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...

Typically, the way I view damage is that the weapon is mainly irrelevant in regards to the character until they get into wounds, be it a fist in the face or melta in the chest. I tend to fluff it out that either the armour protected the individual resulting in some bruising and the like, or that in the case of no armour that the blow barely connected and leaves superficial wounds.

That all changes once they take a crit. I then describe the blow as an actual serious wound, that armour failed to protect or that the blow actually connects more directly. This ends up portraying the scenario in a manner consistent with the rules, and maintains the sense of reality. It fits the genre, the setting, and keeps the game playable. Wounds represent that notion of resisting the opponents attack (a common complaint that there isn't an opposed roll). As wounds typically increase as characters level it represents multiple things, notably resilience, but also ones skill at avoiding a serious blow.

One change I made to RAW is in a coup de grace. I break from the rules in that I don't have an attack roll, but simply have it max damage reduced by TB and armour as usual and then apply that damage as a critical bypassing wounds. This, I think, represents an unresisted attack quite effectively.

JM2C...

tundra said:

No insult intended but...

My games take long enough as it is without all the extra dice rolling and checking and remembering all the extra damage etc.

Here's a simple "fix", off the top of my head.  This assumes, of course, that you want Power armored folks to be fairly significantly difficult to kill with anything except heavy weapons.  Make Power armor it's own category of armor.  So, there's Primitive, non-primitive, and "Power"/"Advanced (or some other title).  Give a few weapons the "Power"/"Advanced weapon ability (like Power weapons, Melta weapons, lascannons, etc).  So, any non-Advanced/power weapons double the power armor's bonus (or, if that's too much, just give a bonus to the power armor's AV, or ignore any Pen of the weapon, etc). 

dvang said:

I think you'll always run into stuff that you hadn't accounted for. Why not say anything with a PEN of 6 or more (the low end of power weapons and plasma guns which are supposed to go through Power Armour) reduces AP normally. Other wise remaining armour points after PEN deduction are doubled.

Alternatively power armour could ignore PEN values below 6.

To be honest, I think Power Armor is fine as written, though maybe up it one point, otherwise you start gettin armour that functionally is more like Terminator Armour and that is right.

One thing I've been able to think of (coming up with a similar problem as noted in the original post)

is to change how TB affects wounds.

It's a relatively minor change, where TB no longer reduces damage at all, but does reduce critical effects.]

When a character takes damage, after armor, apply full damage to wounds. However it doesn't end there. From the damage taken, you compare it to the critical table, minus the TB of the character.

This leads to characters or NPCs dying faster, yes. But it also prevents the stupid number of times you have to shoot a space marine in the head before he feels it. (Keep in mind you can still kill marines with lasguns if you're lucky, and shoot them in the face, etc. I'll refer you to many of the various dan abnett novles, etc, and moreover, the miniatures rules as well. Lasguns kill things. Just not as well ;) )

So I shoot joe average with a lasgun. He take (average) of say 8 damage. Being unarmored, he takes those 8 wounds. Nearly enough to kill him, or maybe it does. From this, I subtract his TB and apply it to critical. Joe average has a TB of 3, so he take 5 critical to his chest (Where he was shot) which leaves him not quite so happy.

In this way, critical effects happen more often. TB is useful in preventing bad things from happening, but it doesn't prevent you from taking the damage in the first place really. When you ACTUALLY lose enough wounds to be in the critical effects without my addition to the rules, you can either apply the worst of the two, or apply both at the same time.

I hope my 2 cents helps some.

Hey,

I would like to preface this by saying that I have not read every single post in this thread, nor do I intend to. If what I suggest has already been mentioned, please feel free to disregard this post in its entirety. In any case, back on topic. I had the same problem as you, in that I could not understand how a character's body could offer the same, or in some cases more protection than armor. I have applied a very simple solution. Apply the leftover AP from an attack to the TB of the target as well. Why would a round meant to punch through thick armor plating not absolutely destroy any soft tissue it impacts? Sure, you could say that the round, being designed to penetrate armor, punches a neat little hole in the target rather than doing excess tissue damage. However, I have to point out that a small, perfect hole in your brain, heart, ect is still a friggin' HOLE in something important. I dont care how 'tough' you are, a hole in the vitals, jagged, clean, or otherwise, is still a problem. That's how I handled the issue. It really made my characters appreciate their armor more, instead of dumping all their XP into available Toughness advances before anything else. Hope that helps.

TL;DR - Leftover AP from any and all attacks is applied to TB as well. Makes armor that much more important.

~Kon

Because in RL AP rounds tend to punch through the body and not do nearly the same amount of damage as your average slug due to higher velocity, etc. There's actually been research into this. An AP round is generally moving too fast to do more then go right through. Sure, you're gonna be bleeding profusely, and probably in a lot of pain, but if you were shot anywhere non-vital, your only danger is bleeding out, and without the shrapnel that, say, a 9 mm slug is gonna leave in there, it's not gonna be nearly the same.

tl;dr: AP Rounds do bad things to armor, but move too fast to do worse things to your body.

That's why things like "Dumdum" (ie Hollow Point) rounds exist. They're meant to do harm to soft fleshy bits of people and/or animals by breaking up upon impact in order to transfer all of their energy into their victim of impact. They were originally first purposely used by hunters in the late 1800s or so to help easily take down game.

That's also why normal infantry soldiers are not usally outfitted with full metal jacket bullets, as their kenetic energy is not properly imparted on a human target. Instead they more often use soft points, which were actually produced by the Dum Dum Arsenal, where the jacket is removed from the head of the bullet so that they flatten upon impact instead of passing clear through.

This game isn't real life. In real life there is such a thing as too much penetration. If you wanted to make it more realistic than why don't you have guns that do more penetration than AP have their damage reduced? This is a game and these are game mechanics intended for game balance, not 100% real life representation. And sadly you can't have both, as a real life representation would be forced to lack balance or even a proper set of cohesive rules

With regards to the OP, what I do is rule that Toughness is functionally equivalent to Primitive Armour, although it is unaffected by Penetration.