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Aellea
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Registered: 05-2015
Posts: 17
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
Maybe an old topic, but the problem still exists IMO. They've really complicated things calling it all 'toughness'.
After reading all I could find on the subject and applying some logic, I'd say:
1) Any toughness bonus from a common piece of armour, helmet or shield (standard starting equipment and bought from blacksmith) is a non-magical armour point.
2) Any toughness bonus from a non-armor magical item, potion or spell (or Event) is a magical armour point (?).
Eg: Ring of Protection, Witch Hunter gorget.
3) Any uncommon Treasure Card armour is Magical (as per Roleplay book note under 'Weapons & Armour' dungeon treasure table).
It still gives non-magical armor points (+X tougness) and can add some magical armor points, eg: 'absorbs X wounds' (effectively translating to magical Tougness bonus = armour point).
4) 'Ignore (magical) armor' weapon ability applies only to armour's toughness bonus, not other special abilities, unless see 3).
5) 'Ignore Toughness' ability applies only to innate creature Toughness (unmodified by items).
It is the same for monsters.
Said Bull Centaur with an armour rating of +2 and magical armor, say: quote:
Armour of Cursed Iron.
This armour adds the value of the attacker's Strength to the wearer's Toughness, effectively cancelling it out. If the attacker has a Strength of 5, for instance, the armour gives the wearer +5 Toughness.
would have 2 points of armour and [Warrior's Strength] points of magical armour, and:
- an armour bonus of [2 + Warrior's Str] against normal damage
- an armour bonus of [Warrior's Str] agains hit that 'ignores non-magical armour' (eg Gromil Blade)
- no armour bonus against spells/skills ignoring armour completely.
My conclusion:
All physical pieces of body armour, helmets and shields, magical or not, with a +X Toughness bonus give non-magical armor points.
All magic item bonuses, potions, spells, effects and magic armour abilities which effectively rise toughness count as magical armor points.
--------------------------------------
Nice and simple, but it also means that some magic abilities of an armour (absorbing) CAN be igored, if they apply while resolving damage and not before or after the blow was done.
All skills, weapons and spells that ignore armour are therefore very powerfull.
Elf helm damage absorbing ability could therefore be ignored, as it is a part of Warrior's effective armour bonus. (It doesn't matter if he tries to take the blow on the head, as any armourt would be ignored anyway by 'ignor armour' ability.)
Elven armour on the other hand would still protect, as it ignores Damage Dice before the damage is calculated.
quote:
Roleplaybook [p. 22]
It achieves this distinction by deflecting weapons rather than absorbing damage, and thus dissipating the force of a blow.
There are yet skills that can negate the blow AFTER it was resolved, as all skills/abilities allowing to ignore the blow that put Warrior at 0 Wounds.
I think it complies with the spirit of WHQ rules.
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27/May/2015, 5:37 pm
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Edquest
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Registered: 09-2011
Posts: 318
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
yay debate time!
I agree mostly with littlemonk's last post and Aellea's post.
except the elven helm: the weapon ignores the "toughness bonus" but not the ability. so, the way I see it, the ability to take a blow to the helm and risk it being destroyed is still good to go as written.
(otherwise the ability of the helm has been bypassed)
on my warriors character sheets I actually keep an extra characteristic box for "Armour" as an actual characteristic itself: when calculating damage you deduct your Toughness and your Armour (if any) along with any Warrior-specific abilities too.
I treat armour pieces that happen to be magical armour (Dargan, Taakan, various magical shields) as magical armour bonuses.
regular armour bought from traders would be non-magical armour bonuses.
non-armour items that give a plus to Toughness I treat as a bonus to Toughness itself: rings, swords, crowns (Bograts Krown, a few Chaos Warrior crowns), cloaks, boots and whatever else.
these are not armour but actual Toughness increases.
actually the sword of Pain is the one and only deviance to the situation and I think one weapon is easy enough to say "specific versus general" and leave it there.
many issues come about because many spells and skills states "ignores toughness and armour" but then ignore pain is introduced...
some spells specifically say they ignore that too...dirty blow (pit fighter and witch doctor skill) and slayer skill both clearly stipulate they ignore the skills ignore blow and ignore pain when the skill is triggered.
what about sword of vengeance? ignores toughness and armour, no mention of ignore pain but that rule is not introduced until later in the rulebook so it could be simply an oversight.
(although the spells are introduced before these self same monster abilities and they do mention if they bypass it?!!?)
also monsters do ignore magical armour points if they have Assassinate skill and roll high enough, but again I think things like elf helm ability, not armour points, are not ignored.
---
most of my posts may run into essay length. I find that for a lot of queries/feedback context is important and that is why this happens more often than not.
have a great day :D
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28/May/2015, 5:02 am
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OldWarrior
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Registered: 04-2006
Location: USA, Western hemisphere, earth
Posts: 1283
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
I mostly agree with Edquest's post.
I especially agree with what he said about non-armour bonuses to Toughness.
I like the idea of keeping a separate tally of current armour points and current Toughness. I think it also important to keep track of Starting Toughness (see plague for instance).
Things which add to the Warrior's Toughness (like a Ring of Power), which are NOT armour points, can often assist with tests that are based upon Toughness, and might even save a Warrior's life when he/she is affected several times by plague. Armour points on the other hand can only add protection against the damage done by incoming Attacks and other physical sources of damage which do not say that they ignore armour.
Some events, traps, and etc, might actually state that the Warrior can only deduct his/her Toughness from the amount of damage done. I see this as an implied "ignores armour".
Well, now I have gone on with one of my "let's exhaust the subject" posts. Never mind me. I get to pontificating once in a while. 
