Well you could have Pen values work against TB as well. Then TB doesn't become so amazing. A max human in BQ power armour has 15 damage reduction (6 for TB and 9 for armour). But if Pen worked against that then a bolter would reduce that 4 and then add 1D10+5 Tearing damage as well.

Perhaps called shots also halve TB on the location being struck? Representative of the weak points being targetted.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

I like that rule, makes Called Shots much more tempting (and adds some benefits for Snipers)

Hellebore said:

Yep that's the easy fix for the OP's problem. I was about to post it myself. Great minds think alike.

It's also pretty fluffy. Plasma guns and melta weapons are pretty much always portrayed as doing horrific damage to living tissue.

I can see the problem.

If your PC is using a bolter (fairly standard by about rank 4 or 5 i've found) against two guys, one toughness 30 with a suit of full guard flak armour and one toughness 40 wearing nothing but his speedos, the half naked guy is harder to kill than the fully armoured guy.

Given the way a bolter works, it does indeed shred armour like paper, but this kind of discrepancy is jarring.

Now lets ramp it up.

An Ork, tough bonus 4, doubled to 8 due to his unnatural toughness buck naked (yuck). And a human in power armour, toughness bonus 3, armour value 8.

The ork is harder to kill with a bolter. Tough as Orks are, that just seems weird.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

Not really. Human being takes a bolter shell in the face, he dies pretty swiftly. An Ork does likewise, he loses a chunk of brain and a chunk of skull, but that might well only slow him down (and in one case, ends up becoming the singe most infamous Ork known to the Imperium and leader of the largest WAAAGH ever seen by contemporary humanity).

Orks survive decapitation with little difficulty, and can happily have their heads stapled onto a convenient headless body (doesn't even have to be theirs) with essentially no chance of rejection or complication. Their bodies are insanely durable, capable of withstanding and recovering from crippling injuries or even those that should be fatal for anything that isn't an Ork.

Why not allow armor pen reduce toughness?

Taking the naked ork and power armor human example, the human comes out ahead for having more damage reduction. (7 compared to the orks 4) when shot by a bolter.

I think it would work pretty well.

Varnias Tybalt said:

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA........Ha.......

I'm sorry, but if your character had spent all their XP on characteristic advances you'd be laughed out of our cell. They would be utterly skill-less, and easily the leasteffective member of the group. In fact, Id argue youd be weaker than my character at that same level, and she has 0 Fate and didnt start with a single characteristic above 35 (and even THAT was due to a divination-increase). This may seemtangential, but remember, Dark Heresy is about Skills and Talents more than raw characteristics. The guy with TB4, True Grit and Iron Jaw will be alive much longer than the guy with TB6.

Your example fails in every imaginable way. Firstly, you've taken the two extremes of characters here. On the one hand you've got a character with both background/career AND rolls tailored to his advantage (literally the maximum possible natural roll), THEN progressed single-mindedly to become "the utmost extremes of human capability" at TB6. On the other, you've got the lowest possible natural roll (barring some TRULY horribleluck in the wayof malignancies and the like) for a TB2; the stereotypical chess player who the jocks always beat up. Of COURSE one is going to take more punishment thanthe other; in fact, if Mr TB6 (reaching whatte rulebook openly calls superhuman levels of resilience)COULDN'T take much more punishment than our regicide-playing acolyte, I'd feel sad for him wasting all his XP.

But the thing is; those are the twoextremes. Your average acolyte is going to be skirting between low-to-high 30s in most stats, with 40s for his 'chosen' characteristic. In regards to toughness, that's an equal amount of damage suffered, all other things such as career, advances, and gear considered. AT MOST, the average acolyte is going to be dealing with a distinction between TB3 and 4, with only the most single-mided characters reaching anything higher in a reasonable level of time. That's only 1 point of damage difference where that shot could either have left an acolyte injured or scot-free. The rest of the time they are mostly the same, either because they have the same TBor because the one point difference is negligible.

