D&D 5E 5E, HP, and Constitution

[Ogre Mage]

Constitution has been important across all editions and I have no problem with that. In the games I have played, anyone who thinks hit points are not important quickly becomes a liability for the party. And in some cases they will soon be rolling up a new character. A Constitution score of 8 would be foolish. I have been playing since 2E and all of my characters have had at least a 12 Con.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

A Constitution score of 8 would be foolish. I have been playing since 2E and all of my characters have had at least a 12 Con.

In 2E, the only difference between Con 7 and Con 14 was your chance of surviving System Shock and Resurrection. You didn't get a penalty to HP unless your Con was 6 or less, and you needed a 15 before you got a bonus. The bonus or penalty only applied up until level 10 or so, and it was impossible for anyone other than a fighter type to get more than a +2 bonus.

You could survive with below-average Con in 2E, because the effective difference between a low Con and a high Con was much smaller than it was in 3E. In 3E, and again in 5E, the Con modifier is even more important than the size of your hit die!

 

[Dualazi]

· Knocking over a bookcase does small AoE damage. So does collapsing a tunnel or bridge. It's there and just a factor of environment and/or preparation. See DMG pg 249 for improvised damage for an idea on it. If the DM allows gunpowder it's something the fighter might even craft on his own depending on background, and the secret for making gun powder could be a hermit secret for a fighter as a possible method of allowing it in the campaign with restrictions on access. It's another method for some AoE damage.
· I was flying with my griffon mount, could still climb, and could still jump.
· I was not turning invisible but I was hiding.
· Charm isn't a great ability in the first place. Advantage on a check can be done resource free with 2 members of the party where one uses the aid another action. If it's to stop incoming attacks then death or restraint accomplishes that as well.
· Teleporting also sucks in general without specifics like items from the location or existing circles of which the teleporter is aware. It can be convenient but traveling does accomplish the same thing. The typical use being getting home quickly after the important part is over or when fleeing.
· Dead > stun. Multiple attacks for grappling and pinning is effective to restrict opponents even without the stun, but other options such as poison coated weapons have useful effects as well. There's quite a bit of potential with poison whether the fighter is using contacts to supply it, or harvesting / creating his or her own. The choice also exists to knock someone unconscious instead of killing when dropped to 0 hp.
· They can hit and hide. Hitting and then leaving turns the encounter into a chase. The leaving part can be done taking the opportunity attack, or knocking opponents back first with a shove, or a combo shove with knock down and push first, or having taken the mobility feat. They aren't as good at it at rogues or monks, true, but the option still exists. They can do it as well as a rogue or monk momentarily by using action surge.

There are obviously things fighters cannot do but the lack of utility tends to get overstated. The utility just tends to fall into standard skill and equipment use.

This list is some pretty hysterically reaching, I gotta say, so props for that at least. I also like that we’re not 1 page in on discussing the CON stat and we’re already at wizards v. fighters. Again. Anyway…

1) The AoE damage is largely insignificant, likely takes the fighters action (would love to see a bookcase out damage a full round of fighter attacks) and is entirely dependent on DM fiat. The gunpowder thing is hilarious too, yeah I suppose if we give the fighter a super-secret clubhouse where he builds equalizing weapons that only he can use somehow then yeah, maybe that works. And maybe it highlights that there might be a problem when you have to go to that extent.

2) A wizard also has a griffon mount, and now can fly *and* be invisible, or use whatever other utility magic they want. Having a mount that the wizard can also get is not a point for the fighter class.

3) Cool. Right up until one of the slew of monsters with darkvision spots you. Better hope you’re a dex fighter too, else you really like that disadvantage for heavy armor.

4) Partially related o DM fiat on the wizard’s side this time, Charm person is useful in and out of combat. In combat is basically is a kill spell, it forces the enemy to regard you as “a friendly acquaintance” which, in my experience, means they stop trying to kill you.

