The Idea

So, the other day I was thinking to myself how fun the Loot the Unconscious and Silent Takedown mods were. Essentially, it might be possible to have a mostly non-lethal playthrough with that. Almost. And this got me thinking on another topic: What if that were actually possible? What if one could be a wasteland pacifist, killing only when it was actually necessary? And what if there were rewards for doing so?

The Execution

The mod would provide a series of mods for all laser and plasma weaponry in the game that would essentially turn the weapon into one that almost purely damages fatigue instead of health, it would take about the same amount of effort though to knock a person or creature out as it would to kill them, perhaps even a little bit more. The mods would be found in the wasteland or purchased. (The Weapon Mods Reworked would likely provide a good basis for this.)

For every 5 levels you go without killing someone, you gain a perk. Perhaps one that scales up and boosts speech and barter whenever it does. Or something like that, but not too much as to keep things balanced.

The game would also likely need to be modded to dictate that people who fall unconscious remain so for longer. A little effort might need to be put into this area, perhaps with energy weapons skill dictating just how long they stay out for. And with the loot the unconscious mod, you'd never actually lose out on anything. Though you'd still lose karma for knocking out an allied person, of course, both faction and in general, as it applies. The same as with killing.

Why?

Fun.

It'd be awesome to do it, to be able to beat the game and say that one did it without killing a single person, it'd probably be a little bit difficult, but it could be doable. And eventually it could be expanded upon, to work with melee weapons, and to perhaps include unique guns which use tranquiliser dart ammo. It would likely make the game a lot harder playing it this way, too.

My Taser weapons for FNNCQ NV are doing exactly what you are describing here. :whistling:

But you have to wait a bit because there is still a lot of work to do for my slavery mod.

I wonder if Endurance still governs how fast people regen Fatigue? In Oblivion my normal nonlethal method was to KO someone with fatigue damage, then knock their endurance down to 0 so they wouldn't get back up for hours.

Not really sure why avoiding killing people would somehow make you a better haggler, or improve your talent at persuasion. If anything, having killed a lot of people should, your threats would be more believable

Boost Medicine, Unarmed, and Survival.

I believe it is. I mean, the Loot the Unconscious and Silent but Deadly mods both tinker with fatigue to make people unconscious, and stay unconscious for a while. That's why a mod for laser guns that made them do almost purely fatigue damage would be particularly effective. You could knock someone out for ages, you could use Loot the Unconscious to get whatever you needed off them, and then just scamper off before they wake up.



Speech in New Vegas isn't about threats, that would be more to do with Intimidating Presence. It's actually about being suave. So therefore, your logic doesn't work. People are more likely to listen to a sophisticate in New Vegas, what with a young government trying to find wings, and the echoes of old world capitalism hanging around, than they would listen to a psychopathic killer.

"Threats, eh? Go tell it to the NCR troopers/Securitrons over there, I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige you."

So being a pacifist who doesn't kill would actually get you in the good books with a lot of people. Perhaps it would also lose you reputation for not killing with groups like Caesar's Legion and the Fiends too, just to balance things out. But if a group isn't psychopathic or sociopathic, they're not going to appreciate someone acting like a psychopath/sociopath around them, are they?

So actually, my reasoning fits. You need to realise that New Vegas isn't so much a post-apocalyptic world, but rather a post-post-apocalyptic world, they've moved beyond the intiial stages of desperation, and they're actually just starting to cobble things together, hence the larger factions.

I would love this. It would make lasers more useful, as well as beanbag rounds.

There are several speech checks that are threats actually, one of which is in Goodpsrings if you help the Powder Gangers.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to crap all over this idea, more choices is always good. But I don't personally see why you'd get better at talking when you refrain from killing people. Speech is about being suave for the most part yes, but how does being a pacifist make you know what to say and when? How does not killing people make you better at choosing the right words?

Oh, also, the NCR is far from a pacifist faction. Most crimes are punished with death, at least in the Mojave and they've got no problems forcing people to join them or just conquering people for resources. The NCR aren't the good guys here, they're arguably the lesser of several evils.

Now I'm not going to use this, I'm not interested in pacifism. When someone shoots at me, they die. I don't see a moral issue there, if someone tries to kill you then the obvious way to stop them is to kill them instead, stunning someone could and often wil bite you in the ass later on, death tends to be fairly permanent.

I'm not sure what kind of bonuses could be applied, I don't see how it makes sense to be a better salesman or diplomat simply because you don't kill people, certain people may like you more, but if you're an oaf that just spits out half broken sentences then that's not really going to help that much.

Actually, here's an idea. How about instead of rewards, you get penalties of sorts. Your only incentive to continuing being a pacifist would be your morals. You choose to be a pacifist despite how much easier it would be to simply kill people. Say that if you're doing knockouts instead of kills for so and so long you start getting hunted by thugs or raiders, who have heard that you're an easy target that won't kill them anyway.

You could get a perk that goes a little something like this:

Taking the high road.
You are a pacifist at heart and refrain from killing, instead relying on non-lethal weaponry. You get a slight bonus to reputation with certain factions, but a penalty with others. In addition, some groups of thugs or raiders may hunt you down looking for an easy target.

I'm definitely no expect on modding, but I think this could be realized trough modded ammo types.

damage multiplied by zero, fatigue damage +X?

Doesn't sound too hard to do.
Also, I'd love to see this - I'm planning on an energy/pasive playtrough so I'd love to see this.

Energy weapon ammo could easily be modified like beanbag rounds. You could even use the same effects.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts
Now just to wait for a modder willing to give this a spin - the main issue will be spreading this ammo around the Mojave.

