Did you ever just

My Monk has decided that after letting his anger and emotions get the better of him during a boss fight that he is going to try his best to avoid taking lives wherever possible. This mostly translates to just Batmaning people: beating the shit out of them without killing them, but it sorta works.

>tried playing a pacifist?
I don't think a pacifist although I have played character who went to rather large lengths to avoid fighting if they could, it tended to be for practical rather than moral reasons though
>Or at least someone whose utterly disgusted by violence? [You know, like, a normal person]
I don't know who you're socialising with but most people aren't 'utterly disgusted' by violence

There is actually a role-play game (not sure if it's out yet or not) entirely about pacifism, it's called Lotus Dimension, I'd look it up if that sort of thing interest you OP (I can't attest to whether it's actually a good system or not though)

This class isn't even that bad.

I played Shadowrun as a pacifist, my character was supposed to be the perfect assasin, when he got out his program and actually tried to kill someone he was physically ill from the thought of it, he simply couldn't do it. They kicked him out and he became a shadow runner because he has no other skills. Would disarm and citizens arrest his enemies, called the ambulance or doc wagon if they were badly injured. It was quiet fun. At one point the mage burned someone alive and that almost killed me. Best shadow run experience i ever had.

Yeah, I went through a whole phase of that. I made about 3 of them, had a lot of fun playing them, then moved on to different character types.

And so do people in D&D, but when you're raided by orcs, zombie plagues, dragons, etc, sometimes diplomacy doesn't work and you have to grab a weapon and defend your family and loved ones.

Pacifists are stupid, avoid violence is ok, but if you sacrifice the life of other people over that you're scum.

>I don't know who you're socialising with but most people aren't 'utterly disgusted' by violence
You guys need to take a step back from your gore and actually talk to real people. Yeah, violence exists irl, but most people don't like it that much, and that's before you get to the point that it's at in most D&D campaigns, where you have wanton slaughter of everything from the native people, to the local wildlife, to anyone that pisses you off at all. Despite what you seem to think, murder and killing has never been the first resort of any major group of people.

Yeah. I was a psionic diplomat and scheming politician. Despite being a little underhanded from time to time, I was very Lawful Good and dedicated to giving everyone a second chance and using non-violent solutions to problems as much as possible. I even adopted a Goblin who surrendered for a while and tried to civilize him. It was... mildly successful.

You have been surrounded by too many murderhoboes and killer GMs, normal people try diplomacy first if the creature can understand and isn't already in full killing mode.

I think you should probably state the difference between over the top fantasy violence, and actual real-world violence. Most people would not be disgusted by some amount of pretend violence, but most people WOULD be horrified by seeing someone actually get brutally murdered in front of them.

just to be clear when you say 'violence' are we talking carving people up with axes or two people getting into a fist fight?

had a player run a pacifistic paladin of Sarenrae, tried to redeem everything she saw. Went for a lot of stuff that focused on non lethal damage and she was quite the powerhouse with non lethal.

Yes, but in Recon (Vietnam War setting) has that as an alignment. Fun times.

>D&D
>disdain 4 plebs

I have played several Primetime adventure games which didn't have any violence. None of the characters were people who were used to violence, so it never happened.

I've played Blue Planet. A system where, if you're not focused towards violence, you'll lose badly to someone how is. If neither side has anyone focused on violence, the fight is round after round of everyone failing to hit. The PCs were all focused on other areas so, after the first fight, we worked to avoid it.

But I've never played a character who avoids combat in a system with a combat focus (most systems that get talked about here) because I know that combat will come up in those systems and, when it does*, playing a pacifist will be a horrible experience. Partly from having nothing to do, partly because the lack of combat capability gives me a much lower chance of surviving the combat, partly from letting the team down.

*Even if it's only one fight every few sessions.

I have seen one person playing a pacifist character in an Ironclaw game I ran. He seemed to enjoy it. Though he was playing a healer, so he had plenty to do that didn't involve harming the enemy and the pacifist gift gave him good defensive bonuses as long as he didn't hurt anything.

