Deliberately Non-Lethal Attack

Inigo: Kill me quickly.
Westley: I would soon destroy a stain-glassed window as an artist like yourself. However, since I can't have you following me either — [knocks Inigo out with his sword handle] Please understand I hold you in the highest respect.

— The Princess Bride

Attacking someone or something is all about defeating the enemy, but that doesn't mean they have to die.

To ensure that death doesn't happen, while still attacking, is what these attacks are for. Useful for Pacifist Run attempts, or if you need to do something that needs a living enemy, such as Video Game Stealing, or maybe for some Achievement that requires a long battle time. In any case, these can be Cruel Mercy situations, leaving enemies alive, but possibly in a very terrible state.

Joke Item weapons overlap with this, to be more of a joke, with their useless-ness. Attacks that deal only Non-Health Damage also can count as this if the stat that's being attacked can't lead to a Stat Death. The last attack type to cause this would be Always Inaccurate Attacks, the opposite of an Always Accurate Attack.

Narratively, if a target is wanted alive and not dead, these attacks would be the ones used. These are also the weaponry favored by Technical Pacifists. These attacks might deal Clothing Damage to cause a Defeat by Modesty, or done if the attacker is Just Toying with Them. It might even be enforced by a No-Harm Requirement.

Other tropes related to taking people out a fight non-lethally, but aren't directly attacks, like being Pinned to the Wall.

Real Life "non-lethal" weaponry, is still possibly deadly, so it's a Subverted Trope of this in naming, such that they've been called "less lethal" weaponry instead. And in real life, even something as seemingly innocuous as pushing someone over can cause serious injuries or death if, for example, they hit their head on something hard - there's no such thing as a completely non-lethal attack in reality, given the physical world we live in.

Nerf Arm can hold inversions, a.k.a something that should be non-lethal, yet, due to Rule of Funny, is actually a viable deadly weapon.

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A Super-Trope to:

Sub-Tropes

• As Lethal as It Needs to Be: The weapon's wielder controls the lethality of the weapon, which is different from a weapon that can never be lethal.
• HP to 1: Can't kill if Hit Points never reach 0.
• Mind Control: No point in controlling a lifeless corpse.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack
• Non-Lethal Warfare: Warfare that doesn't kill anyone, which is sort of against the goals of war.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Where this is technically encoded into a combat system, automatically.
• Weaponry and attacks for taking people alive:
  • Agony Beam: Can't hurt the dead. Usually.
  • Agony of the Feet: Feet aren't a vital component of a human body.
  • Attack the Tail: Tails usually aren't a vital organ.
  • Battle Bolas: Bolas are for captures, not kills.
  • Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Dangerous in real life, but a useful pacifist move in fiction.
  • Breast Attack: Usually not lethal, especially in fiction.
  • Butt Biter
  • Bullet Dancing: Aiming to get people to jump. Killing them is directly not the goal.
  • By the Hair: Can't kill someone through their hair. Usually.
  • Forced Sleep: Sleep isn't deadly. Usually.
  • Groin Attack: Usually not lethal. Especially in fiction.
  • Knee Capping: Usually not lethal in fiction. Very effective way to keep an enemy from running away.
  • Net Gun: Nets are for captures, not kills.
  • The Paralyzer: An enemy that can't move is basically as safe as if they're dead.
  • Pistol-Whipping: More dangerous in real life.
  • Power Nullifier: Making them safe enough to not need lethal force?
  • Shadow Pin: Pinning someone by their shadow.
  • Tap on the Head: More dangerous in real life.
  • Tractor Beam: Pulling something towards you doesn't involve attacking it really...
  • Tranquillizer Dart: Used to make people sleep only. If death was wanted, why not use a more lethal poison?
  • Transformation Ray