By the time acolytes *realistically* have a chance to reach those lofty pinnacles of characteristic bonuses in the 5+, they've either dedicated themselves to the point where it would be believable to achieve that or they've survivedlong enough that Ibelieve they'd be capable of such badass feats as shrugging off more damage than the average mook.

Don't get me wrong; you have a valid argument in claiming Toughness takes a larger portion of importance over Armour. But please try not to use such terrible examples because they make your argument look bad.

While you have a completely valid and valuable point, I have to disagree with your opinion.

As has probably been stated over and over again, Power Armor is MENT to keep smaller arms fire from hurting the guy inside. That's it's entire purpose. And of course things like Las Cannons and Heavy Stubbers are gonna do bad things to it. That's supposed to happen.

Now, if you want to balance the PA against small arms fire, what you COULD do, as a GM, is start making it so every so many points of damage done to the armor (say, every 4) causes wear, and every so many points of wear (say, every 2) drops the AP of the power armor by one. This way, eventually, enough small arms fire will punch through (which is true) and the acolyte using the armor has to remember to stop at a repairshop/get the team techpriest to repair his armor between mass battles.

Sorry if this got suggested already, didn't exactly have time to move through the entire page.

The Hobo Hunter said:

An example doesn't become "terrible" just becuase it illustrates certain extremes. The issue here is that said extremes exist within the system when they really shouldn't...

IMHO changing the basic rules for pen and damage would be dangerous, difficult, and unnessary, as they work perfectly well for everything except power armour. Weapons and armour counter each other in ways that feel right and make for good game play.
Primitive weapons become ineffective against armoured opponents. Flak is very useful against standard weaponry, but does not make you invincible and is countered by man-stoppers. A character in carapace can wade into lazgun fire and is decently protected from man-stoppers. Bolters destroy normal targets in anything less then stormtrooper carapace. Etc etc.

Also most DH PCs will have TB between 2-5, and 2-6 points of armour. Pretty similar ranges, and you can see how both will matter in gameplay.

The problem comes when you try to add power armour to the mix.
This is what happened with my RT group. Getting stormtrooper carapace is pretty easy, even best quality is very attainable. That’s 6-7 AP.

This is fine, but it raises the question of why anyone would get power armour. +1 AP, but -30 to move silently, +10 to attacks against you, and a 1-5 hour time limit. Even best quality power armour is really not worth the effort.

A PC in my group went through a lot of effort to get a suit of best quality (with some extra goodies). He is still the most fragile member of party, because he has TB 3 and 9 wounds.

I think the best solution is just to increase the AP of power armour. Say AP 9 for light power armour, AP 10 for normal, keep all the other rules the same. This should be enough to make power armour proof against small arms fire short of a bolter.

@Monkyman: As i see it a power armour is only fashioned on order, and as all pieces of great sophistication they are hand made. For me, that counts as 'good' armour, if not even 'best'. And as for the power source: I give my PCs the chance to by a military power unit, giving them a 48 hour operation time.

Power Armour Pack - 800 Thrones - 5 kg - Rare

It seems that you did not read the complete list of effect of wearing PA: You also get +20 Strengh. May not seem much, but it still boosts the carrying capacity in ungodly levels, and even your unarmed melee attacks will hurt everybody without Unnatural Thoughness. Besides, since your hands are in a nice metal glove, shouldn't they count at least as Brass Knuckles?

Tybalt, I am curious to know if you have been reading the novels published by Black Library? Nevermind the Space Marine titles... They are superhuman killing machines. Pick up any of the stories focusing on one of the dramatic and famous "named" mortal human characters and tell me what sorts of things they live through. Crazy-ass LT Kage of the Last Chancers, Commisar Cain, Inquisitor Eisenhorn, Jergan, Cal Jericho, Colonel-Commisar Gaunt, Harlon Nail, Chastener Fishig... What they all have in common is that they are UTTER badasses! Yes, they are mortal humans, but far from "ordinary" humans. They are special. They are HEROES! They take punishment and just keep on going.

