How often do you use Toughness?

[ForceUser]

We haven't house-ruled Toughness; instead we allow the Dwarf's-, Giant's-, Dragon's- versions from Masters of the Wild to be available.

We do, however, add one's Con modifier to their "at death's door" threshold, as others have mentioned here. It's a solid house-rule.

 

[Slomoot]

How about this for toughness: Keep it as it's written but in addition make deaths door for the character -13. This would really benefit a weak hp character as it would give them 3 more rounds to allow the stronger characters to bring them back to life.. .. Just a thought,
Miles

 

[Celebrim]

I think it is a weak feat, and I use a house ruled version of it.

BUT, I seriously doubt a single classed sor/wiz would survive through the first three to five levels of any game I ran without taking toughness in some form, which is why I don't like versions of toughness which nerf it for low level wiz's/sor's.

For a first level wizard, say 14 CON, toughness improves your h.p. from 6 to 9. That is HUGE. The benifit at 2nd level, from ~10 to ~13 is equally huge. Unless the DM goes soft and deliberately keeps a spell caster alive, very few characters are going to survive with less than 5-6 h.p. per character level if they have to face encounters of CR = thier level.

Slomoot: I have a similar homebrew feat called 'Hard to Kill' (it a little more helpful than the one you describe), in edition to the house ruled toughness.

 

[Sejs]

for death's door, the way I usually run it, is you can go to -ConScore before expiring. So the average person goes to -10, but the really frail person is easier to shuffle off this mortal coil, and the really tough people are die-hard.

*shrug* My group's been quite receptive to it so far

 

[Slomoot]

Let me change topics real quick like: Celebrim, do you mind sharing how "tough to kill" works?

ok.. now we can return to the topic

 

[Marimmar]

for death's door, the way I usually run it, is you can go to -ConScore before expiring. [...]
*shrug* My group's been quite receptive to it so far

Your group seems to have had no encounts with con draining monsters yet. The first Dire Weasel to come along will cause that rule to be kicked out.

~Marimmar

 

[Sejs]

Your group seems to have had no encounts with con draining monsters yet. The first Dire Weasel to come along will cause that rule to be kicked out.

Nah, we have. The threshhold is based on the caracter's actual ability score, not one that's been temporarily reduced by ability damage. Permanant drops in con score, on the other hand, would reduce the character's threshhold. Likewise, we handle it with magic in a fashion similar to int boosts and skill points - temporary increases in con (buff spell) will give more hp and better fort save, but won't extend the death's door ammount. More permanant boosts like from items, that have been worn for a considderable ammount of time will enbiggen death's door, but if that item's snatched away from a negative hp person.. them snapping back to their normal con score could be fatal.