One of The Six Stats, abbreviated as CON.
This is the stat that determines just how tough a character is. While not a measure of strength, it's a measure of just how hard it is to actually kill a guy, usually being the stat governing Hit Points. A secondary function is sometimes used to determine how well a character can shrug off poisons, illnesses, and other things which attack the body. Occasionally it will also determine the potency of venoms, Breath Weapons and other attacks which are produced by the body but don't relate to the user's physical or magical strength.
Determinators especially have a metric ton of this, even if their Strength isn't so great. Expect to see a lot of action heroes have this more than just about anything else, since they're probably going to suffer more damage than an Abrams tank. Characters with healing abilities often either dump constitution or are supernaturally durable because of said powers.
Here's a guide for examples:
12-15: The character is tougher than normal, but will still likely die from an untreated gunshot wound, severe beating, or blade wound which hasn't hit a vital organ.
16-19: The character is really tough. They likely won't die from any blade wound or gunshot that doesn't hit a vital organ, and even then they'll probably shrug off that injury for a good few hours.
20-23: Go ahead, empty a clip into this character. That might kill him; might, maybe, after about 5 hours of constant, profuse bleeding. Having a limb blown off will probably hinder them, or it might just piss them off like crazy, too. Still in the realm of "killable" though a Kill Sat or headshot will probably be needed for a definitive kill.
24+: You've just made a juggernaut; he cannot be killed by conventional weapons. Ballistics don't work on him. This guy blows his hair dry with a jet engine.
30+: Nothing short of something that outright disintegrates or atomizes matter indiscriminately will stop this bastard from moving... Maybe.
This should not be confused with the document that establishes the rights of a government and its citizens.
Examples:
12-15:
Anime- Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: Nijima, for all his wimpiness, can at least take a few hits from fighters.
- Tadashi of Onidere can take some damage from Saya. Of course, she holds back when she does have to beat him up, but her holding back is still pretty painful. He doesn't walk away without scratches, though, and has been stated that he would die without question if she weren't holding back like crazy.
- Indiana Jones has been shown to be able to take more damage than your average person, but compared to many characters from other action films, a decent pounding or a single gunshot is enough to put him in deep trouble.
- Transformers Film Series: Sam Witwicky, while no match for any of the marines in the films, the fact that he's getting thrown around like a ragdoll while trying to not get killed by giant, sentient robots, and only suffers cardiac arrest in the second film is a testament to him being tougher than your average teenager.
- Technically, Achilles from The Iliad . The reasoning is thus: while he was invulnerable in all but his heels, he still died pretty quickly to a poison-tipped arrow. His legendary imperviousness is likely more a case of insane Damage Reduction than outright high Con.
16-19:
Anime- Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple has Kenichi himself. He can take a lot of damage. He's basically the toughest character in the series barring Master-level characters. His life can still be put on the line, but unless you're a Master-level martial artist, expect to have to continually pound his face in for a good twenty minutes before he stops moving because his master-level mentors only do a little less than that all the time.
- Rurouni Kenshin: Kenshin and Sano can literally take more hits than a brick wall. They'll still die if they're left in that state, and Kenshin especially is on the brink of death by the time Makoto Shisio is through with him. Still, that's saying something when you consider that it means Kenshin was still alive against someone as skilled as he in Hiten Misturugi Ryu.
- John McClane, in every single Die Hard film, gets beat to hell before the end of the film, possibly stabbed, probably shot, and likely with at least one broken rib. But he isn't done until he says "Yippee kai-yay, motherfucker!"
- Jackie Chan regularly takes beatings in his films, and though they're usually cumulative, it isn't until the end of the film that it really starts affecting him. He usually barely wins
- Oldboy (2003) has Oh Dae-su. Exactly what it'd take to bring this man down is uncertain, but a corridor full of people trying to beat him up combined with a knife in the back and an elevator full of henchmen afterwards obviously wasn't enough.
20-23:
Anime- Love Hina has Keitaro Urashima, who has been stated as being "immortal," going so far as to be launched about a half-mile into the air, on several occasions, by Motoko. He's also been hit by a van, dropped off a cliff, you name it. The worst damage he's ever sustained is a broken leg.