I really think you're overthinking this. Most famous pacifists are strongly associated with good speaking skills. There's no actual causal relationship between pacifism and oratory ability, but there's a thematic one and this is, after all, a videogame- it's theme, narrative and gameplay drive the world and your interactions with it, not realism.

I'm glad to see that people are interested in the idea. C: It would really add something to playing a genuinely ethical person in New Vegas if this was possible, I mean, consider... you don't kill unless you really have to, and with the Grave Digger mod, the people you absolutely have no choice about you can give a good burial. It could be a fairly powerful experience with the right mindset.

@The Talkie Toaster

Yay, Red Dwarf. Anyway, it always amuses me that so many people try to apply realism to an alternate reality, and one designed for entertainment and, most importantly, narrative. It isn't what makes sense most from a real world perspective, because little in Fallout makes sense from such a perspective, but it's more about what makes for a deep, engaging storyline, with strong, memorable characters, and traits are a part of that.

It's just as you say, some of the best speakers throughout history have been pacifists or have had pacifistic/ethical sides to their personality, they're renowned for it. And in any worthwhile story, you're going to want traits like that. No story ever echoes reality in any meaningful way, it's always the best and the worst, an exploration of dreams, aspirations, nightmares, and horrors, but rarely does it encapsulate the daily grind of life.

Therefore, it completely makes sense to have groups that value peace in their lives react positively toward a pacifist as a thematic element of a well-handled narrative. And likewise, as part of that narrative, if someone is an outright sociopath then people are going to respond negatively to them. And that actually needs to happen.

It needs to happen for the player to form their own opinion on any given storyline. If you look at any sympathetic villain, they're almost globally disliked in more civilised circles within the scope of the storyline. It helps the reader to empathise with the character, and in the scope of a game, it would aid with roleplaying.

The sociopaths fit with the Fiends and Caesar's Legion, whilst perhaps being a poetic villain (in the case of Lanius), misunderstood, having lost their way, or being an anti-hero, and the more well spoken integrate well into civilised society, whilst having their darker sides, their past mistakes, their secrets, and their hidden sins. It's how you introduce shades of grey into a story.

Edited: Point being is that it's perfectly reasonable for a pacifist to have good relations with civilised people, and there might even be some particularly morbid, scarring reason as to why they're a pacifist, or perhaps the pacifism is just for show. But in a story, people would warm to a person who chose to do no harm.

In a story, you wouldn't have Freddy Krueger eloquently speaking to a crowd of civilised people, after just having butchered one of them and eaten a person's heart in front of them. And likewise, you wouldn't have Gandhi, if he were a character, taking up arms and slaughtering people. Traits and personality are important to a story and to its characters.

You might have them want to try this, but they'd fail rather than succeed. So yes, a pacifist having speech/barter perks makes perfect sense, within the scope of a game. It fits the character.

The almost cynical thing is that the pacifist & the slaver need both the same weapon and skill set. The slaver doesn't want to hurt his merchandise to sell it later on (keeping slaves and pay the medical bills is pretty costly) and needs to be very convincing for his business needs. But he/she is completely on the other side of coin.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread for the good Karma play through of FNNCQ NV. But one initial moral breach has to be done to get to these weapons.

The idea is certainly interesting but the rationale for how it should be implemented is, I am sorry to say, tenuous at best. 'Speech' in this game is a tool. It can be used to persuade or intimidate, or to mobilize others to violence. There is no inherent link between pacifism and speech. Hitler was an inspiring orator afterall. In fact, wars necessitate speech as it is one of the tools needed to legitimate violence and mobilize entire populations to the conduct of (mass) violence. You are thinking of 'violence' as only direct forms of violence, when even war itself cannot be considered a non-communicative or a non-speech act--"war is diplomacy by any other means."

I think what you are looking for is the addition of dialogue options to allow a character to pass quests without using force (but instead rely on speech checks), for those quests in which the use of force is deemed the only method of completion. Speech here is still a calculated tool--because it doesn't preclude getting others to do the killing for you. This is an interesting idea, but I can't help but keep thinking..."wrong game"? Contrary to stupid people like Jack Thompson, violence is not any more inherent to video-games than it is to any other forms of media (eg. films). There are certainly other (less popular) genre of video-games that are not built around the "violence as escapism" model. That this game is ultmately built around this model makes the implementation of your suggestion that much more difficult.

But since this is an interesting suggestion, let's talk about how this might be implemented in a way that it feels immersive and persuasive (rather than just hokey and simplistic). The one thing you need to keep in mind is that a reputation as a "pacifist" is not going to immunize you from being attacked--Urge is right in this regard. He is also right that the NCR are not the "good guys" (if it is even possible to be unambigusously 'good' in a game like FNV, where the developers have made a reasonable attempt to complicate simplistic understanding of morality). Let's not forget that this is the faction that is colonizing the Mojave desert in the name of 'civilizing' the populace and the land, first by massacring them at Bittersprings, then forcing them to relocate to Red Rock Canyon. If not for Mr. House, NCR Rangers would have marched into New Vegas after securing the Hoorver Dam and planted an NRC flag there as if this land was "terra nullis."

The faction that most closely adhere to a pacifist ideology is the Followers (or maybe we should say, 'methodology', since I haven't finished my first play-through yet and don't know what happens to them or if they have a grand plan themselves--don't spoil it for me ) and even they hire mercenaries and armed guards, the Wasteland being the state of nature that it is. But what would a Follower do? How can they go about completing the main quest? It seems to me that to construct an interesting 'pacifist path', you would need more than simple dialogue tweaks, but actual alternative quest and mission objectives for those missions and quests in which you are required to "kill this" or "shoot that"--a much more elaborate project.