There's more than a few references to how movement affects someone's ability to be hit in combat; running causes attacks against you to be penalized by 20%, and there's a special movement option for moving between covers without losing its benefit.

How is this handled? If someone moves in a round, subsequent attacks are assumed to occur "while" they are moving? Or is this just for cases where their movement might trigger an attack to occur concurrently, like overwatch or whatnot.

Separate from this, how do you guys handle toughness? It seems to me with decent armor and toughness, you can rapidly become very difficult to kill. Add unnatural toughness or more and you basically become unstoppable, as nothing negates toughness.

Is the answer just more damaging weapons?

Trodamus said:

This is you answer.

As to the toughness question, in Deathwatch they introduced a weapon trait called Felling . This weapon trait allows you to bypass a certain number of unnatural toughness levels.

Uhm, no running penalty starts when the character starts running and stops when the character stops running - you don't run x meters and stop waiting for your turn again that is beyond sillyness.

Even RAW is clear here: "Until your next Turn, ranged attacks is -20 and melee +20" (edited for simplicity).

As for TB and armor, yes they can stand alot, but then again weapons scale faster than armor, so at high levels you can easily deal 20-30 damage with a good hit while you can soak maybe 10-11 with armor and normal TB. Unnatural Toughness is usually reserved for monsters, but I hear certain AdMech Magos can get insane amounts of TB and armor.

Friend of the Dork said:

Oops, I focused completely on the second half of the question when I answered that and ignored the part about running.

Trodamus said:

A PC that dumps xp into toughness is doing their best to stay alive. IMHO that's all just part of the game. However tougness isn't the end all be all, there are still plenty of things that can kill you. Felling Weapons from DW as Uncertain mentions can negate UT. Some Psy powers bypass tougness for damage. Burning and falling both ignore toughness and armor for determining damage. Toxins, when they get through, tend to ignore Toughness and Armor for damage.

I've never had a hard time killing players as a GM, the problem that typically arises is creating a challenge for the super tough guy with mounted guns while NOT killing the rest of the party off. That's the trick, and often times you have to hope your players will work with you, and the bug tough guy plays the big tough guy role and tries to defend the weaker folks in the party.

And though I'm not a personal fan, some people use a house rule where toughness acts as primitive armor, so it soaks 100% on primitive weapons, but is only 50% effective against 90% of the 40k weapons, which brings the toughness levels much closer to earth.

And if all else fails, shoot him with a lascannon.

Charmander said:

There is no rule that precents you from getting TB against burning and falling damage.. see my thread Killing me Softly with Fire about the details of the former.

Kinda weird house rule, as a sword manages to slice through unprotected flesh as much as bullets can pierce and damage it. And the wounds tend to be alot larger too. I just realize that TB for soak is just a game mechanic with no basis in reality. If you remove it you should increase all armor ratings in the game and pretty much make it mandatory to wear armor or combat will be extremely deadly. Hmm almost tempting...

Yeah, it's just weird to me. I think a guardsman starts with flak armor (+4 AP) and if he gets lucky he'll have 4 TB; so unless the badguys have ridiculous equipment or go for just headshots, he'll be ignoring damage 70%-80% of the time. Though I do like the idea of using toxins... and I imagine cultists and gangers might use weaponry that's a bit more unstable just for the kick.

Going back to movement stuff, so basically: if the attack either happens concurrently with the movement, or the character ends their turn moving, such penalties and/or talents apply, like the 20% BS test penalty when running or the movement option that allows you to benefit from cover when moving out of one cover to the next. Sound right?

Have them bring in snare weapons, accurate weapons, semi/full auto or scatter weapons, or they just start using weapons with PEN to get around that 8 base soak. Its pretty easy to keep the combat incredibly deadly, and honestly, Guardsman is kind of a combat monkey career.. If they cant shine and survive in combat a bit better than most it wouldn't go that great for them.

Essentially view it as all things happen during a 5 second window - that's what a round is after all. Highest initiative begins the action and is doing it fastest, while the lowest initiative is lagging behind reflexively.. But its still a 5 second window. Abilities/talents mention when stuff extends to the "next turn" - running being an example; if you take the Run action (its a Full Action so you cant do anything else), the -20BS to hit extends till the player begins their next turn. If the player Ran from a point of cover to another point of cover that's great; when he arrives and they start shooting at him he's behind cover and they receive the -20BS as well.

However things like Overwatch happen concurrently - its triggered the second someone steps into view; so if he Ran from cover to cover he would leave cover, enter the point of Overwatch, and be shot without receiving any benefits of cover. He would still get the benefit of Run, but nothing from cover.

I'm not really sure how to break this down further so hopefully this makes sense. I assume you know every character has a Full Action worth in their turn, so it has nothing to do with "if they ended moving"; ie: if they shot and than moved it doesn't matter that they moved last. It only is beneficial when they take actions (which are almost always Full Actions) that describe their benefit continues (ie: either to the start of their next turn, or till the end of their next turn). So for example again using Run, they give anyone who shoots at them a -20BS penalty until *they* may act again.

Oh yeah, I'm fairly familiar with the rules and how actions can continue to the next turn and all that. I just think the one rule that has me wondering is the cover-to-cover movement option, and when I get home I may scour the book for a quote, but basically it does say you benefit from cover when moving from cover to cover in a certain way.

Which makes it hard to consider when you have people marching out in front of overwatch. But if you've played games like Splinter Cell or Gears of War lately, there's usually a cover-to-cover movement option that minimizes your risk. Which is what I think this rule refers to.

Trodamus said:

Indeed, Tactical Advance. Its a Full Movement advance so it doesn't get the penalties or benefits of moving in regards to being hit (only run gets that), but yeah, it basically stops you from walking out into the open and being shot up if someone is covering the hallway; its an excellent way to move up since nothing is stopping someone from say, delaying an attack or overwatching.

But yeah, otherwise I am just somewhat confused what the questions meant to refer to.