly. Meanwhile our bloodhunter rugby tackled the other thug "knocking him out" but certainly keeping him alive.
I guess the easiest thing to do is to simply make a calculated decision on whether the npc can be saved based on the manner by which they are defeated.
Important note, in order to deal non-lethal damage, it has to be done with a melee weapon attack. Spells, ranged weapons, and traps cannot deal non-lethal damage, but they can incapacitate enemies in other ways (i.e. glue trap, paralysis poison, sleep spell, etc.).
Is that really important though? What about pinning an enemy to a wall through the shoulder with an arrow? Or a sputtering goblin boss who's been burnt nearly to a crisp by a fireball but still has the breath to insult the party as he lies on the edge of death.
I think it's more important to note that you should do what seems right for the good of the story.
It is 100% true.
I may be wrong in my beliefs, but my statement above is factual. The rules 'feel' wrong to me as I believe knocking someone out is harder than killing them. D&D is about my experience and the shared reality I have with the other players. Real world facts be damned! :D
But your comment has made me think about 0hp. It seems that everybody accepts that at 0 hp you either fall unconscious or die. Maybe we should view it as being so wounded that you no longer have the will/capacity to continue fighting.
Except then you need rules for combat ending wounds that still allow you to run away. And people of "such singular focus" (Russian accent required) that they can "do a bear" and fight on below 0HP. ("One does not simply fall unconscious." - Boromir).
Monty Python's Black Knight was obviously the comedic end of the scale, but injuries are a scale of magnitude, not just positive/negative hps.
The trouble is, you need a more complex system for that and....well, see my comment above about "beautifully streamlined."
Given how powerful healing is in most D&D worlds, you are probably right - the chances of accidentally killing someone are pretty slim if there is a cleric type nearby.
I'll probably keep my house rule though, as it has a mechanical cost to gain a game advantage. (I play D&D as a game firstly, and all the other good stuff as secondary.)
Roleplaying since Runequest.