In Nethack, you can fully complete the game as a pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard. The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.
That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.
With Mr. House, it feels like a quick golf club to the head is much more merciful than keeping him trapped in his mind for possibly hundreds of years.
With the Khans, IIRC I ended up needing to help them expand their chem empire. Selectively excising a few very evil people seems like it would have been a better choice. Which is really the larger moral question of a NV pacifist run - it’s a game about war, people are going to die, and playing as a pacifist seems more about not wanting to get your hands dirty rather than about practical morality.
Yeah - I think those questions are actually part of why New Vegas is such a well written game. It does give you the option to get out of most situations without violence - but it doesn’t automatically equate pacifism with “good.” It doesn’t really equate anything with “good.”
Fairly certain the NPC in Morrowind could theoretically be killed by a combination of his own drain health spell reflected back at him and/or - once he’s out of magicka - dying to fire shield.
In Morrowind, you have to kill a ghost to please the Urshilaku, Dagoth Gares for the Sixth House Base, Dagoth Vemyn for Sunder, and Dagoth Ur/the heart. I guess you could probably cheese reflect spells, but that doesn’t feel quite “true pacifist” to me - just like dragging Eridor everywhere in Oblivion doesn’t quite feel like “pacifism.” You’d also have to do a lot of leveling/side quests to get the Hortator/Nerevarine skip to avoid the inevitable slaughter of Venim, Gothren, the bad Erabenimsim, etc (it’s annoying, Gothren stalled out my “no inventory” run and working on the skip took 5ever)
You could trade the ghost and Gares for Vivec if you wanted, and then not have to do the leveling/side quests.
Not an RPG, but in the Thief series the hardest difficulty usually means that you aren’t allowed to kill anyone. Many people even try to play the games as a ghost. Meaning the only sign of their presence after leaving is the stuff they stole. Every door has to be closed and locked again. Keys stolen from guards have to be returned (in lieu of a game mechanic for this you have to lay it on the ground behind them).
People do challenge runs of the Gothic games as pacifists. So it isn’t part of the games but doable with some shenanigans.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance has an achievement for a main quest line pacifist run. There is one NPC you have to kill for story reasons which apparently doesn’t count towards that achievement.
The Deus Ex series often have pacificist playthroughs (3rd one definitely does, you can play a pacificist playthrough of the OG game with a few exceptions).
The Age of Decadence has a mostly skill check and conversation playthrough. I forget if it’s fully pacifict though.
I’m gonna throw the rythm game Osu! into the ring. The lazer client works natively on linux and is available in the AUR. (The -bin version is required for score submission).
They offer a sub! Ever dreamed of paying monthly to use an alternative launcher that does the same stuff than the already FOSS existing launcher? Now you can! 🤦
bin.pol.social
Aktywne