This is what my players are portraying in this game: HEROES of the Imperium! They will never be famous or well known, but they serve the Inquisition (an organization that DEMANDS special!) and the Emperor knows of their deeds.

So the Techpriest in my game that has gone to the trouble to push his toughness up into the 60's at the expense of his agility, fellowship and the ability to survive falling off a boat can take hits that would kill a hive ganger? GOOD! He **** well SHOULD get a reward for that. The team's Assassin only has a TB of 3 (like most other humans in the galaxy). The Assassin has a dodge skill of 80 (yes, a fricking 80!) so he avoids damage by ducking and weaving like an Eldar on crack. The Techpriest by comparison has an agility in the low 20's and has not trained dodge skill (not even an OPTION until rank 8). He avoids damage by standing there and hoping it bounces off his tough hide and implanted armour. DH is not perfect, but in the current ruleset both characters are viable. The proposed change to have penetration bypass toughness makes the tough characters as squishy as D&D mages but has little impact on the fast and nimble types. Under this home rule you will have very, very dead Techpriests, Arbitrators and Guardsmen. Assassins and Scum will dominate. Pistols, lasguns and other iconic weapons will be considered "trash" and there will be a mad rush to abuse Manstopper ammo (rather makes the DumDum obsolete, doesn't it?) until your players can all load up on Hellguns.

You take serious offense at other posters making desparaging remarks in your direction, but you are pretty **** liberal about dishing out the slander yourself, so shut it or endure it. You can't have it both ways. For examples scroll back through the last 3 pages or any number of other threads.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Again, I'll reiterate: No acolyte should be able to bump their characteristics to the 50-60s without a combination of luck and dedication, and it certainly shouldn't be achievable by the everyman. And, if you look at just what it takes to generate those characteristics, it most certainly is an extreme and not one that should hamper gameplay often.

As for not belonging in the system, the core rulebook categorises anything above 50 as "Heroic" (page 23). Are you trying to tell me that a character, with the Toughness equivalent equal (or superior) to a Daemon's Willpower, shouldn't be catching bullets with his bare abs? Or are you going so far as to say larger daemonic creatures (the sort with unnatural+high-scoring characteristics abounding) should not be present also?

Perhaps your problem is the apparent ease in which characters can attain such unrealistic characteristics (which I would argue vehemently is not necessarily the case). In which case, why not just limit the ways characters can advance through higher xp costs to polarise such characters, tighter limits on advances (like +15 or +10 maximum to ensure 'nothing gets out of control'), or perhaps rank prerequisites on higher-tier advances?

Any option would lead to acolytes becoming relatively fragile skillmonkeys, which to be honest I don't see a problem with; it's what most 'sensible' players would generally do anyway since +1TB is hardly worth 500-1000xp (the sort you have to fork out to really make a difference from the chump beside you) worth of skills and other talents, otherwise we'd see this 'Toughness 60 Arbitrator who can walk while chewing gum - most of the time' on every sheet at every game.

Back to original subject of penetration and damage. If you want to test something new, you might want to try following:

AV > Pen: Toughness bonus is doubled against the damage, resulting in non-penetrating shots even from highly powerfull weapons doing very little damage.

AV = Pen: Toughness bonus is calculated as normal.

AV < Pen: Character with normal toughness does not get toughness bonus at all. Unnatural toughness and Demonic Resilience still counts normally.

If you think of normal, battle-hardened veteran guardsman with TB 4 and flak vest (AV 3), this would translate to following results:

Autogun (1d10+4, pen 0) does 0 to 1 points of damage when hitting the vest.

Autogun with manstoppers (1d10+4, pen 3) does 1 to 10 points of damage when hitting the vest.

Autogun (1d10+4) does 5 to 14 points of damage when hitting unprotected part of the body.

