Just something I've been pondering. I'm finding myself at a major dislike of Sound Constitution, primarily because it does only one thing-- gives you more Hitpoints, essentially, and not even that many. It's a one-note advance that has no flexibility, and doesn't even do very much compared to other advances. A single Sound Constitution Advance won't accomplish much-- you'd need 3 or 4 at least to make a significant difference, and depending on your career that could easily be an 800 XP point sink. 800 points! For some careers, it could actually use up less XP to take two toughness advances, and raise your TB-- and the latter would actually give you further use outside of soaking up hits.

Minor rant aside, I'm checking in for opinions on when it's a good time to get Sound Constitution Advances. Obviously this is a bit of a vague and general question, but when you're weighing the difference between Sound Const. and another Advance, when do you pick the Sound Constitution? There seems to be almost no instance in which you'd get +1 wound over... say... even the ability to try to lie to someone without taking a massive penalty due to not having the Deceive basic skill.

Sound Con's value lies completely in its cumulative effect. 1 Wound now is underwhelming, but over time you can get a lot more Wounds. It has trememdnous value in that respect. Also in my games, we all agreed the only way you get soak is if you have Unnatural Toughness, so we value Sound Con far more.

Sure, you can boost your TB and just soak, but at the same time, Sound Con has boosted an Arbitrator of mine who started with max wounds to nearly, or I think he actually went to, 25 Wounds. Yes it was horribly expensive as you have pointed out, but you don't realize how much good even just 3 more Wounds does until it stops you from going into criticals, let alone the Arbitrator's full 12 or 13 Sound Con advances letting him effectively shrug off a power sword's full damage.

HOWEVER, if you play an adept, having 25 Wounds means nothing, and the TB would be better, by miles.

Basically, spend an ever-increasing amount of points for TB, which helps quite a bit in the long run, or put a flat rate into more Wounds and feel immediate benefits, and get far more out of Sound Con in the long run (4 Toughness Advances versus however many Sound Cons you can take as per your class)

TL;DR

Its entirely subjective based on what you're going for and how you want to pay out xp. It could also be good for roleplaying. Did anyone say "I smell a mutant?" "Who, me?" "How else do you shrug off grenades?" "Uhhhhhhh.......hmm."

Sound constitution is a numbers game really. Many times it is cheaper and easier to get sound constitutions then it is to upgrade your Toughness. Yes, if you role well on the right character, you may be able to get a quick toughness for cheep, which is always better then wounds, but some classes it is better to just get a few wounds instead of investing massive xp for +1 tougness bonus. One thing to keep in mind is that 1 toughness advance does not equal +1 toughness. It only gets you this bonus 50% of the time. What do I mean by that? Well, if you have 35- 39 toughness, 1 advance will get you to 40, giving you +1 toughness bonus. But a 30-34 will not, and you will have to buy two toughness advances to get +1 toughness. If you dont care about being good at resisting things or other uses of toughness, and just want to soak up bullets, getting 2 advances can be a lot worse then a few wounds. And once you have gotten +1 to toughness, unless you are a arbitrator or tech-priest, getting the second +1 TB can be brutally hard.

did some counting to try and help show you. The first row is the class, the second is the Cost for 1 toughness advance (assuming you are 25-29 or 35-39). The second row is how many sound constitutions that class can get without spending more on it then they would have the advance, followed by how much that will cost. The 3rd shows the cost of 2 advances (assuming you are 20-24 or 30-34). The forth shows how many SC that class can get without spending more on it then they would have the advance, followed by how much that will cost.

Class |1 Cost | 1 Num | 2 Cost | 2 Num
Adept |500 | 3 (500) | 1250 | 5 (900/1100)
Arbitrator | 100 | 1 (100) | 350 | 3 (300)
Assassin | 250 | 2 (200) | 750 | 5 (700)
Cleric | 250 | 2 (200) | 750 | 7 (700)
Guardsman | 250 | 2 (200) | 750 | 6 (600)
Psyker | 250 | 1 (200) | 750 | 3 (600)
Scum | 500 | 5 (500) | 1250 | 8 (1200)/8 (1100)
Tech-Priest | 100 | 1 (100) | 350 | 3 (350)

Most classes allow you to get a fair number of SC for what you would have paid for the advances. Take for example the scum, one toughness advance is the same as 5 wounds. Thats probably going to be somewhat more useful then +1tb, if you can even get that high with only 1 advance. It really comes down to what your stats are and how much you are willing to spend. For example, a guardsman with 35-39 toughness would be far better off spending 250 xp to boost that toughness up, then to get +2 wounds. But if they have 30-34? You could easily get 4 wounds and still have lots of xp left over.

As I mentioned above, unless you are a 100xp class, once you DO get that +1tb, if you want to get harder to kill after that will be a massive xp sink. Lets again take the example of the guardsman. In the first case (35-39 toughness), I can get 40-44 toughness for only 250 xp. Good deal. But I want to be even tankier? if I go for toughness, that is another 1250 xp. I could instead get a 6 wounds with 150 xp left over for other things. and If I had to spend 2 advances to get a 40-44? 1750 xp. Im not going to count out how many wounds that would be, but im going to assume its a lot.

Sorry if non of this makes sense. Im bad at writing. Thats why your the English major and my grade 12 English teacher told me I was going to fail (Suck it mr fraser, dat c- for the win)

Edit: Turns out It didnt want to paste the chart, you will have to make due with that

I have to agree with your ColArana. In our games, it is always in the list of nice to have , but it never makes the list of must have s. The xp cost isn't that much compared to other talents, but like Filliman said, there is always something better.

However, most of our games aren't about combat as the essential activity. Sure we do shoot up gangers, carve up cultists and burn the xeno, but the majoritiy of our time goes to investigation and social play. Perhaps that's why sound constitution isn't as high on our list.

You could lower it's xp-cost to 100 and see if your players go for it then, but something tells me that even those 100 xp will be used for something else.

Yep, i agree with ColArana too.

Even in combat settings, you may want to spend your XP points in other defensive skills, like dodge, parry, depending on the character you play.

I still took four HP points because i had a ridiculously low dice roll on wounds. But it was very situational. I estimated the average HP i have to get in order to not fall into critical wounds. Having at least 10 - 15 wounds seem reasonable, and will prevent you to get knocked out in one shot.

I find the armour a bit overpowered in Dark Heresy though. I mean, your armour points will ultimately be the highest guarantee of your survivability since it will soak every attack, unlike thoughness bonus. Armour is so strong that even as a psyker, i bought strength points to be able to carry an enforcer carapace, because wounds are useless if you don't have armour.

In my opinion, they should take into account that armour can be damage from shots (a bit like where you hide behind a cover), so that it won't be as much overpowered as it is currently.