History MadeOfIron / TabletopGames

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'' 1st edition warrior characters (assuming that they survive their [[MadeOfPlasticine squishy]] and pathetic earlier careers) can acquire a condition that the fanbase [[FanNickname used to call]] [[FanDisservice Naked]] [[{{Squick}} Dwarf]] Syndrome, which is essentially the idea that a Dwarf [[DeathSeeker Giant Slayer]] or similarly high level character, even if he is [[FullFrontalAssault totally naked]], can take repeated [[GunsAreWorthless gunshots]], [[AnnoyingArrows arrows]] and [[AlmostLethalWeapons sword strokes]] from [[{{Mooks}} average combatants]] without ever taking a single point of damage due to his high Toughness characteristic.

* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' suggests a lot of Ablative Damage Reduction to replicate this. Basically it acts just like HitPoints except that you won't flinch, won't bleed and won't be "really" hurt until it has been worn away by, say, getting hit by a truck and then shot several times.
* The ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' RPG turns Malcolm Reynolds' aforementioned toughness (see Live Action TV above) into the character trait "Tough as Nails". It gives an HP bonus.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' Aftermath reintroduces readers to the character of Julian the First, the leader of the infamous ''Juicer Uprising'', some five years back. This is at least ''four'' years since Julian's body was ''supposed'' to have literally burnt out to a flaming (ultimately ''exploding'') skeleton as a side effect of the PsychoSerum he enhanced it with. True, his body is nowhere near his peak condition, but the sheer fact that he is still alive in the first place is nothing short of miraculous.
* ''TabletopGame/DCHeroes'', ah, whereto start. First, in the default "Action" genre, any attack not explicitly declared as such at the time the attack is made is incapable of killing anyone, or even causing long-term damage (with a few exceptions, such as the damage from knockback). Superman could pick up a battleship and use it to bash Aunt May over the head, and she'd just be unconscious for about an hour or so; she could also survive a direct blast of solar level fusion plasma and likewise just be unconscious for about an hour or so. Secondly, any character could spend up to his or her "Resistance Value" in Hero Points to negate incoming damage - meaning that Batman, with 190 Hero Points, could be shot with a .50 cal machinegun repeatedly, assuming each shot hit and didn't do exceptional damage, for over 65 combat rounds (counting his actual innate hit points), which is long enough for the barrel of most heavy machineguns to have melted long before, and assuming a single continuous belt, long enough to have fired well over two THOUSAND rounds of ammunition. Now THAT is Made Of Iron !
* ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'' tends toward this as written. Player characters and major antagonists can generally take quite a few hits to just their "stress track" (five-plus-bonuses boxes of which only one gets checked off per hit, though not necessarily in order) before they have to move on to taking "consequences", of which they can accumulate up to three before finally being taken out. This tends to result in overlong conflicts even for the pulp genre, so later iterations of the ''FATE'' system address it by either radically shortening the default stress track (''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'') or turning it into a more traditional hit point bar where every ''point'' of damage takes off a box (''TabletopGame/StarblazerAdventures'' and its fantasy cousin ''TabletopGame/LegendsOfAnglerre''), as well as turning consequences into more of a form of reducing or preventing incoming stress damage in the first place.
* ''TabletopGame/OnMightyThews'': the most an injury will do is provide you with a bit of a penalty later in the story. Character death isn't actually part of the rules.

** The current ultimate example of this is Commissar Yarrick. All of the above, then, if you actually manage to get through all of his wounds, he has an ability that lets him ''ignore death'' two times out of three. Roll well and Yarrik will survive anything and everything. {{Determinator}} does not begin to describe it.

** The current ultimate example of this is Commissar Yarrik. All of the above, then, if you actually manage to get through all of his wounds, he has an ability that lets him ''ignore death'' two times out of three. Roll well and Yarrik will survive anything and everything. {{Determinator}} does not begin to describe it.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'' 1st edition warrior characters (assuming that they survive their [[MadeOfPlasticine squishy]] and [[YouSuck pathetic]] earlier careers) can acquire a condition that the fanbase [[FanNickname used to call]] [[FanDisservice Naked]] [[{{Squick}} Dwarf]] Syndrome, which is essentially the idea that a Dwarf [[DeathSeeker Giant Slayer]] or similarly high level character, even if he is [[FullFrontalAssault totally naked]], can take repeated [[GunsAreWorthless gunshots]], [[AnnoyingArrows arrows]] and [[AlmostLethalWeapons sword strokes]] from [[{{Mooks}} average combatants]] without ever taking a single point of damage due to his high Toughness characteristic.

** Units aligned to the [[LegionsOfHell Chaos]] {{God|OfEvil}} [[PlagueMaster Nurgle]] almost invariably have this rule. {{Bl|essedWithSuck}}ight [[SpaceMarine Marines]], for example, who are already superhuman killing machines with [[HyperactiveMetabolism basic regenerative powers]] that would make ''clerics'' jealous, are so bloated and disease-ravaged by their various maladies that not much can hurt them further. Also, they don't feel pain. At all.