Yes, this will make heavy armor extremely powerfull and it will make it nigh impossible to "brute force through armor" without penetration... But it also will make sure that if you get hit without armor on the first shot is almost guaranteed to put you out of combat. Teaches players to use cover.

Polaria said:

It seems well though out but brings up a fair amount of problems.

At the low end weapons with 0 pen become even more pointless. Even a primitive armour or 1 point equals a +4 or more damage reduction.

And this is actually less favourable than simply penetration coming off toughness as 1 point remaining removes the entire TB.

On the high end Brother Sergeant Agamnon and the becomes pretty much invulnerable, I know they are supposed to be tough but a plasma gun should at least force him to dodge and their own bolters should have a change of hurting each other.

You could add some small amount of pen to lasguns, frags and plasma guns but again it's a lot of work.

I don't see why simply having Pen ignore TB as well wouldn't work. TB is resilience to damage, which is pretty much how armour works. If it weren't for natural armour I would call TB 'natural armour', watching an ork bounce a bullet off its peck with TB8 tends to give that impression (or even a normal dude, check out mythbusters' episode on whether fat and muscle can stop a bullet).

So you take armour and TB as your damage soak or reduction or whatever and Pen simply reduces that total. I don't think a meltagun is going to be resisted by someone's flesh and sinew. In fact if someone will truly attempt to logically argue that a plasma blast (1000 C +) can reduce ceramite (ceramics have melting temperatures in the several thousands) to slag by penetrating it but can be resisted by flesh then there really is no help for them. Flesh boils at a few hundred degrees, there won't be anything to resist. And if people try to use the 'WP' or 'stamina' style argument we still have Fatigue to represent that, wounds can't represent your stamina when we've already got a stat that does that. So if armour made from materials that can withstand the temperatures of plasma is 'penetrated' by its 'pen' then flesh suredly will not be any kind of hindrance either.

That then makes TB and armour identical and thus makes power armour no better or worse than high TB. In fact it makes armour more important because it's the only way you can increase your DR beyond spending tonnes of XP. An armour piercing round will pierce flesh just as suredly. The through and through is a direct result of high powered armour piercing rounds.

It always struck me as funny that a sheet of plasteel can be blasted right through by a bullet but that the peck underneath somehow 'resists' the damage such that the pen is ignored as soon as it hits. Note that the above doesn't make Pen 'wounds' damage, it just makes it negate damage reduction which is defined as armour + TB which is really what it's for.

Hellebore

Apologies if I've repeated something but I got halfway through the thread and about to jump into bed ready for work.

Our group has the homebrew rules to rectify this because we were sick of fights not being fatal enough. Toughness is in our opinions overpowered. It should still have some effect but being able to shrug off low rolling small arms fire or an unlucky bolt shell was frankly retarded for our style of game. We introduced the following:

1. Toughness bonus no longer reduces damage
2. Toughness bonus is now added to total wounds
3. All armour is increased by two points

It's still very simple, makes armour choices more viable and combat more fatal if you get get in a firefight wearing your hessian undergarments. It's worked wonders for us so far.

To Hellebore

I think plasma and melta guns are bad examples in this situation. In my eyes the point of these weapons is that they are highly likely to kill you regardless of whether you are wearing power armour or not.

If you shoot a squirrel with a BB gun you are probably going to kill it, if shoot a person (other than in the eye) they are going to get a bruise but otherwise unharmed. It's an extreme example but there's definately a threshold of ignoreable damage. It's not about flesh bouncing bullets it's just assuming that a normal weapon hit can be everything from a grazing attack to a full hit.

To defeat unarmoured opponants best you want to use bullets that fragment and mushroom doing a lot of tissue damage. Against armoured foes you want sharp solid bullets (or sub calibre pentrators etc) that go through armour well but do much less tissue damage. If you are making a knife to go through armour you'd use one that like a needle (like a misericord), if you are making it to kill unarmoured opponants you'd want it wide to give a nice big wound (like cinquedea).