Yes, had a mummy with a non-lethal build. If he had absolutely no choice he'd just knockout people.

>disgusted by violence
>You know, like, a normal person
What is going on here?

There's also actually a pacifism trait you can take, though obviously with how some jobs get messy this can be a hindrance.

Yes. He was an illusionist who wished to avoid fighting through trickery because he didn't like the idea of people dying.

>but most people don't like it that much,
That's why action flicks are some of the most popular movies Hollywood can make. Humans react biologically to violence, in both positive and negative ways.
What makes us avoid violence is FEAR, by the way. Human corpses have a smell that may be the worst thing your nose will ever experience. The color of blood (red) is the most alarming color to us.
We are evolutionary equipped with a healthy attitude towards violence-avoidance.

But at the same time we love it. It's amazing how easy it is to make people enjoy torturing others. Most people can be made to torture people literally to death in a very short time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Eavesdropping on German soldiers revealed that while some were hesitant to shoot at people at first, it took them all but 3 days to get a taste for it.

Humans are naturally inclined to develop a violent streak, because that too is a survival trait.

It is extremely abnormal humans that can face manslaughter every day and not think, "gee, I'd really like to stab that guy in his squishy bits before he stabs me in mine".
Even then, fear is still a dominant factor. Many combatants have been observed to use swords with hacking motions rather than as cutting weapons because they were too afraid to do what they had trained.

Adventurers are anything but normal, though.

I played a dude who looked like he fell into a meat mincer from all the wounds he received due to having a non-lethal fighting style. His gimmick was trying to avoid violence at all cost, and when that fails, using non-violent methods of fighting. As in fighting with a sheated sword or just the environment to knock them off.
there were exceptions like constructs and unintelligent undead. But the idea was that sentience needs to be preserved at all cost.

>fighting with a sheated sword
Did your DM give you any attack or defense penalties for that?

Isn't the Milgram experiment fairly commonly misrepresented? I thought most people actually refused, so I wouldn't say it was most. You also have to account for the fact that the experimenter would say

>Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on

if a subject expressed concern for the other persons health

Pacifist characters can be done very well but you seem to be suggesting some kind of spineless, contrarian fag who gets up on his high horse whenever the knight kills an orc.

That's right. I'm afraid I can't track down the podcast where I learned this, but there were a couple dozen variations on the Milgram experiment with different variables. Sometimes the tester would be wearing normal clothes instead of a labcoat, sometimes the wording would change. Literally every participant would stop the moment the tester said 'You don't have any other choice.'

>I thought most people actually refused,
Maybe read the article next time?
>In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock
>Milgram later investigated the effect of the experiment's locale on obedience levels by holding an experiment in an unregistered, backstreet office in a bustling city, as opposed to at Yale, a respectable university. The level of obedience, "although somewhat reduced, was not significantly lower." What made more of a difference was the proximity of the "learner" and the experimenter.
>He found that while the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages ranged from 28% to 91%, there was no significant trend over time and the average percentage for US studies (61%) was close to the one for non-US studies (66%).
>>Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage,
Indeed. That doesn't change that these people were quite ready to administer what was quite visibly great levels of physical torture to their victims.

I'd like you to provide a source.

He didn't.
I imposed penalties upon myself.

>I imposed penalties upon myself.
You chose your own attack/defense penalties and he didn't care what kind of numbers you came up with?
Can you make up bonuses too, if you feel like your character had a great night's sleep or something?

Wew lad, you sure got your panties up in a bunch over nothing.

I don't think I found the exact podcast on a google search, but here's one that seems close to what I remember. It starts around 14 minutes in.

radiolab.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/

Sorry. I just find it odd.

People forced into situations where they're constantly around violence typically acclimate to it pretty quick. They don't necessarily become desensitized to it, but they do get tougher. If after five years a cop or firefighter is still running off to puke in the bushes every time he sees a gruesome car crash then it's generally accepted he's not cut out for it.

My issue with people on Veeky Forums who plug pacifist characters is they go under this dual assumption pacifism is essentially cowardice and cowardice is somehow laudable because it's "practical". Like how OP insists being totally disgusted with violence is normal.

