My solution is still to Remove tb soak entirely. Instead I would use it as the basis for wounds the character could take. As in

Total wounds = tbx2 + homeworld + hearty con talent(s).

I would also remove ALL "unnatural" stats but that is a different thread!

Just to play Devil's Advocate...

Lets say someone gets hit in the arm in RL with a 22 > that bullet can hit a bone in the arm and ricohette into the torso killing the victim...

So in the spirit of I "barely" rolled a hit but my damage was high even perhaps Righteous Fury?

There's your explanation

Yeah, but this is how it works in real life: you have two different things - shooter skills and the accuracy of the weapon. Even for lasguns you'll have dispersion and non-linear absorption by atmosphere.

But the Accurate weapon trait or upgrades such as the various sights all modify Ballistic Skill , not damage.

And technically speaking, there is no good reason the accuracy of the shooter and the accuracy of the weapon cannot be resolved in a single roll, considering how they all result in a combined, single outcome: determining the one spot where the attack hits.

In fact, I think Shadowrun sort of does it this way, with the accuracy of the weapon serving as a hard cap for the shooter's accuracy.

Another idea > no automatic TB soak > roll a Toughness Test after a hit > for each success reduce the damage by 1 point...

That sounds like a lot of rolling; I'd rather cut back on dice rolls wherever convenient to speed combat up.

Something you could do is all or nothing Damage reduction.

Basically, if damage is below a threshold, none is taken. But if damage is above a threshold, ALL is taken.

Hmmh, might be interesting, but perhaps a little too deadly (even for my taste)? It sounds like a very extreme approach in that either nothing happens, or you'd easily get insta-killed.

Also, in your example, wouldn't you take 12 damage if you're supposed to take "all" of it? Did you subtract armor after all?

Just to play Devil's Advocate...

Lets say someone gets hit in the arm in RL with a 22 > that bullet can hit a bone in the arm and ricohette into the torso killing the victim...

True, but if you want to embrace this level of realism, what about the other extreme where you're nailing someone in the eye and they don't drop dead?

Personally, I don't necessarily want 100% real life physics in 40k, just something closer to what happens in the various stories that take place in the setting. This includes, by the way, incurring lasting injuries -- something disincentivised under the current rules. For once you go into Criticals after burning through your HP pool, between temporary penalties and dying, you only have about 5 Crits that actually leave you with a memento of that engagement.

How many of you have ever had a character who lost an arm or an eye in a game, but survived the battle to make this a part of the character's appearance/mannerisms?

But the Accurate weapon trait or upgrades such as the various sights all modify Ballistic Skill , not damage.

Because sights help you to aim, they don't upgrade your weapon accuracy. And Accurate trait add to damage at least for Basic weapons.

P.S. I'm personally not very happy with current rules for attack/damage/TB soak, but the only way to realistically imitate shooting is to take a real weapon and shoot.

Because sights help you to aim, they don't upgrade your weapon accuracy. And Accurate trait add to damage at least for Basic weapons.

There still should not be a difference between shooter and weapon accuracy. Both values, if there are two, should coalesce into a single result -- not two that are only related if specific circumstances apply.

And Accurate only grants this bonus damage if you use the weapon with the Aim action, and only when scoring Degrees of Success on your Ballistic Skill test. Which makes sense on one hand, but on the other (a) if this is how guns work, it should be like this for all weapons and (b) is in the end just "magic damage" when you consider that a weapon that is not Accurate has no chance to generate this amount of bonus damage even randomly.

It's just inconsistent throughout the board, and thus feels more cobbled together rather than thought-out from the beginning. As does Toughness Bonus as Skin Armour, considering all the band-aids that have been introduced over the years to deal with the worst side effects.

P.S. I'm personally not very happy with current rules for attack/damage/TB soak, but the only way to realistically imitate shooting is to take a real weapon and shoot.

It's not so much about 100% realism, but rather inconsistent rules leading both to it getting harder to "suspend unbelief", in addition to leading to (sometimes severe) balancing issues, which have in turn lowered cross-game compatibility and led to a series of minor tweaks that barely managed to contain the worst excesses of these mechanics' flaws.

2E would have been the perfect opportunity to come up with a better system altogether, and as much as I love what they did elsewhere (open character generation/advancement), I'm still disappointed they did not tackle this issue as well. I mean, they have to be aware of it, considering all the attempts at fixing it by stacking conditional exceptions, right?

2E would have been the perfect opportunity to come up with a better system altogether, and as much as I love what they did elsewhere (open character generation/advancement), I'm still disappointed they did not tackle this issue as well. I mean, they have to be aware of it, considering all the attempts at fixing it by stacking conditional exceptions, right?

