Toughness Perk Redux

The Fallout 4 Toughness Perk Problem

The Fallout 4 Toughness perk is, well, awful. There are 5 ranks of the Toughness perk, and each perk point invested gets you only an additional +10 damage resistance. This means investing a full 5 perk points gains you a total of only +50 damage resistance. Admittedly, right at the start of the game, +10 damage resistance is actually kind of good, but beyond that, investing perk points for static +10 damage resistance gains is terrible. With the way the Fallout 4 damage resistance system works, small damage resistance values like this are virtually worthless as gameplay progresses and damage values increase. Add in the fact that there are are multiple gameplay difficulty levels that increase enemy damage--and that Fallout 4 doesn't offer alternative perks for the different difficulty levels--and Toughness gets even worse.

I've seen various mods that try to buff Toughness by simply increasing the static damage resistance values gained at each perk level, but I wasn't quite satisfied with any of these approaches. Admittedly, low-level perks like Toughness (which are available right away at the start of the game) aren't supposed to be particularly powerful perks. In other words, perks available at Endurance 1 should be notably less powerful than perks available at Endurance 10. However, my philosophy is that perk investments should never become irrelevant. Perks should either serve as stepping stones (think Gun Nut 1) or provide incremental gains that remain useful throughout the course of a playthrough.

So I decided to completely rework the Toughness perk.

The Toughness Perk Redux

Balancing the Toughness perk to remain useful without becoming overpowered in the early game is extremely challenging. In the end, my solution was to scale Toughness with the player character's Endurance level: Every level of Toughness provides a damage resistance bonus per Endurance level. Here are the revised perks with the vanilla perks listed for comparison:

Toughness Rank 1 (available at level 1)

Toughness Perk Redux: Gain +5 Damage Resistance for each Endurance point up to Endurance level 10.

Vanilla: If nothing else, you can take a beating! Instantly gain +10 Damage Resistance.

Toughness Rank 2 (available at level 9)

Toughness Perk Redux: Now gain +10 Damage Resistance for each Endurance point up to Endurance level 10.

Vanilla: You now have +20 Damage Resistance.

Toughness Rank 3 (available at level 18)

Toughness Perk Redux: Now gain +15 Damage Resistance for each Endurance point up to Endurance level 10.

Vanilla: You now have +3