Think of paramedics. They're basically pacifists; they cannot attack or restrain people. It's not their job. But they're anything but disgusted with violence and actively contribute to a hectic scene. My general belief is if a character is so shocked and horrified with violence then they need to either shape up or ship out because blatant cowards are more often than not total deadweights.

Ah, that's perfectly understandable.
But it can easily depend on the system itself. Some won't impose a penalty on that. Getting a hit in isn't much different, accuracy-wise, with a sheathed weapon and an unsheathed one.
What would change would be how effective the strike is.
In the case of our game, it made the weapon lose all armor pierce and caused it to deal stun damage instead of lethal damage.
It's more or less a rules situation that's not hard to resolve, so I just said "hey GM, I wanna do it this way, with full knowledge of the penalty"
He was originally adamant about keeping it penalty-less, but I was opposed to that.
That's why I called it self-imposed.
Hope that makes more sense.

Thanks. I'm currently looking through a few other websites myself.

I've played one. Only tough part was no gear, but other that a very viable character .

>Getting a hit in isn't much different, accuracy-wise, with a sheathed weapon and an unsheathed one.
The sheathed weapon is just heavier and has a different point of balance, making it slower and less nimble. Though I guess that largely depends on whoever is running the game.
>Hope that makes more sense.
Yes, thank you. But next time, why doesn't he just buy a mace and use a weapon that is inherently unlikely to kill people unless you hit them in the head?

I killed a man in real life once. Home intruder. And yeah, I'm usually the PC who tries to curb murderhobo-ing whenever possible. Once talked down a group of orcs by appealing to the war chief I was engaged with mid battle. Lucky rolls and good RP.

You got engaged to an orc war chief?
Are you playing an elf girl?

Maces aren't really nonlethal. They cause internal bleeding and broken ribs can puncuture organs. You can even puncture arteries in limbs, especially if you break bones. An effective bludgeoning weapon can be just as lethal as a cutting weapon.

Difference being, you can fix a mace victim after the fight before he dies.
Sword victims usually bleed out relatively quickly.

>fixing a mace victim
Internal damage is deadlier than external wounds, user

If you're talking magic then they're both relatively easy. If not then I don'tsee how staunching a wound is much harder than stopping internal bleeding or patching up somebody's lung after getting their ribs back where they should be. If don't want to be realistic about the lethality of getting bludgeoned that's fine, but you can do the same with cutting if you just want to be less lethal.

I just watched a youtube video saying the British police forces usually went with maces because of their lon-lethal nature.
youtube.com/watch?v=OnveFLcgoG0
youtube.com/watch?v=V-8jdqNXeG4
I'm inclined to trust the guy since he studies historical sources and tries to revive medieval martial arts. He says the mace is basically the precursor of the police baton.

The problem with playing a character disgusted by violence is that in most RPGs, violence really is the answer to most problems.

Unless you're willing to set aside some time in your game to have a bit of an arc where the character gets used to violence or convinces the party to stop being violent, there's really no point to including it. It's weight that would hinder or even halt the party in achieving their goals, and it's not going to work with every story.

Trigun manages to work well with it because at first it's a contrast between what's known about Vash the Stampede and how he actually is, and eventually ties us into a larger plot with his backstory and stuff. But it would not work well in a story about a rebellion, or a survival horror game.

You can just play somebody disgusted with what they have to do while at the same time seeing the necessity of it.

We have one player who.. guy is just weird with it. He'll insist we not fight obviously evil creatures that could later come back and attack but pick fights with neutral clerics of gods rival to his own (he's a fucking ranger by the way) and it's seemingly at random.
Oh no we don't have to fight those two mind flayers, lets just leave them in this room behind us after we've opened the door and they know we're here.
But meet a cleric of umberlee who's quite litterally using her control of water to make a kiddiepool for some refugee kids? FUCKING RAGE.

I just stared a Paladin and my party is already worried cause i said i knocked the guy if fought out, but that was more i figured a halfling bandit is more "bring him the local law enforcement" than "SMITE AND CLEAVE!"