With all their blind copy-paste from one line/edition to the next? I'm not sure that I prefer to think - that they are not aware, or that they just forget...

2E would have been the perfect opportunity to come up with a better system altogether, and as much as I love what they did elsewhere (open character generation/advancement), I'm still disappointed they did not tackle this issue as well. I mean, they have to be aware of it, considering all the attempts at fixing it by stacking conditional exceptions, right?

With all their blind copy-paste from one line/edition to the next? I'm not sure that I prefer to think - that they are not aware, or that they just forget...

My recollection was that there was quite a bit of pushback against a lot of the new innovations due to concerns over compatibility with existing materials. It might not have been the only factor, but I'm sure that was an appreciable one.

My recollection was that there was quite a bit of pushback against a lot of the new innovations due to concerns over compatibility with existing materials. It might not have been the only factor, but I'm sure that was an appreciable one.

I think the biggest pushback was in regards to the "action points" system they intended to implement. Personally, I think it sounded rather interesting ...

To me, the irony back then was how they did re-work the damage/injury system as well, with some elements that actually reminded me a lot of Inquisitor, yet still wouldn't want to let go of Toughness Bonus. Someone at FFG has to be as obsessive about keeping it as I am about dumping it.

Its good and all to bemoan its existence, but would you have a viable, applicable, and straightforward replacement for it at this stage?

My bad on my math (did it at work while working > lol)

Yes > in this suggested method

First combine all soak to see if you did more than that value > if so > then only apply the armor to the END soak value / damage on the character (not the whole total > I just used that as a foundation / basis)

When you get hit > first compare the damage to the total soak value (TB + AR)

If the damage is greater than that combined soak value then

Only apply the AR and implement the damage to the character

FIN

Just an idea....

Keep in mind this idea technically does do away with Toughness soaking and only uses Toughness as an initial metric but not in the final conclusion to the damage dealt (think of it as sort of like "health armor class" > for a lack of a better term)...

Anyone else have any new ideas or fresh perspectives on this?

OK I found where the FFG people got this system from...

Body Type Modifier is a Cyberpunk RPG metric that works EXACTLY the same as Toughness Bonus (Soak)

Wounds are just Hit Points > ok

Critical Hits & Effects > aren't these a throwback to old school Warhammer Fantasy RPG?!

Its good and all to bemoan its existence, but would you have a viable, applicable, and straightforward replacement for it at this stage?

I would take inspiration from Inquisitor and transform TB from a second layer of armour into a buffer between Criticals.

What this means is that any attack that penetrates a character's Armour Points will cause an Injury. However, Toughness will dictate just how bad the Injury will be! Characters with excessive TB may often only suffer one or two levels of Critical damage, where less robust people subjected to similar punishment may suffer double or thrice that number, if not more. The same bullet may merely cause a nasty flesh wound for the bulky Catachan, but the wispy scribe next to her gets his arm broken.

This way, lasting injuries become more likely, whilst the existence of TB as a buffer between every single level of Criticals still means that characters have quite a bit of survivability -- in some cases even more than before!

I would also rework some other aspects of the system in conjunction with this change, however. For example, as already hinted at above, I would do away with Wounds as a standard, and the Die Hard talent would increase the maximum combined injury level a character can incur before passing out (provided they do not suffer lethal location damage first), and Unnatural Toughness could re-add Wounds as "ablative skin armour" that softens only the first blow.

OK I found where the FFG people got this system from...

They probably got it from Black Industries who wrote the rulebook for Dark Heresy 1, and those guys got it from WFRP.

But who knows where the WFRP team got it from.

Its good and all to bemoan its existence, but would you have a viable, applicable, and straightforward replacement for it at this stage?

I would take inspiration from Inquisitor and transform TB from a second layer of armour into a buffer between Criticals.

What this means is that any attack that penetrates a character's Armour Points will cause an Injury. However, Toughness will dictate just how bad the Injury will be! Characters with excessive TB may often only suffer one or two levels of Critical damage, where less robust people subjected to similar punishment may suffer double or thrice that number, if not more. The same bullet may merely cause a nasty flesh wound for the bulky Catachan, but the wispy scribe next to her gets his arm broken.

This way, lasting injuries become more likely, whilst the existence of TB as a buffer between every single level of Criticals still means that characters have quite a bit of survivability -- in some cases even more than before!

