Why should watching a pack of summoned rats trying to chew through your +2 mithril cap, +4 cloak of protection and +3 mithril boots influence Toughness? Again, seems like nothing more than making suggestions for your own convenience.

Firstly, well, because you can gain strength by hauling too much weight around. That doesn't make much sense to me. I'd think that carrying anything above burdened would damage strength rather than boost it, personally (you wreck your back hauling too much loot around). Thus, if strength is possible by hauling tons of stuff around, why not have toughness for taking hits but not suffering damage?

Or if you prefer, how about levelling toughness when you suffer a critical hit? Since there isn't really a way to train toughness via a physical activity, like Strength, I'd want to have a physical activity to level up toughness as well.

Secondly, why the hostility?

Thirdly, if I was going to suggest something for my own convenience, it would be something that didn't require grinding. It would take a lot of grinding to level up toughness in this manner.

If grinding is involved, there are already effective ways of increasing toughness which do not require interaction with monsters.

Adding a way to train toughness would then need to be balanced by something that abuses it. You shouldn't just add stuff that makes the game easier.

I think that if this is to be implemented, it should be the other way around: training Toughness a tiny bit every time you get hit and do take damage. After all, Strength goes up by walking around strained by the items you're carrying, not coping pretty well with that load.

Yep. For the same reason it makes sense to only train skills when you fail to use them successfully. That way you can't grind. If you keep doing a task until it becomes trivial, you will no longer get any benefit from it. It's a self balancing system.

It's not like this would be game breaking, you can already pump up toughness with herbs with requires zero risk, at least this way you have to actually take damage. You probably don't want to use damage done by the pc to themselves for that purpose, otherwise you could just whip yourself until you were tough, although that arguably wouldn't be any more monotonous than herb grinding.

The real problem is that by early to mid game, your toughness and willpower potential *are* your toughness and willpower. 9 out of 10 times, you will hit that potential due to herbs. That makes no sense. Other stats are hard to raise, but toughness, the most important stat, arguably, is the easiest to raise.