The armour values seem a tad low (especially with power armour, which the fluff does state being able to 'shrug off damage that would destroy most tanks' - well, I can only suspect that whoever sells those armours has managed to a bit of their sales pitch into the Imperial common consciousness), but the damages, or penetrations, not that much. Also, how TB works in the system is pretty good; there is always a guaranteed amount of protection, meaning that some wounds are insignificant enough to simply ignore.

Personally, however, I had some serious issues with the damage system in DH (and in RT, and the trend is likely to continue with Deathwatch). The whole thing is obviously an abstraction, designed to create tension; eventually, your wounds will run out, critical damage will accumulate, and finally, getting poked by a spoon will lop your leg off.

I couldn't handle this. So I rewrote it. TB no longer reduced the damage, but to compensate, most armour values were increased by 3. Critical damage was no longer an inevitability, but a (likely) possibility; Toughness Bonus now represented a Critical Threshold, an amount of damage you had to do to cause Critical damage. In an average human, this is 3. To make matters worse for those hit, every degree of success (from a single hit) reduced the Critical Threshold by 1. Every point past it was a point of Critical damage. Critical damage no longer accumulated either - you could have numerous 1-point critical hits to your arms. And Wounds? Those became representatives of bruises and the general tolerance of injury. Whenever you had received damage equal to your Base Wounds, you'd end up to the next level of pain and suffering. I decided upon three levels: Bruised, no penalties; Battered, 1 fatigue level until healed; Mauled; like Battered, but with an extra -10.

So far the system has worked decently enough. The lethality of the system is increased in some ways, and decreased in others (you rarely survive a good hit from a decent weapon, but you can withstand many poorer ones), and the importance of armour is far higher.

My reasoning was that no human, no matter how tough, could escape a hit from a firearm, a punch or a two-by-four unscathed. Space Marines might be a different thing, however...

Sandepande said:

Terminator armour... that's a different kettle of fish.

borithan said:

It was, as I recall, somewhere in Dark Heresy, probably in the descriptive text of the power armour, in Armoury chapter. I thought it hilarious, when a guy with a chainsword can hack a power-armoured person into small bits.

Thank goodness for the possibility to customise every rule or number in the book.

This question is similar to the one that was brought up earlier in forus only under slightly diff..idea i believe...i think you might like the rules that my group and i came up with for it...  http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=100&efcid=3&efidt=79907&efpag=2#336915  here is the link back to the original posting...hope it helps you or gives you some ideas to play with

All the DH Power Armour section says is that it is "The heaviest and most sophisiticated". Nothing about shrugging of hits that would total tanks.

 hell if power armour was more capable in shrugging of damage then tanks... either they'ld built new tanks with power armour or justinvent something better or... not using tanks?

I wonder if the OP is even here any more since this thread is so old. But anyway.

 I understand the primary concern which is that armour is undervalued in comparison to toughness value, and I actually agree with it in most cases. The concept that armor can be completely negated, even some of the best armor around, but you will always be "so damn tough" is a little silly.

It also has the secondary issue of devaluing penetration. One point of damage is always better than one point of penetration, since Pen only means anything sometimes (when their armor is good enough) and nothing against something like an Ork which relies on Toughness. Damage is always useful. It also means that a person standing completely naked hit by a melta gun takes as much damage as someone in very advanced and protective armor...

Rebalancing the rules to equate the two more appropriately might be hard. A couple of quick ideas

>Penetration applies to both toughness and armor, or applies halfway to toughness. Points of Penetration are "spent" alternatively against armor and toughness in the sense that an AP 7 weapon will ignore 7 points of armor, or 4 armor 3 toughness etc. This could be tweaked in multiple ways (For example maybe the values apply simultaneously, it ignores 7 armor and 3.5 toughness). Problems: Makes an already brutal/deadly game even more so and everyone will shun weapons with no penetration, creating the opposite problem.

