The perfect solution for players seeking non-lethal or less-lethal play.
Now available through Bethesda.net and for Xbox One. Requires Far Harbor.

Too Long; Didn't Read:
This mod does two main things. First, I improve the pacify perks Intimidation, Animal Friend, and Wasteland Whisperer. Second, I've added a new non-lethal pacifying damage effect that makes enemies more likely to yield and can paralyze. I want you to be able to get rewards similar to killing, but without needing to kill. If you like games like Deus Ex and Dishonored giving you the option of not just slaughtering everything, you'll like this mod. You'll also appreciate that it's absurdly compatible, working happily alongside almost anything.

Longer version:
This mod overhauls the pacifying perks in Fallout 4. There are a few mods that do this, so why use mine? Well I did make Speech Tree for Skyrim, so I've got experience doing this. Actually, because the pacify perks in Fallout 4 are so similar to my yield system, I suspect Bethesda took inspiration for them from my mod. But they still screwed pacifying up. The perks in the base game are only useful for momentarily scaring enemies and getting a free sneak attack against them. That's dumb. They also always had a flat chance of success, regardless of how strong you are and how weak your enemy is. That's dumb, too. I fixed the perks, plus added a new pacifying damage type.

So yeah, there are other mods to make the pacify perks better. But they're not perfect.

Perk changes:

• Intimidation has been switched to 5 Charisma, with Animal Friend bumped to 9 and Wasteland Whisperer to 10. Making it easier to pacify a radscorpion or a yao guai than a person was silly. Intimidation rank 2 level requirement reduced to 9 and Wastland Whiperer rank 2 reduced to 18, so you can use those effects a bit earlier.
• Experience is awarded for pacifying the target (only the first time; no cheating), but any target that you pacify no longer awards kill experience. Because there is no function to grab the target's actual experience award, the value awarded will be based on the target's level and whether it was legendary. This will not be the same as kill experience for all enemies, but should be close. The Gift of Gab perk doubles experience earned from pacifying targets, so go make a friend.
• Pacifying a target counts toward increasing Adrenaline in Survival mode (done through script, so no conflicts). As with experience, it's only the first time you pacify that target. Feel free to mix pacifications and kills and still get your full adrenaline bonus.
• Pacifying maximum range was far too short, so it has been doubled from 1600 to 3200 game-units.
• The second rank of Intimidation allows you to Exile or open inventory for pacified people, and the second rank of Wasteland Whisperer allows this against super mutants and feral ghouls. Exiling causes the target to disappear from the game and leave behind their stuff in a pack*. It counts as killing for any quests, but nothing else (doesn't increase kill count or adrenaline - you already got adrenaline from pacifying). For obvious reasons, you cannot exile an essential target. To open inventory, get close and you'll see the option when not aiming. To see the Exile option, aim your gun at a pacified target while crouching. The target must still be submitting (e.g. humans hold up their hands) to exile them; if you've lowered your weapon or walked too far away, you have to re-pacify them (your chance is always 100% on targets who've submitted previously). This helps keep you from accidentally exiling. Frenzy and Command options now require you not to be crouching. These had to be split because the game doesn't like too many options being available at once, so just remember to crouch for exiling and stand for frenzy/command.
• Pacifying humans, feral ghouls, or super mutants has a chance to spawn 0-2 bonus junk items on the target and can spawn a small amount of caps (charisma and luck increase the chances and max possible caps). These small bonuses help to reward letting people live. I'm aware that killing everything is still easier and more rewarding, but I want no-kill players to not be too penalized.
• Pacification is now permanent. Enemies who've submitted to you won't attack even if you leave the area or lower your weapon**. Commanding is now semi-permanent. As before, you may only command one target at a time. However, they'll now keep obeying until you command someone/something else. Combined with rank 2 letting you check inventory, you can basically treat commanded enemies as temporary companions. If you switch commanded targets, there's a 20 second delay before you can command or pacify the old one.
• In the base game, you always had a 40% chance of success, it was impossible against targets higher than your level, and you had to wait a minute before trying again. Now, you can use this on targets of any level with only a 20 second delay before trying again, and your success chance is based on level, charisma, and perks.*** If the alternate start mod Start Me Up is installed, the Good Natured trait will make pacifying 20% easier.
  

Pacifying damage:

• A new pacifying damage type has been added****. Pacifying damage ignores resistances and builds up against the target's health for the purpose of pacifying them alone*****. It does not kill. As pacifying damage increases relative to the target's remaining health, each shot becomes more likely to briefly paralyze the target. Stuff that's normally immune to paralysis will instead be extremely slow. Targets will recover from all pacifying damage after 10 minutes real-time of not taking any pacifying damage. Pacifying damage only affects hostiles. The legendary effect works on all hostiles, but the grenade and syringe have no effect on robots, vertibirds, turrets, or gen 1/2 synths.
  

Legendary effect:

• A new Pacifying legendary effect has been added (through script, so no conflicts and it will spawn like any other legendary). This effect can spawn on most guns (small-magazine weapons like missile launcher and laser musket not allowed). This legendary effect causes the weapon to do -95% damage and critical damage, but each hit causes 15 pacifying damage. Note that the -95% is against final damage (but doesn't reduce limb damage), so Pacifying weapons are terrible at killing things. Non-lethal players will love them.
  

Companion:

• Piper's default 10mm Pistol is now a custom pacifying weapon, so she's a great companion for players who want to avoid killing, or want her to paralyze stuff. If you want her to kill, just give her another weapon.
  

