It's less toughness, as it actually provides quite a bit of protection against low pen weapons. It's more the extreme prevalence of high pen weapons like power swords, plasma, etc. That, combined with the fact that you can still make a very durable character with even things like a plasma gun, power sword, etc.
I was also thinking about trinkets... Did they have any effect on your survivability? +4 health... Is it really worth spending points on it?
Yes and no. On it's own, no, it isn't going to help. Combined with the rest of a Tanky loadout, that 4hp may be enough to bump your shots to kill up by one.
Penetration and toughness are still enigmas. The difference is too small to be visible. I hope the game mechanics will be explained in the game soon. I understood that the pattern was : - Ork is more hp oriented - Chaos is more toughness oriented - Marine is more armor oriented - Eldar is more armor oriented as well, but as less toughness but higher speed. So that you take high rof weapons against orks, plasmas against chaos and marines, and eldars are in-between (depends on the class you are facing.)
Note that Toughness has diminishing returns, though I don't think it diminishes that much for what players can currently get. An ork with maxed Toughness (160) has about 32% damage reduction against regular 80 pen weapons (Bolter equivalents, including heavy ones). I don't know how the shield banner with 10% DR works with that (additive/multiplicative). Against bullshit plasma however you have a mere 9% DR from 160 Toughness, and basically everyone else is taking full damage from it. Autocannon is a bit better with 13% DR, but still not great. I wonder if lowering plasma penetration (and autocannon so plasma is still > autocannon) by 10-20 would be enough to balance it.
Not sure how the damage table works (someone can correct me if I am wrong) So I'm guessing Weapon does "X" damage with "Y" Penetration. Character receives damage= X-((AV-Y),min 0)-TV where AV=Armour and TV=Toughness EX: Generic Character Has 115 AV and 100 TV Stronge Melee does 159 damage with 90 Pen 159-(115-90)-100=34 damage modified by hit location multiplier. Seems like there should be a strength value in there to negate some toughness.
Just my honest opinion, but at some point you have to start making sacrifices when making an "authentic" translation of the table top game into a shooter. We're all aware that plasma is meant to punch through armor and deal the big damage! However, on table top that's fine due to the point cost of said weapon and it's overall impact against an enemy unit. When you translate that same power to a shooter, for example, the lines need to be fudged a little bit in order to make a more enjoyable experience for your players. That being said, I am totally okay with plasma cannons as the annoying siege weapon they are. However, I would like to see them providing less outright splash lethality, especially against targets with high toughness. Direct hits are one thing, dying outright from splash damage because you were on the outer most edge of the explosion is a tad much. As a final note I'm down with the charge attacks on power weapons in the back dealing horrific damage. I had a bit of a discussion with someone about this and it just makes sense. The level of trauma inflicted having someone slicing clean through your armor and through your spine plus organs would be tremendous. The fact warriors of the 41st millennium can even crawl around without a functioning spine is absurd.
I am not happy with toughness as it currently stands. My issue with it is the insane amount of weapons that all have very high penetration values. And if it doesn't have a crazy high pen value it has just a massive rate of fire to where it isn't needed. Basically it feels like the only weapon in the game that even cares about toughness values is the Bolter.
Thanks mate. So it's basically Toughness - Penetration = damage reduction...but we cannot stack toughness all that well xD Need more armor!
./ The trade off that I have seen in other games is that some weapons favor high penetration while dealing relatively normal damage and low pen weapons able to deal high damage. The thought being that you crack open the turtle shell and hit the squishy insides with the high pen weapons and smash the tough gorilla with the high strength cuz there is no armor to go through so no worries about pen.