Hi ChromeNewt

It's sounds like that's working for you but somewhere's there's a Carnifex crying. Also dodging bullets isn't exactly realistic but in my experience it balances those classes (or is actually better) out with classes that have a cheap toughness and are expected to simple take it.

Face Eater said:

How much Penetration does a BB gun have? An autogun has 0 penetration so I doubt a BB gun has any (it might even 'give you' armour points). TB is still used unless the weapon has a Pen value in which case it is reduced by the Pen, so your BB gun will be reduced by whatever TB (if any) the squirrel and human have.

The balance can also come from the amount of wounds the squirrel has vs the amount of damage the BB gun does. If a BB gun does 1D5 damage and a squirrel has 3 wounds, then on average the squirrel will be at 0 wounds from a BB gun, if it doesn't have any TB to reduce the damage. A human with TB 3 will take 1 or 2 wounds from the BB gun if it rolls a 4 of 5, otherwise, none.

TB is the threshold of ignorable damage for weapons that aren't designed to penetrate hard objects. For weapons that are designed to penetrate, your fleshy resistance means about as much as the armour you wear ie nothing.

Hellebore

I as a GM have no complains so far about TB or Pen, they are ballanced enough for me.

As for the general discussion about those things they fit better into the 'Rules Question', since both sides are bringing in a lot of arguments (both good and bad) about this topic, but not everybody looks in here to read them.

I've seen the argument so many times in so many games, esp. Star Wars...

Seriously, lets look at the system.

Wounds (also known as HP in other systems) don't really represent actually serious wounds inspite of the name. They represent a heroic factor, endurance and minor injuries like scrapes and bruises that DON'T represent a serious injury like bullet holes and the like. Seriously, do you honestly view the melta to the chest as putting a hole the size of a fist in the meat of his chest while the character still has wounds remaining????

Critical wounds: Represent the real meat and potatoes of damage. These are no longer simple bruises, they're real wounds, and will seriously inconvenience a character. This is the point when you really are taking a bullet in the gut so to speak. As Eminem said in a song, "You're gonna die, honky!"

Armour and penetration work as they should, not many weapons bypass power armour altogether, some weapons make some armour irrelevent, and the whole game mechanic assume the opponent is doing everything in their power to stay alive. I also find it interesting in how there is an issue over TB, with references to the TT. TB is just as important on the TT as it in DH, and it's not reduced by weapons either, not to mention that a figure with a TB of 3 is more likely to be incapacited than a TB of 4. Yes, armour is weaker in the RPG, but so is TB...

If you seriously want realism, then remove wounds altogether. Have every attack deal critical wounds, the amount of damage being the actual effect, don't add the damage from seperate hits together. It'll be grim, gritty, and fairly realistic, but it won't be heroic or mesh well with the noted heroism in the setting.

Ok, so first up I will admit I didnt read everysinglepostonthisthread I honestly dont have a problem with the way armour and toughness work along with penetration.

My only problem would actually be that the Pen for a power weapon and plasma pistol is way to low, (but I play 40k so maybe they have done this for some balance in the game)

The way I look at it is that toughness isnt really that good at keeping you from dying,(except unless you have unatural toughness), the thing with armour and toughness is that they are completely different ( because toughness represents the ability of the individual to shrug of damage, resist impact/energy and hold itself together, where as armour is simply an aditional bonus that stops impact/energy[for a crude way of putting it), the penetration of a weapon (lets say the meltagun, 10-12 or something) is simply designed to ,yes, peirce through. Though it burns straight through the armour [and indeed the character, that extra penetration value is not at all usefull when it comes down to, did I or did I not completely burn his heart and lungs and wholechest cavity (which would be the damage equation).