>Split Penetration into two categories. A weapon has a "Penetration" value and a "Lethality" value. One applies to armor ignore, the other to toughness ignore. For example, a Chainsword might have high Lethality and low Penetration, huge and gaping wounds but little armor penetrative value. A Melta Gun might have the opposite, intense penetration but the wounds themselves are both smaller and self-cauterizing and thus tough characters can grunt through the pain. Problems: A weapon's damage, and things like Tearing, already exist which are intended to represent "lethality." Have to create your own stats for every damn item in the galaxy, and even some Psychic Powers.

>Increase armor values across the board on a curved scale to make high-pen weapons more appealing/necessary in some cases but not all. This would also balance the impact of high-toughness versus high-armor. Problems: Also requires you to rewrite stats, but only for the comparatively few types of armor versus the bewilderingly large array of weapons. A creature such as a Space Marine (Unnatural Toughness, Power Armor) becomes virtually unkillable by anything that isn't an Assault Cannon or higher. But then again maybe you want it that way.

>Institute the rules of "armor points not negated by pen count as double against damage". Has a certain finesse to it, promotes high-pen weapons in some cases and not in others. Problems: how do you deal with Primitive weapons now, since this essentially steals their rules?

I personally think the last set is the most effective at promoting a "Tactically-minded" selection of weapon that may well vary fight to fight.

borithan said:

I distinctly remember I read it somewhere in the book. Of course, my memory might suck worse than vacuum.

At Last Forgot said:

The whole Toughness vs. Armour seems to be designed to favour natural resilience. Makes everyone less dependent on armour (unaffected by Pen or AP reduction caused by penetrating hits), but not rendering armour completely irrelevant.

Of the ideas, I have used the quoted one (they work with my rewrite quite easily); simple to implement and no extra math during play (always good). Typical increase has been 2 to 3 points of AP, which is seemingly working for most cases. High-Pen weapons have certainly become more interesting all around.

Ok, as an incredibly late comer who feels the need to correct what seems to be a massively popular misconception...

Military ammunition is not produced in hollow-point formats, it is full metal jacketed as the global standard. This is for two reasons; because the Geneva convention ruled that expanding bullets are inhumane, and so using them in legal warfare (not to be confused with an unsanctioned conflict or use against illegal combatants that do not follow the rules of war) constitutes a war crime, and because the over-penetration does reduce the chance of instantaneous death. The reasons that wounding is better then killing are many, from the massively demoralizing screaming to the tendency of nearby soldiers to stop firing and try to help their fallen comrade to the exorbitant cost or nursing a wounded soldier back to health, in traditional warfare incapacitating wounds are the most efficient way to eliminate enemy combatants.

So a cultist shoots an acolyte who has maxed out their toughness (Highest possible 68), doesn't roll enough damage to hurt him can easily be explained, while the shot hit, it was a graze. Or maybe the check was a hit but there wasn't enough damage, so you could simply say, you missed for narrative purposes. Just because someone takes a hit and the resulting shot only does 1 or 2 points of damage, be clever and make a reason as to why it only did a few points of damage, like a graze, or the bullet dented the augmentation slightly but otherwise didn't do any real damage.

Plus, assuming you're the GM, you could always restrict the ammo or weapons the group gets. for instance, just because they have bolt pistol training, don't give them one for a long time, or give them one, with maybe a mag, so they'll only use it on the big bosses. The idea of using a bolter to kill joe the heretic doesn't seem quite good, seeing as the ammo is so expensive.

Unless you're playing a game where, the GM throws weapons at your feet and ammo for them. just because there's a heretic boss with a bolter after the group kills him, throw some instance in where they don't have the time to grab it and must make a hasty escape.

So, restriction will be your easiest way to work around the damage system. that or take the damage total, half it and give the players whatever the critical effect might be. I've found that works out quite well. makes combat scary.

 This just came to me, and I haven't done any "math" or rules investigation yet, but why not use the following convention(s):

If the AP of the armour being worn is MORE THAN twice the Pen value of an attack the armour simply negates the Pen value.