I would also rework some other aspects of the system in conjunction with this change, however. For example, as already hinted at above, I would do away with Wounds as a standard, and the Die Hard talent would increase the maximum combined injury level a character can incur before passing out (provided they do not suffer lethal location damage first), and Unnatural Toughness could re-add Wounds as "ablative skin armour" that softens only the first blow.

OK I found where the FFG people got this system from...

They probably got it from Black Industries who wrote the rulebook for Dark Heresy 1, and those guys got it from WFRP.

But who knows where the WFRP team got it from.

Sounds interesting. I don't have enough actual play experience to say much more, but I found it strange to have both Wounds and Critical Damage (some of the RPGs I'm familiar with are older, and use Hit Points, but nothing else. 0 HP = dead).

Anywho, the comments about Cyberpunk and WFRP got me curious. WFPR 1st edition was published in 1986, while the first edition of the Cyberpunk RPG (commonly called Cyberpunk 2013) was published in 1988, 2 years later. I am only familiar with CP2020, the second iteration of the game, so I can't confirm if CP2013 had BT (Body Type) mods.

However, the buffest of buff guys had a BT mod of -4 (well, -5 with cyber), and wasn't walking around taking 20 damage before it started to hurt (a DH character could easily have 20 wounds and 50T at high level I'd think). After 6+ our edgerunner will start to feel it (mechanically), regardless of his BT mod.

Not super relevant, but I got to contribute something and I do like the CP2020 system (even though I've yet to play it).

Edit: and while BT mod was not reduced by weapons that bypassed some/all armor, it could never reduce damage below one (at least, not in CP2020).

EditEdit:

"You say you've done this kinda thing before?"

Silence. Then, "Yep."

A long pause. Click. Rattle. Click.

"You're sure?"

"Yep."

Long pause . . . Click. Whir. Click. "Uh . . . Ice?"

"Ripper, shut up before I cross a wire and wipe out half the City in a thermonuclear accident."

"Uh . . . right." Click. Whir. Rattle.

(CP2020 main rulebook, pg. 41)

Interesting > I figured WHFRP would have came out first - it was like D&D's competitor for a short minute.

I do remember Body Type Mod never being able to reduce a hit below zero points of damage > you had to take at least 1 point of damage per hit (i kinda liked that rule)...

I need to look at their gun codes and math (aka game mechanics again) in terms of your example of BT 4 & 5 not being able to take X amount of damage... I forgot how lethal that game was > though I recalled its legality being tied to its burst/full auto firing rules LOL (basically you could pump bullets into people like the old Logo comics LOL)

I used to love Cyberpunk's legality > tho I will say character generation was very simple in that game so a character death wasn't so hard to recoup from - albeit outside of story context of course for said player.

I have a PDF copy of the old Talsorian version and the d20 2020 version as well > will look at both > granted the d20 version doesn't hold as much weight with me.

I'm unfamiliar with the Inquisitor or Cyberpunk rules but one option I've recently seen to modify how damage and toughness work is to mimic Shadowrun's use of Lethal/Stun damage tracks. We already have that to a certain extent with fatigue tracking but, outside of critical and environmental effects, fatigue is rather uncommon in my experience.

As an example, say a person has 7 DR (TB 3 with flak armour) and gets shot with 6 damage from a lasgun. While the damage isn't enough to inflict any wounds, it does exceed the target's TB which would inflict one level of fatigue. I understand that this would result in fatigue happening fairly often so you could throw in a toughness test with only a failed test inflicting any fatigue.

While this doesn't do anything to help low damage rolls against targets with high TBs, I think it works quite well to reinforce the idea that armour protects you against potentially lethal damage.

Personally, I think a system where TB blocks damage but converts that damage to Fatigue might work, although then you'd end up with a lot of unconscious players.

Interesting > I figured WHFRP would have came out first - it was like D&D's competitor for a short minute.

I do remember Body Type Mod never being able to reduce a hit below zero points of damage > you had to take at least 1 point of damage per hit (i kinda liked that rule)...

I need to look at their gun codes and math (aka game mechanics again) in terms of your example of BT 4 & 5 not being able to take X amount of damage... I forgot how lethal that game was > though I recalled its legality being tied to its burst/full auto firing rules LOL (basically you could pump bullets into people like the old Logo comics LOL)

I used to love Cyberpunk's legality > tho I will say character generation was very simple in that game so a character death wasn't so hard to recoup from - albeit outside of story context of course for said player.

I have a PDF copy of the old Talsorian version and the d20 2020 version as well > will look at both > granted the d20 version doesn't hold as much weight with me.

There a D20 version of R Tasorian's Cyberpunk 2020? Interesting