non lethal attacks

[Glory]

iv played through almost three times now and i dont really think iv used this at all iv definitely missed stuff but is there any fight where the idea is to use non lethal attacks for information or something

[IRMcG]

There's one it's vital for if you want to keep a possible party member alive ( Minsc ) and one metagaming moment if you want another possible party member ( Minthara ) but beyond that it's not required outside of some roleplaying choice like not killing Ethel's puppets and the like.

[Brian_the_Brute]

Knocking out Minthara in the goblin camp is a way to get them to show up in the story later so you can recruit her even without burning down the grove.

It's also useful on the duegar to avoid the guardkiller status.

[Mike Garrison]

Be aware that non-lethal is tricky. Ranged attacks are always lethal. Elemental damage is always lethal. And the game decides whether someone is unconscious or dead by whether they took any lethal damage when they were at 1 hp or less.

So if an NPC has 35 hp, you can do 34 hp of lethal damage and then knock them unconscious with 1 (or more) hp of non-lethal. But, if you hit them with a sword that does 1d8 + 1d4 fire damage as a bonus, then even using it "non-lethally", your attacks will include that fire damage and therefore the final one that brings them to 0 hp will be lethal.