--- Old Warrior
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28/May/2015, 2:00 pm
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Aellea
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Registered: 05-2015
Posts: 17
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
Good to read this. Debate is always good as long as you have new arguments.
In our games all item bonuses are actually counted as Toughness as well and are non-deductable by 'ignore armour'.
As I was writing the post above I realised counting this all as armour makes all spells/skills ignoring armour much deadlier and left characters too vulnerable. There is no "syndrom of the naked dwarf" in this game, so warriors need some extra protection.
I still wander about non-magical bonus armour from a magical armour though (Dargan or monster Magic armor). However it is a minor issue, as there are very little weapons and skills that make this distinction, at least ion our party.
quote:
Well, now I have gone on with one of my "let's exhaust the subject" posts. Never mind me. I get to pontificating once in a while. emoticon
The philosopher was always a reputable job 
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28/May/2015, 3:52 pm
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Warrior Monk
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Registered: 09-2013
Location: Northern Rockies
Posts: 281
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
This all seems to be just for argument's sake in much of the text of this thread.
Either that or I am just missing the point?
There are simply these classes:
1) non-magical armours:
Armourer's products and any starting armours that do not say they are magical; this includes furs (notice they are sold by the armourer) and anything else like unto.
2) magical armours:
the Magical Armour monster characteristic items and treasure card armours that say in either the fluff or the game text that they are magical.
That is it.
A ring of protection and anything else like unto that modifies the natural toughness of the character, but they are not worn like armour, which is an item worn that takes hits from weapons to protect the body.
Am I missing something that accounts for the hoopla here?
Armour is armour, magical armour is magical armour.
What is the hang up really?
---
In service of Deity, the Latter-day Prophet, the de la Valette and mankind.
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28/May/2015, 7:50 pm
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Edquest
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Registered: 09-2011
Posts: 318
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
quote:
OldWarrior wrote:
I think it also important to keep track of Starting Toughness (see plague for instance).
ah the way we keep track of this is on you sheet you keep track of "real Toughness" by putting what your characters toughness is with no bonuses from items
next to it you have a +n with n being the bonuses from items etc.
and a separate armour box.
example: playing a barbarian with 3 separate items of +1 toughness and his level table shows Toughness of 4 while wearing Armour of Taakan and a shield would look like this:
Toughness 4 +3
armour 7 (Taakan +5, shield +2)
total T&A 14
because if your natural toughness reaches zero from plague, which it likely will when you hit level 9 and start facing greater daemons of Nurgle (ambush), you will die.
you don't get to survive so long as you found enough baubles of +1 toughness!
the other lethal trick is the necromancer spell that causes a warrior to lose 2 toughness until the necromancer is dead.
if toughness becomes zero the warrior becomes dead. yay, more lethality!
---
most of my posts may run into essay length. I find that for a lot of queries/feedback context is important and that is why this happens more often than not.
have a great day :D
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30/May/2015, 5:16 pm
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OldWarrior
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Registered: 04-2006
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
Edquest, I like the way you keep track of the Toughness, bonuses from items, and armour bonus separately. I think that would help simplify things in many higher level games especially.
As it relates to the Warrior's Toughness characteristic and plague and other effects which reduce the Warrior's Toughness, I interpret non-armour magic items which add to Toughness as adding to the Characteristic itself (though not technically to the starting value) as long as that item is currently equipped, because I do not read anywhere in the rules that the non-armour magic items are to be treated as armour in respect to damage.
Howbeit, I am not saying that there is not an item or two that might say in their description something specific like "whenever your Warrior takes damage from..." a certain type of damage (for instance, fire, or magic) "then this item adds +1 to your Warrior's Toughness" against that type of damage. I just think that things like the Ring of Power (if the player chooses to have their Toughness increased by it, since the Ring of Power is a chosen Characteristic) increase the Warrior's Toughness all the time, while it is worn, and are NOT normally treated the same as armour in the official rules.
I think edquest and I disagree a little on this point, which is okay by me. We are probably working under somewhat different assumptions about how the magical bonuses affect the Warrior's Characteristics. This might show that I need to reread all that has been written before. I might learn, or relearn something... Who knows, I might come out more confused though. lol.
Last edited by OldWarrior, 31/May/2015, 1:47 pm
--- Old Warrior
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31/May/2015, 1:43 pm
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Edquest
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Registered: 09-2011
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Re: Armor vs Toughness
I don't disagree with what you've written, the ring of toughness (or whatever non-armour bonus item it is) adds to toughness at all times and always is deducted from damage taken unless toughness is ignored entirely.
I just keep track of it separately because of the issue of lost/stolen/destroyed items and also to stop the "okay I have toughness of 8, but my natural toughness is 4 and I have a shield so where are the other two from?" issues that otherwise arise.
I think this comes from my RPG background.
as to having items of toughness boosting your toughness and enabling you to survive longer with plague...it's not come up in my game so far.
the plague power doesn't destroy items, should a character with 6 +1 toughness items survive a bit longer due to this when afflicted with plague repeatedly?
unsure.
also poison and strength has the same issue.
however at level 10 you're quite likely to face a Great Unclean One, it ambushes on a 5+ and unleashes spells, stream of corruption attack and then 7 attacks doing 6D6+7 damage per hit, if any attack reduces you to zero you lose a toughness point permanently due to plague.
and it has large monster so can wade into another warrior or even 2!
better save your luck to stop it getting those ambushes 
---
most of my posts may run into essay length. I find that for a lot of queries/feedback context is important and that is why this happens more often than not.
have a great day :D
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31/May/2015, 6:46 pm
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