Superman is a pacifist until there's no other way to save lives.

Played a Vow of Poverty/Peace Monk once, and it was actually kind of fun.

Ever been hit with one? Bout as "non-lethal" as a pistol whip, or a god damn tazer.

This so much.

>I'm a better person than you because I'm passive-agressive little shit and refuse to fight.
9/10 people who claim to be pacifists are really just this.

Well neither of those will kill unless you have some heart condition or you fall over onto a bed of nails, so...

>people have basically always avoided violence
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
no one should bothe respond to such obvious bait, I can probably give you 5-6 example on the top of my head

>people always avoided violence and punished iy
you WOULD be right IF you added
>within their group.
humans are cooperative, social species so internal violence is naturally harmful. But violence against other societies is not. From the tribes of hunter gatherers raiding each other for shit to massive wars caused by nationalism not that long ago. Only recently humans began to leave the kin versus alien mentality.
Besides it was always easy to justify or even glorify violence if the case was just. And there was no juster case than kicking ass of "the alien" who wronged us. Even if the wrongdoing wasnt that violent, or violent at all.

I tried.

Except your fellow PCs will all be shitty murderhobos.

Did I try it? DID I TRY IT!?

I literally made a class centered around the concept.

Here's the referenced daunt levels, they're basically negative levels that remove nonlethal damage immunity

Yeah, the party just got annoyed.

>non-violence
>in le game where manual explains how to violence people for 250 out of 300 pages.

And to explain why they need to be subject to language-dependent skills, it was the simplest way I could define "A rational intelligent being".

If I was asked the question "What is a man", I would have said "One which can speak and understand speech", which would cause Diogenes to show up with a parrot. End result? I get a free parrot.

>being a pacifist
>in a world where things are evil by nature, not by nurture
>goblins, orcs, gnolls, chromatic dragons and their ilk, fucking DEMONS

Good luck with that.

>he's never imposed his own penalties

There's a rogue thief in the 5e campaign I just joined who seems to be fairly pacifistic. We ambushed some cultists in an abandoned home and while the party slaughtered them she guarded the only other exit. She defended herself and contained the fleeing cultists while the fighter cleaved through them all. I'm not sure if the character or the player is upset by what took place. I also worry that my influence on the game was had a negative impact. The rogues irl sister plays a cleric who seemed pretty just and lawful in her approach the first session but seems to embraced her inner murderhobo over the short time I've participated. Being a wizard, i thought it natural to be suspicious of others and to always have countermeasures planned. Rather paranoid, really. We knew we had to clear out a dragon who was hiding elsewhere in the abandoned town but when we heard there was dragon cultists looking to parle with said dragon, i thought it wise to dispatch them to prevent their potential meddling with an already likely to be incredibly arduous fight. So I recomended that since we knew where the cultists were, and they seemed not to regard us as a threat, and seemed quite inept themselves, that we ought to simply trap them and kill them all but one to squeeze fof information. And it worked. But, like I said, though my methods work, it seems to be a bit darker than what was the initial tone of the group and how they might have gone about solving things before my arrival.

Played a pacifist bard in my last campaign. Up until now I've been fighters and tanks, it was a lot of fun trying to figure out ways of annoying and distracting people without hurting them.

I did have a steel reinforced lute I named Last Resort if someone needed a good thumping.

STANDING.....
ON THE EEEEEEDGE

I'd like to play a pacifish yojimbo in l5r who tries to avoid combat if at all possible. Bonus points if their charge runs their mouth all the time and forces him to duel for her

just buy this game OP and then stop judging eveyone else kickstarter.com/projects/112707022/lotus-dimension-a-new-game

The popularity of wrestling, action movies, first person shooters, etc indicates differently.
We love violence, just not gore.

Does Reversal do lethal damage to things immune to daunt and nonlethal damage? The caveat implies that it does but the text doesn't say it

Consider this as errata: Reversal does lethal damage to the undauntable due to being the class's central ability

Where can i find a 5e pdf for this dude?