Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback What's the point of non-lethal damage when the game still thinks you killed people?

So, yeah, I get it that allowing for different dialogue for non-lethal options in every situation implies lots of extra development. But if you aren't going to accommodate it, then why even include the non-lethal option? It feels like a lie.

Non-lethal mode is primarily made to give the player an option to avoid killing temporarily hostile NPCs, such as civilians, quest givers or vendors who catch you in the middle of a criminal act. Without it the player would be forced to kill them which would be just terrible design.

Outside of that in terms of the story as much as I wish it did, for example with Minthara's story, it unfortunately does not have much purpose. Still it's incredibly useful as you can also use it to grab unique items off of NPCs without having to kill them, such as Kagha whose unique necklace can be obtained by knocking her out

None.
I am not sure but I think players demanded it and like so often Larian caved in. But even if someone at Larian had the idea which somehow got greenlit it was obvious from the start that it would be impossible to have reactions for all combinations of kill and ko.

It does have one use in Act 3 when you're doing .

I’ve found a couple of other instances where knocking out characters is recognized, but also a couple where it probably should have been and wasn’t. You may also just not want to kill some people for your own role playing reasons even when the game doesn’t recognize it.

However I did find a bug where previously knocked out characters didn’t turn hostile when when the rest of their colleagues did. Even though they highlighted red, they never entered combat.

Well, one good use if you have ghouls as reanimate dead. They can feed on knocked out enemies.

I think it should mostly be perceived as an abandoned feature. There's ONE use in the story that has been already mentioned and then you have at least other three or four scenarios where it would make sense for the this to be an useful option (i.e. Mayrina brothers, masked hag minions, etc) but the "knocked out" opponents are functionally treated just as corpses.

It's probably a vestigial leftover of a time when they were planning to do more with the option, only to be forced to overlook it when development deadlines started biting them in the ass.

There are a few places, like with misnc or Isobel where it's useful. But yeah it's very low impact

I knock out Gotashu,and news paper say he is dead .......

Non-leathal damage is a D&D rule, if memory serves.

Its for example very useful to avoid killing
They should probably take it into consideration that players may just knock people out. Or make it impossible to not kill certain people, because the game assumes them to be dead.

I can knock out kagha,and after a long rest,she will stand there with bruises all over the face , the describe is"she is hate you ,dont want to say anything".I thing this result is far more fun then just kill some one.....

"You can't just go around killing people!"

- John Connor, 1991

"Yes, I can"

- The Dark Urge, 2023

Yeah, that was my memory of it, too. People really wanted it in EA, and this is how Larian implemented it.

Well, you need it to rescue Minsc. Also, if you get caught stealing, you can knock someone out without killing them, and aggro-ing an entire city, for example.