Two real life examples:

1) When hitting an armoured opponent with a dagger ( something we came near to doing in sword fighting) the length(to a small degree), the width(to a larger degree) and any barbs and extra weight caused the bulk of the damage. However it is the hardness and sharpness of the point and edge that cause it to slice through and to find the weaker section in armour (maces without flanges [or blades] do not the armour penetrate).
The UN has banned smooth blade dagger and bayonets because while reasonably good at getting in, they do not kill as quickly as their serated cousins, Oh and a long thin stellato or a rapier were used in medieval times to penetrate armour

2) In bullets and cannon shells their are many components that change the ability of the weapon in regards to penetration and actual damage I.E.

Bullet size, weight and any explosives cause pure and unadulterated damage but are unlikly to increase pen as they simply hit more armour surface.

Bullet point sharpness, core hardness(ie uranium cored or hollow etc) and the tip material increase the ability to pentrate a surface but dont offer any increase in colateral tissue damage. (also note, most armies prefer a slightly lower pen weapon so the bullet saty in the target or bounces around inside any penetrated armour)

Projectile speed has a Direct consequence on both penetration and colateral tissue damage.

Can anyone please correct anything I may have mistaken.

Generally speaking, you are correct that ammo that has better penetration has lower tissue damage due to over-penetration of the body, i.e. bullet goes through the body. For ammo to due maximum tissue damage you want it to hit hard, and yet remain in the body to transfer all its energy. Different kinds of weapons would have differing effects on tissue damage and the like, whether large caliber, explosive and the like.

This generally would hold true, but nano technology has changed that. There are now bullet that have high penetration and high tissue damage, and round that can't penetrate but do high tissue damage (developed for air marshels so they don't put holes in the plane).

ok... so i have tried to view the thread in detail however subject to my comments below please forgive me if i have missed anything major...

option 1 - perhaps the most expedient and to me sensible option is allowing penetration to effect toughness bonus once past armour value (if any)... this does not remove TB but rather makes the weapons with a "penetration capability" do exactly that...

option 2 - as above however any penetration that goes over TB and AV adds to damage... i.e. Joe Goon has TB of 3 with a AV of 5... he is hit with a weapon that has a damage of 2D10 with PEN 12 (forgive the rather generic example)... player before rolling damage has already scored 4 points of damage due to the penetration of the weapon... (obviously this makes weapons far more dangerous but reiterates the grimdark of DH)...

option 3 - probably the most significant possible change... a friend of mine when we play WHFRP completely amended the toughness and armour system as follows (amended for DH)...

- there is no TB

- TB only exists for those with the unnatural characteristic i.e. a PC with a toughness bonus of 4... x1 (normal) = TB0 ... x2 = TB4... x3 = TB8... etc...

- wounds are for each body part... a PC with 10 wounds has 10 wounds for each body part... therefore a PC who has take a hit to the head for 8 points of damage will have 2 wounds left to the head with 10 wounds to each other body part...

- armour is body part specific... therefore no armour no benefit...

- armour was made far more protective... how this is done is up to the DM but my view would be that current AP would be doubled or x1.5...

- armour was given "wounds" called penetration points... each section of armour would have "wounds"... my view would be the original AV of the armour pre-change... every time a weapon exceeded the armour value then the armour would lose a wound... once all wounds on the armour were used that armour became defunct... that is not to say that it cannot be fixed however the armour does need patching up...

so a worked example... a carapace vest with 7AP in the current system would become "11 Armour Value / 7 Penetration Points"...

Joe Goon is shot with a damage of 10... armour stops the damage... no loss of penetration points...

Joe Goon is shot with a damage of 12... armour stops 11 damage with 1 point going through... loss of 1 penetration point...

this is a detailed way of changing the system for DH and worked exceptionally well for WHFRP... it meant skill such as "strike to injure" were far more helpful and players would seek to hit unarmoured body parts... essentially armour is more helpful and heroes who have more wounds would benefit rather than toughness which in my view relates to endurance rather than a generic damage pool... penetration for weapons would still apply...