Basically put I believe that AV+TB as it stands is too effective at stopping damage dead.

The average guardsman's total AV+TB value (seven) harmlessly turns aside one in three hits from a standard stub or las pistol, renders him immune to beatings from boots and fists, bludgeoning chair legs and effectively stab-proofs him as soon as he puts on his flak armour.

My proposal is simple, effective and easy:

Any hit that penetrates armour always does one point of damage before applying damage reduction from Toughness Bonus.

E.g.

Bill gets shot in the chest for 1d10+3 = 9 damage.

Bill has a Flak vest AV3 and a TB of 4 (lucky bill)

Old way

9 - AV3 = 6 - TB4 = 2

000 (armour reduction) 0000 (TB reduction) 2 (damage)

New way

9 - AV3 = 6* - TB4 = 2

000 (armour reduction) 1 (damage) 0000 (TB reduction) 1 (damage)

(*armour penetrated: 1 damage inflicted)

Basically the idea is that TB "skims damage off from the top" rather than being a cumulative threshold with AV making characters invulnerable to punches and knives as soon as they put on a flak jacket. (I'm being flippant but you know what I mean.)

Thoughts? anyone else tried ths before? I think I read something like this somewhere once.

Well, it is interesting. It would mean that as long as you bypass it's armor, you at least do a point of damage to it. You'd have to adjust a few rules (since you'd always Rigorous Fury, assuming it didn't have an insane armor, since you'd punch through it, do a point and nothing more, then get a free crit).

It would also make quite a few xenos have some of their bite removed, since a fair amount have crap for armor, but plenty of toughness and unnatural toughness. Would mean that they could quite readily be plinked to death..... when they really aren't that vulnerable (if that makes sense). So certain creatures that rely on TB to soak the damage, since their armor is kinda crappy and they don't usually have a stupid amount of wounds (Orks come to mind), you'd probably have to buff wounds for them, at least a little.

You could make it so that the unnatural thing about Unnatural Toughness is that it, too, counts as armor. So you'd only get your 1 damage if you bypass AV + UT. Or that True Grit means that this isn't the case once you've got them in the crits...

But plinking to death is kinda what the Guard does to big creatures, no? I always thought that's what the "millions of flashlights" were about...

Sounds sensible Myrion, I haven't run into the RF stuff we don't use it. We use "ten again" for damage and call it eye of the emperor.

When you think about it toughness is: how tough you are, not how invulnerable you are (that's what the unnatural in unnatural toughness is for.)

Toughness is how well you can ignore injuries and get on with it, so no matter how tough a person with a flak jacket is if he's being punched and kicked hundreds of times times that would still kill him eventually.

It doesn't matter how tough you are, hundreds of little injuries will plink you to death.

The simple fact is if armour doesn't stop it, you are hurt, it isn't a matter of toughness.

Just asking but if you do use this method how are you going to 're-value' Toughness?

Does Toughness need any more value?

It still negates damage, it just does't make you immune any more.

If anything it adds value to armour and pen.

If you really feel hard done by you could always use TB as a bonus to wounds. (My group has been doing this for ages anyway.)

Well, that might be something to do (add toughness to wounds). This actually affects the PCs more, since over all, it means they'll be taking more damage. Mind you, that's only for hits that penetrate armor but not toughness, but regardless, it means that the PCs will be plinked to death far more than the monsters they face.

So it's more that it works both ways. Adding TB to wounds is a good start to help the PCs out.

My basic point is that this isn`t about "taking away" if anything this change makes things how they should have been all along. Geting hit hurts, avoid it if possible.

A bullet/knife/lasbolt tears throuh your armour like it wasn`t there at all, hits your bare unprotected skin and bounces off? No, it glances you, leaving a painful graze/scratch/burn that you grit your teeth and ignore it but a dozen or so more of those will wear you down.

I doon`t see how this helps NPCs more than PCs, unles the players tend to stand in the open chatting during gunfights. Most importantly no more high toughness low armour foes incapable of being stabbed to death with bayonets.

OW has always been more about hiding in cover and supressing foes with massed fire and trying not to get hit than nonchalantly strolling into gunfire trusting your miraculous invulnerability.

Does Toughness need any more value?

It still negates damage, it just does't make you immune any more.

If anything it adds value to armour and pen.

If you really feel hard done by you could always use TB as a bonus to wounds. (My group has been doing this for ages anyway.)

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, having TB simply increase your Wounds, rather than acting as Soak on every Damage.

My current plan is to:

• Toughness Bonus is added directly to Wounds Total (rounded down)
• Soak is ½ Toughness Bonus (rounded up).
• All Attacks that penetrates Armour cause a minimum of 1 Damage.

How does that sound? I haven't tried or implemented it yet, but if anyone has done anything similar, I'd love some comments or ideas.

I'm not a fan of the idea of adding Damage at different points upon resolving the hit. I already face difficulties explaining exactly how it works just with Damage, Penetration, Armour and Soak. To split the Damage Total into two based on Armour and Penetration and then apply that.

Seems a bit heavy handed to me, also halving TB soak is a bit of a step-up in terms of lethality, especially for ogryns and Orks.

My method isn't really taking damage at dfferent points in the hit (daigrams were hust for illustration of original point) it's actualy just applying soak after damage and imposing a minimum of one damage.

me: hit - AV = damage - TB (to a minimum of one)

7 - 4 = 3 - 3 (minimum of 1) = 1 damage.

15 -4 = 11 - 3 (minimum of one) = 8 damage

You: (hit - AV) - (TB/2) = Damage (to a minimum of one)

(7-4) 3-(3/2 rounded up) = 1 damage.

(15-4) 11-(3/2 rounded up) = 9 damage

We're both approaching the same problem from different sides. surely this is all solved with a simple rule worded thus

Reductions from Toughness Bonus cannot negate damage entirely, any hit that causes damage after applying reductions from armour causes at least a single point of damage.

The last sentence was probably the most clear part of this thread

And how about a bit different idea?

Everytime a hit passes the AV, you get one "mark", doesn't matter if it passes TB or not. When marks = TB you get a level of fatigue. And so on and so on. That would signify a character getting weaker from hits, but not being seriously wounded. In the end one could get TB square AV passing hits before colapsing.

It's not something I use, we play by RAW and haven't had a problem with it, but it's from the top of my head and sounds resonable.

Personally, I'd say "marks" sound like an additional level of bookkeeping, and depending on the weapons used (or just bad dice luck) you'll end up with warriors knocked out on the ground yet still being unkillable. A bit meh, but that's just my interpretation - and I should point out that Toughness, and it being better than armour, is one of my pet peeves in FFG's 40k RPGs.

Toughness, and it being better than armour, is one of my pet peeves in FFG's 40k RPGs

This.

If it helps anyone, I made a little thing where your Toughness actually doesn't work like skin-armor (as it was called in a previous thread I can't find right now), mostly because I found the entire idea of you simply toughing out a grenade or bolt shell and taking 0 Wounds over it to be.....not so gritty. So only Unnatural Toughness works like skin-armor, because Unnatural means you got somethin goin on under the hood there. This also prioritizes armor, because before, and I kid you not, my players would go into battle with no armor because "I'm a tough guy and armor is heavy" both of which are completely true.

TL;DR Only Unnatural Toughness negates damage.

And then you have balance between Pen and Felling, with Pen negating Armour and Felling for UT instead of Felling simply being worse, because you can't get through the much more important TB-Armour anyway.