A Guardsman wearing flak armour (AP 4) is hit with a Mono sword (Pen 2) means AP is 2. Vs Manstopper rounds the AP is 1. Vs a Primitive weapon AP is doubled, but in these cases still apply any Pen value of the weapon to newly calculated AP for sake of balance.

A Storm Trooper wearing full ST carapace (AP 7) is hit by the same weapons means AP is 5/4.

A feudal warrior wearing plate armour (AP 5, Primitive) is hit with a Mono sword (Pen 2): The Primitive plate is reduced to AP 3 because it's being hit with a non-Primitive weapon, negated further by Pen of 2, for a final AP of 1. 

A melee weapon with a Pen value, but without the Mono Upgrade, is considered to be Primitive (IE: great weapons). I believe all Primitive ranged weapons are labeled as such?

A Storm Trooper wearing full ST carapace (AP 7) is hit by a meltagun (Pen 10) means the AP is completely negated (possibly add leftover Pen to damage roll to indicate the penetration value of the weapon overcoming the target's TB as well?) May fix plasa/melta weapons against non-vehicle targets without the need to double Pen values at short range...a plasma/melta weapon will wound an Astartes in power armour as easily as a Storm Trooper in full carapace (they are AT weapons after all). The Astartes is just tougher and may shrug more of the physical damage.

Primitive armours are half (rounded up) AP vs non-Primitive weapons, and non-primitive armours are double AP vs Primitive weapons.

I think there's something here, but I think it means making changes to the AP values of some/all armours.

Just off the cuff.

Here's something I've been musing about for some time. Keep toughness as the damage soak and introduce an armor save roll just like they have in the table top game. I haven't tried this particular model, so it works on paper only so far. This does change weapon balance and might require some field testing so you have been warned.

First you recalculate PEN values for weapons. This is actually quite simple. Basic weapons are PEN 5 + weapon modifier + ammo modifications. Pistols are PEN 3 + weapon modifiers + ammo mods. For manstoppers just check the original PEN value of the weapon and calculate the bonus from that (i.e a pistol that has a natural PEN of 2 would gain one more point of PEN from manstoppers for a total PEN of 6).

For melee weapons just use whatever PEN the weapon may have naturally and add Strength bonus. (Power / force weapons may or may not affected by this, this is something I leave to the GM)

PEN vs AP. Compare the PEN and AP values. If they are of equal value say a PEN 5 weapon vs. AP of 5 the damage rolled is halved on a 6+ on D10 roll. Then toughness is deducted. If PEN is greater than AP, each point of PEN over the AP value deducts one from the roll. Each point of PEN less than AP adds one the roll. You can make a small chart of this to speed things up.

Here is an example: Lasgun hits flak vest doing 11 pts of damage. Lasgun is PEN 5 Flak vest is AP 3. 8+ is needed for the flak to halve damage. The character has TB of 3. If the roll is successful he receives 11 / 2 = 5.5 - 3 pts of damage rounded to 3. If the flak fails to halve the damage  he receives

11 - 3 = 8 pts of damage.

You can use / modify / abuse this as you see fit. Our group uses a similar system to this, but with some differences and additional house rules.

-Gunhead

I confess I didn't read all of the thread, but what I think is the main problem is that mostly those weapons that deal the most damage have the most pen, too.
If you want your players to swap weapons depending on their targets change the weapons to have those that do big damage with low pen and those that have high pen but do less damage.

If you have weapon A: 1D10+6 pen 0
And also weapon B: 1D10+1 pen 7

You got two weapons that are both specialized vs some kind of target but are both viable to use.

Right now you have more:

Weapon A: 1D10+3 pen 0
Weapon B: 1D10+4 pen 5

need no big math skills to figure out which is going to be used.

With the exeption of the hellgun you more or less got weak weapons with weak pen (Las, Autogun) and strong weapons with strong pen (Plasma, Bolt, Melta)

An that is the whole reason (in my opinion) why most ppl have more problems with high T enemies that with high AV enemies: All the good weapons got pen on top of high damage.