Pulling Punches in Troika

A lot of the follow-on complications in my longish running STS Fulton campaign stem from an incident in a cake shop that escalated very quickly. A critical stage in that escalation involved James' character accidentally killing a town guard. The PC in question attacked with a club, wanting to subdue the guard, but I interpreted it as a killing blow based on the damage. Oops. We talked about it and decided to let it stand, but it never felt quite right. It's come up a few times since in discussion but was intensely relevant during last week's game.

During the session we came up with basically "if it reasonably makes sense you can incapacitate someone" (i.e. the "good plan doesn't require a roll" approach) or that they could try to use Wrestling to restrain someone and then if they could maintain it then they could tie that person up. Still wasn't really satisfied but just had a flash of inspiration so wanted to get it written down.

First thing to note is that all weapons in Troika do damage based on a roll of a d6 and then compared against a lookup table (see below for a sample).

Melee Weapons

d6 Roll ->	1	2	3	4	5	6	7+
Axe	2	2	6	6	8	10	12
Club	1	1	2	3	6	8	10
Greatsword*	2	4	8	10	12	14	18
Hammer#	1	2	4	6	8	10	12
Knife	2	2	2	2	4	8	10
Longsword	4	6	8	8	10	12	14
Mace#	2	4	4	6	6	8	10
Maul*#	1	2	3	6	12	13	14
Polearm*#	2	4	4	8	12	14	18
Shield	2	2	2	4	4	6	8
Spear	4	4	6	6	8	8	10
Staff	2	4	4	4	4	6	8
Sword	4	6	6	6	6	8	10
Unarmed	1	1	1	2	2	3	4

The second bit is how dying works in Troika. If you go below 0, you die instantly. If you hit 0 exactly, your friends have until the end of the round to get you back up above 0 or you die at end of round.

So how do you knock someone out in Troika? A player can decide to pull their punch and take a -2 on their damage roll. If they get their enemy to 0 exactly, the PC knocks them out instead of killing them. 

This makes Clubs decent at subduing, Unarmed the best, and Hammers and Mauls unlikely but possible. It also means it's pretty hard to knock someone out with stabby / slashy weapons. Weapon choice has an impact and while you're trying to knock someone out you're leaving yourself open to getting wailed on. The player also has a choice to make on how many full power hits to do before trying to soften the blow and take a prisoner. All of these are about the right feel I was going for, but will see how it plays and update as needed.