Non-Lethal KO: Difference between revisions

* Throughout the ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' series, monsters overcome in battle are described as "defeated". This rule does ''not'' apply to your own party, however - when a character is reduced to zero HP, the game announces, "(Character) [[Only Mostly Dead|dies]]". In addition, monsters dispatched by the instant-death Whack and Thwack spells are explicitly described as "killed".

* In ''[[Dungeon Siege]]'', characters losing all of their hit points will be rendered unconscious. If they continue taking damage, they'll get killed. If your entire party gets killed, the game is over. Of course, you can always revive your party members.

** And human enemies come to their senses. All of these are justified in Mother and Mother 2, since all these things are under the influence of an alien with ultimate evil power on its side. When you defeat an enemy, you are usually just freeing it from the alien's mind control. Objects that stop moving are otherwise inanimate objects that simply revert back to their normal state. Party members will become unconscious instead of dying, ''but'' follow you as ghosts/angels until resurrected.

* The ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games moved from describing characters who lose all their HP as "killed" to "KOed" or "wounded" once they hit 16-bit. This may have been done in part to [[Hand Wave]] the ''"Why don't they use a Phoenix Down?"'' problem when characters [[Plotline Death|die as a result of the plot]]. The spell which restores one from this state, though, remains "Life", "Raise", or "Rise".

** Your party members will always go into a Non-Lethal KO, though, even if they took Body damage. There are plenty of enemies that are still alive in cutscenes after you battle them, as well, regardless of what method you used to defeat them.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'': unless you need the units for plot events, losing them won't net you a game over, but will cost you some to huge amount of money to repair them. And even if you run out of money, destroyed units will be fixed anyway and will be ready for the next battle.

* Games using the Gamebryo engine (e.g. [[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]] and Fallout3) have an NPC flag called "Essential." Since some NPCs are vital to the main quest, they are set to essential so they can't die; when their HP is reduced to zero, they fall down and a message displays "(NPC) is unconscious." The NPC will wake up after a short time.

** [[Fallout: New Vegas]] does incorporate non-lethal damage with a few weapons (boxing glove variants and beanbag shotgun rounds), but has no essential NPCs except Yes Man.

== Tabletop Games ==

* In ''[[Toon (game)|Toon]]: The Cartoon RPG'', the player characters are cartoon characters, who as everyone knows can take massive amounts of abuse without getting killed. So instead of dying when they run out of hit points, they Fall Down, and are taken out of action temporarily.

** As illustrated in [http://www.goblinscomic.com/11152005/ this webcomic].

** 4th Edition changes the death threshold from -10 to negative your Bloodied value.<ref>That is, 1/2 of your Maximum HP</ref>

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[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]