Your hit point maximum increases by an amount equal to twice your level when you gain this feat. Whenever you gain a level thereafter, your hit point maximum increases by an additional 2 hit points.
Tough: Hit Me Baby One More Time
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
To be tough is to take a beating over and over and stay standing. It's getting burned, bruised, battered, and beaten but bravely butting against opposition and holding your ground. Tough is simple. Tough is meaningful. Tough is roughly as good as a +1 Con mod.
There isn’t a particularly deep conversation to be had about Tough. Mechanically, just improving your Constitution score by 2 for a +1 Con mod will give you +1 HP per level and +1 to Con saves. If you don’t care about the +1 to Con saves, Tough offers you a functional +2 to your Con mod as far as your hit points are concerned. Neat.
You probably shouldn’t care that much about your Constitution modifier, nor will you often need a bonus 10 to 20 hit points. In the early tier, Tough will feel pretty bad, as it doesn’t offer you any new things to do, and won’t often be the difference in quantity of hits you can take before dropping. In the mid to upper tiers, when you’ve already established your play pattern and are getting a giant chunk of bonus HP at once, it can feel like you’re getting an extra round up in a fight, which is meaningful. Is it meaningful enough over a proactive combatant feat, or one that empowers your character out of combat? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it for your character. It just usually isn’t going to be the best option at any given time.
Hit points gained before a fight are worth loads more than ones gained by spending actions in a fight, and Tough gives you a healthy chunk from levels 5 onwards. Paired with a barbarian’s resistances or a paladin's enormous AC, Tough can help a character feel unkillable, which is a cool feeling to have. It's not the primary reason why a character is unkillable. In reality, your AC, hit dice, Con mod, and defensive class features are doing collectively the majority of the work, but adding Tough onto that list will continue pushing you towards the unstoppable bulwark or undying rage fueled killing machine. If that’s the fantasy you’re going for, Tough is a perfectly fine pickup in the mid to upper tiers. Early on, I’d steer clear and focus more on feats that empower other elements of your character.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