Grenade:

• Pacifying Gas Grenades have been added. You'll find them rarely in shops or as loot, and some enemies can carry them. With Demolition Expert 2 and Science 1 you can craft them for 1 Med-X, 3 Acid, 2 Adhesive, 2 Aluminum, and 2 Glass. These cause 50 pacifying damage per second for 3 seconds (150 total) and explode on impact with no delay. This grenade does benefit from Demolition Expert and the Explosives Bobblehead. It can paralyze just like the legendary effect, and it rolls this chance once per second, so these grenades are very effective at paralyzing.
  

Syringe:

• A new syringer ammo has been added. They can be crafted for 1 Mentats, 1 Oil, 1 Plastic, and 1 Silver. They cause 8 pacifying damage per second for 15 seconds (120 total). The long duration makes for very effective paralysis. As with other syringes, this does not gain any benefits from perks. That is intentional.
  

Free weapons:

• A syringer, 32 pacify syringes, and 1 pacifying gas grenade have been added to your neighbor's root cellar in Sanctuary Hills. This guarantees you've got a pacifying ranged weapon very early. Please note that the safe has an advanced lock and respawns, but these items do not.
• A legendary pacifying laser pistol and 4 pacifying gas grenades have been added to the chief's safe in the BADTFL Regional Office. This guarantees that you'll find at least one good pacifying legendary gun, even if you're having bad luck otherwise. This is an expert lock, but there's a terminal to unlock it too.
  

Notes:

• *This uses the same game system as ash and goo piles, so the packs get cleaned up any time a cell reset would clean up piles.
• **If you attack a friendly target until they fight back, and then pacify them, they're probably going to attack again if you drop your weapon. Pacification was made permanent by adding targets to a hidden faction that's friends with the player's faction. That means if someone was already in a friendly faction and you made them hostile, they're going to go hostile again because they still hate you. If you pacify two enemies who were just fighting (Raiders and Gunners, for example), they'll probably go back to fighting each other while leaving you alone.
• ***For those curious about the actual numbers, strap in: success chance is a 1-100 roll, plus a bonus of 5 or 10 from Black Widow or Lady Killer ranks 2 or 3, if they apply. If this roll is higher than difficulty, you pacify the target. Base difficulty is 50. To this is added 1.5x enemy level + twice enemy charisma - player level, with your level being increased by 5% per point of your Charisma. If the enemy's level is higher than yours, twice the difference is then added to that value (so higher level targets are possible to pacify, but significantly harder). Then, that value is increased or decreased by 20% per difficulty setting away from normal (so from 60% to 140%), and then that value is multiplied based on the target's remaining health percentage (normally x1/3 at minimum, but pacifying damage can push this lower). The resulting value cannot go lower than 5 so that there's still some chance to fail, but then it's still reduced to 15% per extra rank in whichever of the three pacifying perks applies, (-15% for rank 2, -30% for rank 3). If Start Me Up is installed, Good Natured will drop difficulty by another 20%. Because that value is compared against a roll with a possible Black Widow/Lady Killer bonus, it is possible to have 100% success against opposite-gender people who are low enough in level compared to you. Generally, you should expect to have to soften up enemies (pacifying damage works great for this) before you have any decent chance to succeed, unless they are significantly lower in level than you. You can keep trying every 20 seconds, so make use of that. As a note, I've personally been using this on Survival mode and I've found these numbers to be balanced.
• ****Because I love you all so much, pacifying damage will actually gain bonuses from any perks in the base game that increase your weapon damage, whenever they would normally apply. This includes Commando, Gunslinger, Rifleman, Heavy Gunner, Bloody Mess, Astoundingly Awesome (1/2/3/11/12), Nerd Rage, Adrenaline in Survival mode, Know Your Enemy, United We Stand, Black Widow/Lady Killer, Inspirational, and Live and Love #2 (the last two only apply to companions). For compatibility with other mods, I had to manually add all of this to a new hidden perk (so those perks listed are unchanged). Critical hits with pacifying weapons do an extra 15 pacification damage, and this bonus amount is affected by anything that boosts critical hits, including magazines, bobbleheads, Better Criticals, and +critical damage weapon mods (including any added by other game mods, if they're built correctly). I've even accounted for existing bugs and fixed them in my calculations (so Tesla and Live and Love #2 work correctly for pacifying damage). Yeah. Be glad. Oh, and I've even made it so that you can see how much pacifying damage a weapon does in your PIP-Boy. It'll look like cryo damage on the weapon (a type that's never used in the game), but it isn't cryo damage and it doesn't actually cause damage to anything (the damage is zeroed out if the target is or isn't dead, which means it's always zero, but won't report that in your PIP-Boy). It's fake damage I stuck on there to trick the PIP-Boy into reporting. The grenade will tell you the total, but remember that it does that over 5 seconds.
• *****Pacifying damage does not show up on the target's health bar. I'd like if it did, but it isn't super critical because pacifying and paralysis are chance-based anyway. Still, if this is possible to add with HUD Framework and you feel like doing this, be my guest.
  

Conflicts:
Any mods that change Piper's default gun, the safes in the Sanctuary root cellar or BADTFL chief's office (the exact references; feel free to change the container base IDs), or the perks or effects of Intimidation, Animal Friend, or Wasteland Whisperer will conflict. Everything else is new and thus won't conflict with anything.