Toughness

[guardiankrillin]

In the ICON's System, I would like to know how others run the toughness advantage in their games.

I have seen it ran as

Example
Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 1 = 4

which translates to
4/4/4/4/4/4/4/0
Resistance 3

or

Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 1 = 4

which translates to
4/4/4/4/4/4/4/0
Resistance 4

Also heard of Toughness being a +2 instead of +1

What have you used/recommend

[Dan Gurden]

The character has a high degree of resistance to injury. For purposes of withstanding damage, he is considered to have +2 Fitness, even if he already has the maximum Fitness for his sepcies. A Character with this advantage cannot have a negative Vitality edge.
...Toughness makes it harder for the character to suffer injury in the first place.

So. Its effectively an additional +2 Vitality. So in your examples it would be;

Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 2 = 5

which translates to
5/5/5/5/5/5/0
Resistance 5

(corrected for =2 toughness and only 6 levels of damage, rather than 7... As the 7th is dead.)

[Owen E Oulton]

This would mean that a Klingon with maxed out Fitness, +2 Vitality and Toughness (+2) would have

Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
6+2+2=10

which translates to
10/10/10/10/10/10/0
Resistance=10

That's one tough Klingon. Better break out the Kryptonite!

[Dan Gurden]

This would mean that a Klingon with maxed out Fitness, +2 Vitality and Toughness (+2) would have

Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
6+2+2=10

which translates to
10/10/10/10/10/10/0
Resistance=10

That's one tough Klingon. Better break out the Kryptonite!

This is why Klingons partake in recreational headbutting.

But even then, thats only a single shot in setting 11 or 12... For the Indiana Jones fight manual.

[Easterner]

This would mean that a Klingon with maxed out Fitness, +2 Vitality and Toughness (+2) would have

Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
6+2+2=10

which translates to
10/10/10/10/10/10/0
Resistance=10

That's one tough Klingon. Better break out the Kryptonite!

I'll say. survives a TOS p2 on vaporize. rolled 43 using 5d6+24 ((1,5,6,1,6

Here's a rifle on max. rolled 66 using 9d6+30 ((3,4,3,4,3,5,2,6,6 that does it

[Owen E Oulton]

Nah, with a phaser set on "vapourise", the character is just dead and no body is left. Rolling dice for that sort of damage is just plain stupid.

[WaveMan]

Nah, with a phaser set on "vapourise", the character is just dead and no body is left. Rolling dice for that sort of damage is just plain stupid.

the phaser damage chart (page 239 DS-9 RPG source book) noted that phaser damage could be dealt with in two ways, either by the 'damage column' or in a 'notes column', if you are going by the notes then yes 'vaporize a humanoid' (phaser setting 8/light disrupt) leaves little left of the target, though if you are going by 'the numbers' then some humanoids COULD potentially survive a hit on setting 8 (on minimum damage roll then that's only 20 points of damage, my favorite Andorian character could survive 20 points of damage easily....or the Klingon example above would also survive such a hit, even the Half-Klingon Rebel page 38 DS-9 source book [fit 3 vit+2,]would not be killed on a minimum hit of a phaser set on 8, though the Ferangi merchant page 37 DS-9 source book would be vaporized). It all depends on the style of the game you are running.

Having toughness, will to survive, organ redundancy, maximum Fitness stat (with +2 in vitality) all equates to a character that will survive against some degree of phaser (or disruptor) damage. During play I found (we always played 'by the numbers') if you set a phaser on 12 you had a pretty good chance (even on minimum rolls, which BTW is 72 damage) to kill outright even the toughest humanoids (Jem'Hadar, Klingon's, Hirogen, Andorian's) with one shot.

That's one tough Klingon. Better break out the Kryptonite!

all my characters tried to maximize Fitness and Vitality, and have toughness, will to survive, organ redundancy advantages and I often saw numbers such as 9 or 10 per wound category. Though with the militant/power gamy style games I participated in this was to be expected I suppose.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Were I doing a second edition of ICON one of the things I'd want to do is put more focus on surviving phaser fights through not being hit rather than through squeezing more hit points out of chargen.

[WaveMan]

personal shields and body armour helps as well. While I agree dodge and avoiding hits is always a good option sometime luck just doesn't go your way and eventually you end up getting hit, hence my focus on a characters ability to survive.

