Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-9601450-20131225183646/@comment-24180901-20140430200020

Not to unsheathe the realism-club, but to me this would feel highly artificial, as even fists tend to do a lot of permanent damage, which is why professional boxing is done with padded gloves and bare-knuckle brawling is an underground event.

Quarterstaves will break bones on unarmored opponents and be ineffective against plate-armored fighters (except for disarming moves).

Maces on the extreme end of the spectrum are specifically designed to score kills against heavy armor and will pulverize bones, gooify flesh and do any horrible harm you can imagine - except for transient blunt trauma.

In light of this I would restrict undamaging knockout to a very limited class of weapons in very limited situations. Even a half-decent light helmet will absorb enough of the force of a knock-out blow to make that a very risky proposition and the not-knocked-out opponent will likely respond with lethal force. I know I would.

How about magic? How about poisoned blades and arrows? With blades you reintroduce the permanent damage component, but at least you can (mostly) just send the victim to hospital instead of the morgue.

The route that I would go in nonlethal fighting would be a wrestling system with cooperative moves (one fighter to neutralize the opponents mobility, the other one to apply bindings). Just so I don´t come across as totally negative ;).