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Durarara!!:
  • While it is perfectly capable of killing and has done so before, Saika tends to non-fatally slash people to make more of its Children, though its victims usually require a trip to the hospital as a knife wound is still very serious.
  • Near the end, Mikado shows Masaomi his gun, causing his friend to panic at the thought that Mikado has actually used the weapon and has gone completely insane. Masaomi attacks him to knock away the gun, only for Mikado to fire a second weapon into Masaomi's leg to disable him. However, horrified that he could willingly shoot his friend, Mikado prepares to take his own life.
  • Kujiragi has a special electrified glove she utilizes to knock people out without killing them. To deal with Haruna, she morphs Saika into wires and uses it as a conductor to immobilize the girl and prevent her from attacking.
  • Shizuo really does try to limit the extent of the damage his rampages cause, but his super strength and massive temper don't help much. Thus, on the occasions he has the presence of mind to control himself, he usually makes an active attempt to not do anything too nasty.
  • While saving Mikado from a thug, Izaya takes out his switchblade and uses it to shave the guy's head, humiliating the thug and forcing him to run off.
  • Anri takes Haruna's blows as a way of apologizing in advance before she uses the original Saika to make a small cut on her neck, which doesn't kill her, but allows Anri to control her and the Saika zombies. She also attempts the same on Izaya, but fails.
  • Kururi and Mairu typically resort to attacks that won't kill, but will hurt like all hell, with Mairu using incredibly questionable techniques that include thumbtacks and Kururi using pepper spray. Mairu also offers to teach it to Akane.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke Higashikata mostly specializes in this type of attacks, using his stand Crazy Diamond to heal whatever wounds are around him in addition to delivering Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs to his enemies, inflicting intense damage but otherwise making sure not to kill them, but what he does to his worst enemies, however, is far, FAR worse.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Having sworn off the path of the assassin, Kenshin revised most of his attacks to be non-lethal, including getting a sword with the edge on the reverse side of the blade so he can't accidentally cut up opponents.

Fan Fiction

• Here Comes The New Boss: After their first encounter with Elpis, some of the Undersiders aren't happy about what she was hitting them with, but Tattletale recognizes that her compressed air cannon and pepper dust rounds are "About as non-lethal as you can get."
• In The Victors Project, Elena chooses not to kill her district partner Brandon, because she does not want to perpetuate the hatred between the Anasazi (which she is) and the Settlers (which he is). Instead, she crushes his knee and leaves him for dead.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: The expanded universe (and it was present in the script and novelization of Aliens gives the Xenomorph tail stingers a coma-inducing venom for use in non-lethally subduing hosts to take back to the hive to serve as incubators for more Aliens.
• Baby Driver: At the end of the film, Baby is finally cornered by Buddy, with nowhere to run and a gun to his head. Baby lives, but Buddy still has used the gun to deal his revenge. Buddy take aways what Baby loves. He makes two shots right next to Baby's ears so he's lost the ability to enjoy his precious music, but he's still alive.
• In The Dark Knight, when performing a High-Altitude Interrogation on Sal Maroni, the Batman deliberately chooses to drop him so that it won't kill Maroni but still make him really feel the wrath of Earth's gravity firsthand, by breaking his legs.
• In Hero (2002), the nameless protagonist boasts that, thanks to Ludicrous Mêlée Accuracy, he can stab someone in a way that will allow his sword to pass clean through another's body without doing lethal damage to any of their internal organs. He uses this to help an outlaw warrior to fake his death.
• Mystery Men: Docter Heller specializes in weaponry that is entirely non-lethal, but at the same time highly effective. Such weapons include the Shrinker (which incapacitates the targets by shrinking their clothes) and the Tornado in a Can.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: Any attack can be defined when originally bought as "Stun-Only", which is just what it sounds like — the target may be knocked out, and may have some purely cosmetic bruising, but will never take genuine physical damage (represented by Body points in Hero System) so cannot be killed by the attack. This comes in handy when your superhero belongs to the Thou Shalt Not Kill school of thought.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In Third Edition, Monks could chose to inflict lethal or nonlethal damage by default with their unarmed strikes. With other melee weapons, anyone could choose to deal nonlethal damage by taking a -4 penalty on the attack roll (and a feat or a weapon enchantment could remove that penalty).
  • In 5E, characters reduced to 0 hit points have three turns (less if they're unlucky) to roll saving throws, either dying for good at the end of the last one of being rendered unconscious. An optional rule groups can use is to use the same mechanic for enemies instead of killing them outright by announcing their intent to knock out the target (if the attack would have finished the target off).
• In Pathfinder 1E, all attacks made with weapons that aren't specifically labeled as non-lethal deal lethal damage by default, but by announcing a non-lethal attack before rolling to hit and taking a -4 penalty on said roll, a player can convert their weapon's regular damage into non-lethal one. If the cumulative amount of non-lethal damage exceeds the target's remaining Hit Points, they are rendered safely unconscious (whereas if they were just reduced to 0 HP, they'd be unconscious and risk bleeding to death without immediate first aid).

