Toughness question

[Jake Norwood]

I'm personally a big fan of the To vs. ST rules that Jaeger brought up.

On the other hand, TO is a cinematic element to TROS (ie: it isn't realistic, but wasn't trying to be). It's the "Ahnold Factor" that allows the predator to shoot him with no real effect when one shot killed everyone else.

Jake

[Lance D. Allen]

Once again I'll toss out my interpretation of TO, which is somewhat in line with Jake's cinematic take on it.

TO is the character's overall ability to take a blow, not just the beefiness required to soak the blow. It contains said beefiness, and the instinct to turn the body at the last instant to keep the hit from being as solid, "rolling with the punch" to lessen it's impact, etc. It's all purely instinct so it's not part of the roll.

The flipside to this that most people bring up is if the character is unconscious, or unable to move. In those cases, I don't generally even require a roll. The attacking character does as he/she wishes to the incapacited foe. The other flipside is if the character is conscious and able, but is totally blind-sided, and is entirely unaware of the hit prior to being hit. I've never had a case of such total surprise, so I've not had to make a ruling on it, but if I did, it would probably be to simply half their TO. In this case, "Ahnold" with his 10 TO takes a hit just as hard as Joe-Average with his 5 TO. This ruling allows for scenes like Ben "the Butcher of Bakersfield" Richards getting knocked unconscious with a single buttstroke to the head in the opening scene of "The Running Man".

Your mileage may vary, but this is how I see things.

[toli]

I have come to prefer the solution that Toughness subtracts from an opponents Str only when determining damage. I forgot who came up with this simple solution but it works great.

I've suggested this, but I don't think I came up with it.  We use it.  I think of it as a sort of indication mass and physicall conditioning that can offset an opponents strenth.  

For blunt weapons we let it off set ST+1 and for hand to hand ST+2.  I don't care how hard I hit Lenox Lewis, I'm not going to KO him.  He is too TO for my ST.  

NT

[Dan Sellars]

I think that the problem is not so much hitting Lennox with your fist as standing there stabbing his bare chest with a knife and not doing any damage.

However having put that point forward, I enjoy playing the game with the  rules as they are.   I haven't been in an ingame situation where I thought something unfair happened.   Most of the arguments I have seen seem to be based on theoretical conjecture not ingame experience.  But I could be wrong here ;-)

Dan.

[Mike Holmes]

The other thing about Toughness, Dan, is that no matter what, you can't think of it as actually preventing weapon damage. That's certainly what it seems to do, but in game you have to describe it a bit differently. That is, if you stab the barechested guy, and TO reduces the damage to zero, that doesn't mean that the knife bounced off his skin. I'd describe it as the knife cutting into his chest, and skipping up a rib or two before the blow glanced off. The character is cut and bleeding.

He just doesn't take any game effect.

That is, the cut is, for that character, just not consequential in terms of the fight. Oh, he'll bleed a bit in dramatic fashion. Even grunt in pain. But it won't slow him up one bit. It's a "flesh wound".

It's even easier when armored. The character is just holding out better behind his armor. Making the armor work better for him by being a stout part of it. So, the blows aren't getting through the armor, they're being shunted off by armor combined with toughness. You can even describe the occasional penetration and flesh wound if you like. Just less neccessary with armor.

Does that help with the visualization of it? Toughness isn't armor. It doesn't keep sharp weapons from penetrating flesh. What it does is make those wounds less consequential in terms of battle. Like Jake says, they become shots like the Governor of California takes in movies. They bleed, but go unnoticed. To quote the last Governor of Minnesota from one of the same movies, "I ain't got time to bleed."

Mike

[Ville]

Still the current rules for T can be somewhat illogical at times.
Take for example the assassin who has crept behind his target and is stabbing him (I personally let them choose the exact location in these cases.)
Surely those grizzlied tough guys cannot move away from the blade that is coming from the shadows?
Once again the issue is that this is just a game, not a simulation of reality. To me toughness rules are just fine.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

your assasin must be an incompetant lout if he doesn't kill even a toughness 10 guy with a free cheap shot. Seriously, how often has your assasin not killed anyone witha  free unopposed strike? Thats just not a very good example. If your assasin has a CP of any reasonable amount then he should kill them right out despite toughness. If the CP is low then the toughness is not the limiting factor, its the incompetence of the assasin who has no idea which end of the dagger to stick in his target. and of course, remember, apply common sense.

[Ville]

Well my assassin shouldn't need a combat pool of 15 or should he?

I mean I know where to stick a knife because I have studied the subject but I have never killed anyone. But I firmly believe that I could (physically) kill a guy from behind with a knife. No matter if he is Lennox Lewis or Hulk Hogan. Actually it would be easy (once again:physically not mentally.)
I do not think that my combat pool is very high however. And the TROS system does not choose the hit location on the basis of how high the combat pool is.

If we claim that someone who is very good can kill a man with high T well then we could claim that in D&D those guys with high hit points can be brought down by guys who are good at swinging big swords...:-)

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I never said that your assasin had to be "very good" I meant he had to be a bit better than an amputated chimpanzee on LSD.....
Seriously, on an unopposed strike he should be able to off the dude with no problems toughness or no. and remember my last line there that I used, APPLY COMMON SENSE. It actually appears alot in the rule book even.

[Lance D. Allen]

Hey Ville, in cases like that, you can always use my own suggestion, if otherwise the TO rules are fine. I'll rephrase it here to be totally clear.

Because TO, in my mind, is a matter of knowing how to soften a blow as much as beefiness, if the character is totally unaware of the coming strike (totally blows a perception check, for example) half the TO. Add that to the fact that your character will be able to use his full CP (which doesn't have to be THAT good in cases like this) and you should be able to stick that knife through his kidneys until it protrudes from his ribs in the front.

[Ville]

Yup. I have tweaked the rules a bit and I apply common sense. Once again I believe the question was about game mechanics. We all know how to change them accorsing to the situation. I think I'll start a new thread about this and house rules.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

thats just it, in TROS you will often find the core rule book saying specifically " use common sense with this rule" AS a mechanic.