** Honorary mention to Captain Cortez of the Crimson Fists. If he was to tread on a land mine, that might fracture the last two remaining bones in his body that have never been broken. He once disarmed an Ork Warboss by trapping the weapon in his own ribcage, and has also fought for six weeks without supplies and led charges into the breach with a broken back. Even the Apothecaries of the Fists maintain that he's breaking the rules when it comes to how much damage a Space Marine can sustain. He's currently missing presumed dead, but they NeverFoundTheBody and his Chapter Master flatly refuses to accept him being dead until such time as an actual corpse turns up.
** A new rule introduced in 6th edition is It Will Not Die. Unlike Feel No Pain or Eternal Warrior, this instead lets the model regenerate wounds, up to it's starting total. Very, very few models have a combination of two of the above, and only two models so far, Chapter Master [[FanNickname Smashfucker]] and Chapter Master Smashbane have all three (which is why they're considered one of the cheesiest choices around, as there's ''no way to put him down'').
** The [[MachineWorship Adeptus Mechanicus]] [[TheEngineer Archmagos Belisarius Cawl]] is ludicrously durable on the tabletop. 5 Wounds, as much as a Greater Daemon and cannot be Instant Deathed by high strength weapons, with the best armour save in the game and a decent invulnerable, plus the Feel No Pain rule with a reroll (Only 44.4% of damage that gets that far will hurt him). The cherry on top? He [[HealingFactor REGENERATES D3]] of his 5 wounds every turn, which provides such insane endurance that Abbadon the Despoiler, Grand Warmaster of Chaos and one of the most feared duelists in the galaxy, cannot mathematically harm him. He throws out some pretty shiny buffs to his forces, too, granting the normal devastating but inaccurate Mechanicus weapons platforms [[ImprobableAimingSkills insane precision]], granting about a third of his regen capabilities to everyone or providing a 50% chance to ignore almost any damage. Unless the enemy is packing [[WaveMotionGun Destroyer Weaponry]] or [[YourSoulIsMine more esoteric methods]] he WILL survive to be a royal pain in the ass for your opponent.

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' series of ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'', ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'', ''TabletopGame/Deathwatch'', and ''TabletopGame/BlackCrusade'' zig-zag this trope. Normal humans are absolutely squishy. Space Marines and many of the ''core monsters'', however, can be shot over and over by normal humans and ignore all damage that does not trigger the game's CriticalHit system, Righteous Fury. For a normal human, a weapon which does 4-13 damage is considered insanely lethal and able to tear arms off, while Space Marines typically wield armor piercing grenade launchers which do 7-25 damage. A typical Ork may ignore about 10 damage per hit, making them nearly unkillable with lasguns, while powerful Tyranid creatures can often ignore 12-18 damage from toughness plus another 6-10 from armor, meaning even bolters often can't even score ScratchDamage most of the time.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': with the 2.5 errata toning down the GlassCannon effects, builds that focus on this have gone through "viable" and into "virtually mandatory". Rapid-healing, [[FeelNoPain pain-ignoring]], tons-of-health-levels soak monsters are the big thing now. Resistance-heavy Solars, high-Stamina Lunars, and Malfeas-focused Infernals stand out among the three most likely to take a daiklave to the chin without slowing down.
* ''TabletopGame/DCHeroes'', ah, whereto start. First, in the default "Action" genre, any attack not explicitly declared as such at the time the attack is made is incapable of killing anyone, or even causing long-term damage (with a few exceptions, such as the damage from knockback). Superman could pick up a battleship and use it to bash Aunt May over the head, and she'd just be unconscious for about an hour or so; she could also survive a direct plast of solar level fusion plasma and likewise just be unconscious for about an hour or so. Secondly, any character could spend up to his or her "Resistance Value" in Hero Points to negate incoming damage - meaning that Batman, with 190 Hero Points, could be shot with a .50 cal machinegun repeatedly, assuming each shot hit and didn't do exceptional damage, for over 65 combat rounds (counting hisactual innate hit points), which is long enough for the barrel of most heavy machineguns to have melted long before, and assuming a single continuous belt, long enough to have fired well over two THOUSAND rounds of ammunition. Now THAT is Made Of Iron !

*** this is still in 3rd edition, and 3.5. the massive damage requires a (trivial) dc 15 fortitude save to avoid death whenever you take more than 50 damage. generally, by the time you can shrug off 50 points of damage, you can make that fortitude save on anything but a natural 1. and with a specific feat, you can make the save even with a 1.

* ''{{Exalted}}'': with the 2.5 errata toning down the GlassCannon effects, builds that focus on this have gone through "viable" and into "virtually mandatory". Rapid-healing, [[FeelNoPain pain-ignoring]], tons-of-health-levels soak monsters are the big thing now. Resistance-heavy Solars, high-Stamina Lunars, and Malfeas-focused Infernals stand out among the three most likely to take a daiklave to the chin without slowing down.
* TabletopGame/DCHeroes , ah, whereto start. First, in the default "Action" genre, any attack not explicitly declared as such at the time the attack is made is incapable of killing anyone, or even causing long-term damage (with a few exceptions, such as the damage from knockback). Superman could pick up a battleship and use it to bash Aunt May over the head, and she'd just be unconscious for about an hour or so; she could also survive a direct plast of solar level fusion plasma and likewise just be unconscious for about an hour or so. Secondly, any character could spend up to his or her "Resistance Value" in Hero Points to negate incoming damage - meaning that Batman, with 190 Hero Points, could be shot with a .50 cal machinegun repeatedly, assuming each shot hit and didn't do exceptional damage, for over 65 combat rounds (counting hisactual innate hit points), which is long enough for the barrel of most heavy machineguns to have melted long before, and assuming a single continuous belt, long enough to have fired well over two THOUSAND rounds of ammunition. Now THAT is Made Of Iron !