Toughness

Has anyone made extensive use of this, and is it worth it as a melee based char? What damage to monsters do, slashing or piercing? The requirements seem lower for skills apart from the last 2 (regeneration and +30 blood).

Whit toughness 9, blades 10 and a bottle of pan killer i could take on 5-8 npc's whit out a problem. I take a lot lese damage from creatures to.

I'm playing on hard and a Cunning/Toughness/Voodoo character (no Guns for me and I want to see how far I can get w/o putting a single point in Blades, too).
Toughness is the skill I invested the majority of my points in early on, together with Cunning. I'd say that Toughness is useful. In the beginning, some creatures would one- or two-hit kill me but now (Sword Coast) it's more around three or four strikes before it's over so it helps in staying alive a little longer .
I think I'd treat the skill as secondary if I would be playing on normal difficulty but on hard I consider it as a must have for my character since I want to spend the majority of my points in Cunning/Toughness and Voodoo and just about none in Blades or Guns.
If I would be putting more of an emphasis on Blades then I might neglect Toughness more but as it stands I need some serious defensive capabilities to balance out my nearly complete lack of offensive powers.

How useful do you find the "Booze" skills like distiller and so forth? I take it Bladeproof is more important than Bulletproof? I am thinking an even spread between Blade / tough / cunning / voodoo might be the way to go for me. I already have items to boost steal / pickpocket so can keep cunning at 5/6. Seems like you only miss out on a few skills at higher levels, in addition to 5+/5+/5+ at each level? There are enough items about to compensate as well it seems.

Toughness is awsome, I'm playing currently voodoo character and I also have it high.
Boozemaking I didn't use at all (so far), because of my extensive exploration, solving everything I can, opening every single chest, robbing everyone… And not forcing enemies I couldn't kill early but returning later, I have had enough rum/grog from the loot.