- Every single character in Baki the Grappler. Considering that nearly everyone in the series is throwing around punches and kicks that would kill a normal human in one blow, it's amazing that
they allmost manage to survive with reasonably limited permanent damage. - One Piece: Roronoa Zoro, in a single fight, lost more blood than actually exists in a human body. It's still having an effect on him, but the fact that he's alive at all is nothing short of miraculous.
- Guts from Berserk has been known to take inhuman levels of punishment when fighting Apostles, regularly surviving things that would have killed a regular human many times over. The biggest example of this has to be his grueling and furious battle with Rosine in the Lost Children arc.
- Joshua Graham from Fallout: New Vegas embodies this in spirit note . During the First Battle of Hoover Dam, NCR sharpshooters shot him down and reported him dead a grand total of five times - he got back up each time. For losing the battle, Caesar had him beaten, covered in pitch, set on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon - he walked out of the Canyon and spent three months walking back to his old home in New Canaan.
- Roy Greenhilt from The Order of the Stick. He may not be quite as durable as O-Chul (see below in 24+), but he's not too far behind, at least as of the later story-arcs. Strips 927
and 929 show him impaled by a triceratops' horn and his own greatsword in a single encounter and still able to get back up afterwards, and that was after he'd already taken some damage from a few earlier battles.
- Played straight and for laughs with Brock Samson of The Venture Brothers. As shown above, Brock can take a ridiculous amount of damage and walk away with little real injuries. An enemy emptying a clip into him will probably just make him mad.
24+:
Anime- Dragon Ball By default, any Saiyan counts for this category. Every Saiyan can survive mountain-shattering blows and they all take blows with equivalent power in rapid succession. They also regularly take blasts to the face that can blow up planets or more, and show little to no damage from them.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi presents Jack Rakan, A.K.A. "that damn guy you can stab with swords all you like and it won't do a thing, damn it". The man takes half a dozen anti-army spells to face, gets pinballed through the air several times, and gets impaled by a giant magical spear all in one fight. Then he gets up and laughs. It takes a Reality Warper who can erase him from existence to take him out, and even then it's only temporary.
- Saitama from One-Punch Man. He calmly shrugs off attacks that knock other heroes through buildings. The worst he ever suffers is Clothing Damage. He did suffer a head bruise when training under Silver Fang, but that was namely Rule of Funny (a rock-paper-scissors thing and the loser had to try and cover their head with a helmet before getting bopped. By the time Saitama got a win, he a big red mark on his shiny head.)
- Superman: The bullets-bouncing-off aspect may be a case of insanely-high Damage Reduction, but the fact that he won't die from inhuman pressures like being at the bottom of the ocean, can survive the void of space for a limited time, and, Depending on the Author, a freakin' nuclear warhead, DR alone cannot account for all that. Even a magic weapon, which is his other main weakness besides Kryptonite, will probably take a few stabs to kill him, if it does at all.
- Captain Marvel. Again, pretty obvious, what with the bouncing bullets and all.
- The Monkey King from Journey to the West is Doubly Immortal. He can't be killed by being stabbed, sliced, boiled, eaten, squished, drowned, bludgeoned... yeah, you get the picture.
- O-Chul from The Order of the Stick. In his case, it's quite literal, as Word of God has confirmed his Constitution score to be in the mid-20s. Throw the man in a pool of acid (complete with acid-breathing shark!), then watch him get impaled on the spikes at the bottom, and get attacked by the shark several times before he gets out, and he'll still try to blitz your ass. O-Chul does not have a Constitution score. Constitution has an O-Chul score.
- Waspinator of Beast Wars has been subjected to just about every form of punishment the Maximals (and some of the Predacons) can dish out, and been reduced to pieces more times than one can count. No matter what happens to him, he pulls himself together and comes back for more... and every minute of it sucks for him. He exists for seemingly no other reason than for the universe to torment him.
30+
"Real Life"- Chuck Norris is completely the ultimate badass. He was bitten by a cobra, and after 18 hours of agonizing pain, the cobra died.
- Rev. Grigori Rasputin was poisoned, stabbed, shot, and drowned. He regained consciousness inside the crematory oven and had enough time to wave goodbye before being reduced to ashes. In fact, having to be killed several times in increasingly improbable and hilarious ways to keep someone down is referred to as a "Rasputinian Death."
- In Dungeons & Dragons, the Tarrasque has 35 constitution.
- In Pathfinder, Great Old One Cthulhu has 45 constitution.