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: the player can get money by subduing fleeing criminals: Tommy must not use any weapons to do so. A.k.a, Good Old Fisticuffs only.
• In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, one of the possible weapons that Raiden can unlock is the Nerf Arm of a (mostly) non-lethal high-frequency wooden sword. Unlike the regular kills caused by other swords, where the enemies get sliced to pieces, the enemies defeated by this weapon just fall unconscious and fade away.
• Persona 5: The Phantom Thieves only attack a Shadow until it's defeated, preferring to steal the Heart of their target to reform them, as killing a Shadow would murder the person in the real world. Akechi, on the other hand, has been killing Shadows for years and it's implied he can't hold back at all in a serious fight, given he leaves the entire battle with Sumire to Joker, whom he knows could win without resorting to murder.
• The Pokémon series has the move False Swipe, which leaves the target with at least 1 HP, making it useful for catching wild Pokémon.

Webcomics

• Paranatural: Isabel states her father told her that swords are for the weak because they make the decision to kill for their wielder. He fights with sticks instead as he believes weapons should only be for self-defense, though Isabel remarks that his logic is stupid since all weapons can kill.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: "Legends of the Dark Mite!" sees Bat-Mite place Batman up against a group of bank robbers that Bat-Mite turns into ninjas while arming Batman with katanas. Bat-Mite comments that Batman is deliberately using the flat sides of the blade to enforce his no-killing policy.

  Bat-Mite: (geeking out) No heads go flying, but it stings in the morning!

• Steven Universe: When Bismuth forged her iconic sword, Rose specifically requested it be able to cut through a Gem's physical form while leaving their Heart Drive gemstone unharmed. While just seeming to be another facet to Rose's loving nature, this later becomes a major detail of doubt to the reveal that Rose shattered Pink Diamond, as everyone insists she used her sword to do so.

Real Life

• Most moves in Professional Wrestling such as the RKO or the End of Days are designed to look dangerous and crippling but cause next-to-no damage to the wrestler's opponent. Of course, both wrestlers' own training and physical prowess also play a part on how close the resulting sequence is to no-damage, as it's not uncommon for moves to be botched (wrongly executed, either by accident or both wrestlers not coordinating on the cues) and the wrestler on the receiving side (and very rarely on the giving side as well) to be injured.
• The nightsticks that police and prison guards used to carry (they've almost all switched over to collapsible batons) tried to be this. They were deliberately lightweight so that even the hardest of swings, while painful, would not be likely to cause serious injury. However, striking someone in the throat or an especially hard thrust into the solar plexus...
• Similarly is Pepper Spray or Mace. One shot of this to an assailant's face and their face feels like it's on fire, their eyes are gushing tears, and they can't see. It makes for a perfect venue to escape, or for law enforcement to overpower and subdue them. It's incredibly unlikely to kill, so much so that there's only been a few deaths links to its usage ever in all the years it's been used by law enforcement or civilians. It's also a very effective defense against dogs and bears, marketed as dog spray and bear spray respectively, and is essentially the exact same chemical just in a different-sized container and labeled as such so it's technically a pesticide rather than a "weapon" so it can be legally sold to and carried by just about anyone.
• Skunk is a malodorant weapon created by the Israeli Defense Force to use against Palestinian protesters and to replace weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets. It's sprayed from a firehose-like apparatus from a truck onto crowds, and is described to smell like a rotting corpse mixed with sewage and old socks, and is reported to persist for months without the use of a specialized soap designed specifically to neutralize Skunk. It's completely non-toxic, it's mostly made of yeast and baking powder, and at worst causes intense nausea, vomiting, and sometimes skin-rashes, and is actually potable if you can handle the overpowering stench.
• This is the philosophy behind Aikido, a form of martial arts that is intended to allow someone to defend themselves without harming their attacker.

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