[Owen E Oulton]

I never use rolled damage when it would be inconsistent with what I laughingly call "realism". If someone gets shot with a setting that has an effect like "vapourise a human-sized object", I do not use the rolls. They just vanish. If someone shoots a larger being (like a space-dragon) on that setting, they take the rolled damage, damage points being a somewhat abstract system. If I shoot an elephant-sized animal, maybe I'll vapourise a limb (or another 80 to 100kg piece of anatomy. Even with a Klingon with a resistance of 10 will only mass about 150kg. Vapourise all but 50kg of his body, he's toast, even if that remaininng 50kg body part still has some biological actvity in it. If I'm feeling particularly quirky, I might have the beam hit his feet, leaving his head and shoulders sort of intact. Get him into a stasis tube in less than, say, three minutes, and you may be able to save his life. Bionic body, anyone? That would be a best-case scenario.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

personal shields and body armour helps as well. While I agree dodge and avoiding hits is always a good option sometime luck just doesn't go your way and eventually you end up getting hit, hence my focus on a characters ability to survive.

Nah, if you're hit you're dead. You lose a limb or end up in a Pike chair if I'm feeling generous. Seven wound levels is way too much, too.

[WaveMan]

so neither of you use personal shields in your games? The arm shield (deflect upto 30 points of damage and provides situation cover) is straight out of The Players' Handbook (page 109) and allows characters to survive phaser hits somewhat. Then it is easy to extrapolate shield technology from there. Personal armour is similarly easy to integrate (The Hunters that were after Tosk used armour to make phasers less potent for example) and the Hazard Suit (non-canon) is an example of Federation based armour technology.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Hazard_suit

Seven wound levels is way too much, too

easily achievable though, with the right advantages (organ redundancy and will to survive would give 8, which every character I ever rolled up had)

For me personal shields/body armour is a logical extension. As soon as someone developed man-portable phasers someone else would be trying to develop ways to shield personnel from them.

[Owen E Oulton]

Yes, I use personal shields, straight out of Star Trek V. In game we call 'em PEWS, for Personal Energy Weapons Shield. There's an illustration in the Players' Guide which shows the modern version. That does protect from weapons fire, but again, I don't roll for damage. It deflects/absorbs the damage, or only a little will leak through, resulting in a reduced effect. If hit by a full-on disintegrate setting, it disintegrates 'em. Likewise with Stun - no damage roll, just a set effect. Toughness will reduce the time one spends stunned, as provided for in the description - noted for Klingons, but I apply it to anyone with Toughness. I also allw characters wearing battledress as seen in DS9's Siege of AR-558 and Nor the Battle to the Strong, but again it reduces the effect of the hit. A Disintegrate shot will usually give a Light Disrupt effect and burn out the battledress circuitry. Armour and shields are not magic.

[WaveMan]

though by that logic you are making phasers act like magic (equivalent to a rod of disintegration that allowed for no save in D&D)? I would also say, in that case, why bother with roll's altogether...I assume you have a high character death rate, one enemy with a phaser rifle would decimate most groups in short order.
Your way would also make determining Jem'Hadar energy weapons hard to regulate, as they have a damage roll only listed, no 'cinematic' listing.

I would also think that after a few recovered Borg Drones SF R&D would backward engineer Borg Personal Shielding for use on Away Team and Security personnel.

In games I played we developed a suit called BES (Battle Enviro Suit) that had armour built in (15/40 ballistic/energy) and integrated Arm Shield (30 protection/100 charges). We also had a personal shield's called Haven (500 protection/1000 charges) PDS (personal defense shields)[based on Battle Lords of the 23rd century technology], a small device about the size of a deck of cards that could fit in a pocket, available for away teams and security personnel. There was also a table rule that stated "if you leave your phaser on stun then most times the enemy would also likewise have theirs set to stun"

[Owen E Oulton]

How does this make phasers magic? Armour and shields act by stepping down, whether by deflecting, absorbing or demodulating, the energy delivered to the target, thus reducing the effect. Phaser settings are a range, not discrete different features like Judge Dredd's Lawgiver ammunition options. To use the magic metaphor, that would be like the phaser firing a fireball, and the mgic shield transmuting it to a magic missile. This is more like physics, where if the phaser is firing a "blue" beam, the shield steps down the frequency and you get a "red" beam's damage, with apologies to GalaxyQuest.

It's a paradigm shift in the way things are treated. Just like the game refuses to give a being like Q stats but only effects of his powers, so you don't wind up having a hero with better stats than Thor in AD&D. It better reflects the way the series depicted the effects. One size does not fit all. For instance with phasers against shuttlecraft, you need a crossover between the Personal and Starship scales, so that if you fire a phaser rifle at a shuttle you don't roll a whole handful of dice on the Personal scale, you simply assign a single damage number to a type 3 phaser, so the phaser does 3 Starship-scaled points of Starship damage to the shuttle.