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Hi all,

I've been discussing combat with one of my players and we realised that even unarmoured, a character with Toughness of 8 is unbelievably resilient to damage. It just doesn't feel right that such a character resists damage about as well as an average person in Chainmail!

Any comments?

I agree that the Toughness stat is a bit ... tough. Starting characters cannot have a Toughness of 8, by the way.

Actually, starting characters CAN have a starting Toughness of 8, provided they are from Cyrinthmeir or Stahl. There mey be other nations that provide a +1 to TO, but i am not currently aware of them, since i can't be bothered to check. :-)

Chargen rules state that the max of 7 in a stat is before national/racial modifiers...

I find it works out well because even with high toughness the character can still die and die hard and die fast. The key is to put them in places and situations that challenge them still. Multiple opponents in a tight space (no terrain roll possible) is a great way to do it. You can also raise your mook stats so they ahve bigger combat pools and higher strengths.
Also, if you give your NPC badguys strengths of 7-8 then pit them against the toughness 8 PC watch how fast that huge toughness marches into irrelevancy like the post war UN.

This same problem is in warhammer fantasy roleplaying game , usually it happens with dwarfs so it has been named naked dwarf syndrome. there is about thousand different ways to go around this but best is to lower thoughess score by 1/2 or in case of tros maybe 3/4 or do it like Ashren suggested ...make baddies more resilent too.

Quote from: PAD the MADHi all,

I've been discussing combat with one of my players and we realised that even unarmoured, a character with Toughness of 8 is unbelievably resilient to damage. It just doesn't feel right that such a character resists damage about as well as an average person in Chainmail!

Any comments?

This is a commonly noted problem. Being a career Munchkin, I naturally noticed it the same time I picked up the book.

And while you can still kill a TO 8 (armored) Stahlnish Knight with a good lance charge, I think something needs to be done to change the way TROS generates wounds.

Hello,

In all fairness, I agree with you, and my tendency as Seneschal is simply to cap Toughness below the starting minima for other attributes. Unpleasant, I know.

However, there's another side to this issue that I think a lot of realism-babble tends to obscure. We discussed this issue pretty thoroughly, I think, in this thread: Thinking of buying -- two concerns about combat. The Toughness issue is the second of the two concerns in the thread title, but both of the issues in there are related and worth reading about.

Fundamentally, TROS is not just a better Warhammer or a better GURPS. It's a very different game from the foundation up.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron EdwardsIn all fairness, I agree with you, and my tendency as Seneschal is simply to cap Toughness below the starting minima for other attributes. Unpleasant, I know.

That's what I do.  I limit Toughness to 6 in my campaigns.  It works well, and requires no fundamental mechanics changes.

-Mark

This debate again :)

Seriously though, I have a PC in my game who has a TO of 8. He also was wearing armour. He still suffered a Level 4 break to his forearm, and a Level 3 Puncture to his groin (that hurt more) from one of the game's villains.

Personally, I wouldn't limit TO.  If a PC wants to think of himself as really tough..fine.  A PC's stats are all really relative to the NPCs with whom he deals (as noted above).  Just increase the stats of the NPCs (same holds true for warhammer).

When playing warhammer, we dealt with the Naked Dwarf by allowing TO to only eliminate ST, not result in a negative wound amount (Eg ST6 vs TO8 = 0 not -2).  We allowed TO to eliminate ST+1 for unarmored attacks and if metal armor was worn.

Seemed to work OK.

NT

Hmmm. That makes me think.

How about every point of armor "supports" one point of TO, but unsupported TO is halved, round down. Thus, a TO 8 individual is only TO 4 sans armor. Even with armor with a value of 4, he's only a 6 + 4 = 10 (rather than 12). Wheras a "normal" man is 4+4 = 8. That narrows things a bit. Of course, it leads to breakpoints, but they are ameliorated by the fact that with armor they shift. That is, for different armors, the breakpoint is at a different TO. Thus, the player won't play as much to breakpoints not knowint the armor that will be available at a given time, or for a given hit.

Alternately, do something like this, but double all the numbers going in  instead of halving TO. Then make a 10 level wound chart to support it.

Mike

In his own thread, Eomann Voss offered the following solution:

"Toughness is the uber-attribute. I limited my players to a 6. Both have maxed it that high. I think toughness should be defined as a gift or flaw instead of an attribute, since it is so useful to have. 5 = minor gift and 6 = major gift."

Sounds a good idea; also, using low toughness as a Flaw...

Err... I fail to see a problem really.  If a guy's tough he's tough.  Throw someone with a similar strength at him an it means jack... throw someone with a high reflex and a decent amount of skill with a mass weapon at him and it mean very little even if he's wearing armor...

Hit him with a lance being carried by a knight on a destrier and that toughness and masterclass full plate may as well be paper.

Hell, one success with a longbow means a level zero wound... if the person with that longbow is any good (meaning a low average of three-four successes) and that toughness 8 guy is F'ed... and how many guys run around 24-7 with a great helm or even a chain coif on?

It's the senchal's job to counter the characters strengths... not limit them from the start.


Hell, one success with a longbow means a level zero wound... if the persoan with that longbow is any good (meaning a low average of three-four successes) and that toughness 8 guy is F'ed...

Hi again,

HAving (re) started a discussion, one thing has come up that bothers me a bit... increasing stats of the opposition.

If RoS is meant to be a 'realistic' game, then the vast majority of bad guys will have stats in the 4-5 range. Wouldn't feel right to me to generally up this. However, I do have a few NPCs out there already that have decent stats and combat pools.

Also I have no real problems with high toughness, just that it feels unrealistic (see above). I liked a couple of suggested ideas  - capping toughness at the start and reducing effective toughness in unarmoured locations but probably won't end up using either (generally I keep rule changes to a minimum once I've started a game unless all my players also think it's a good idea)

Gotta go do some work now - look forward to further comments.

Paul

Agree with PAD here.
I don't like when the average NPC get tougher and tougher just because the PC's gets tougher. If so, then whats the point of becoming tougher?