5) Yeah, I can’t think of any campaigns where time is a factor and getting home quickly is important. While teleport is definitely a shadow of its former imbalanced self, its appeal is undeniable. Most importantly, the fighter receives nothing that aids in travel, so like it or not it’s still a point for the wizard.

6) Stuns lead to death, from the wizard himself if nothing else. The difference is that when the wizard stuns someone in the first round and they get blown up, the party doesn’t take any damage from the stunned target. Unless you spend 2-3 feats on being a tank, a fighter can kind-of lock down 1 target at best, sacrificing his damage to do so.

7) This one baffles me, when wizards can do this in superior fashion with repositioning tools and spells, and even if they couldn’t, I fail to see how “turning it into a chase” helps at all, like how is this a mark in the fighter’s favor?

The fighter’s lack of utility is in no way overstated compared to the wizard, especially with the changes to skills over the years. Most of the community seems fine with this, especially since fighter damage is more competitive in this edition than in prior years, but make no mistake that the wizard will have monumentally more options over the course of a campaign.

 

[Ogre Mage]

In 2E, the only difference between Con 7 and Con 14 was your chance of surviving System Shock and Resurrection. You didn't get a penalty to HP unless your Con was 6 or less, and you needed a 15 before you got a bonus. The bonus or penalty only applied up until level 10 or so, and it was impossible for anyone other than a fighter type to get more than a +2 bonus.

You could survive with below-average Con in 2E, because the effective difference between a low Con and a high Con was much smaller than it was in 3E. In 3E, and again in 5E, the Con modifier is even more important than the size of your hit die!

Not if you had evil DMs like mine who threw aging, petrification attacks etc. system shock rolls at us. Ugh, there were a lot of things I didn't like about 2E and that was one of them.

Back in the 2E days I usually did try to get at least a 15 Con for the HP bonus. Dex seemed less important in 2E than it became in later editions.

 

[Dualazi]

I've been talking about my dislike of the return to ye olde Constitution to HP. But, not because it's unbalanced. Con is mathematically balanced with Str, and probably weaker than Dex (for light armor wearers that is). The problem with Con is that it's good for everyone, and "no one" will dump it. A Con of 8 is unheard of. From my experience, 12 to 14 is more normal. I've never seen 10. I've seen 16 once.

I think I figured out a new way to address it. When looking at class balance, I'm not entirely sure that HP is really factored into class balance. They all seem to have a lot of class abilities, and I don't see too much extra damage or utility in the low HD classes. Maybe I'm wrong. But my idea is that rather than having classed based HP, instead have fixed HP per level (size based?) and then Con mod. If you're a melee character, Con is important. If you're a ranged character, maybe you don't focus on Con so much.

Mostly, I'm tossing ideas out there. I'm tired of Con being everyone's second or third choice. It's boring. It's a non-choice. There are other ways to solve it (I'm a huge fan of 4E's Con mod to healing surges).

What are your thoughts on Con?


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Con is fine, the reason that everyone takes it 3rd is because aside from niche character themes, you get virtually nothing for pumping other stats. Sure, the fighter could put some into charisma, but it'll end up being a minor buff to social skills he wasn't amazing at in the first place, at the cost of all-important combat effectiveness. I feel like this has been a design flaw for a long time, potentially since D&D inception, and fixing it would be a ton of work. Basically, they need to find a way to integrate the stats more broadly into classes, so that Paladins care about having INT and mages care about STR. Barring that D&D will always fall into the primary/secondary/tertiary/forgotten paradigm, outside of randomly rolled stats that happen to give you a weird spread.

Also, under your idea I think CON becomes more important, not less, since the only way to get more HP is to have more con. While not common, I have seen players take lower CON because they figure they can coast on the fighter/paladin HD and healing, when in your system they'll probably never make that call.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not if you had evil DMs like mine who threw aging, petrification attacks etc. system shock rolls at us. Ugh, there were a lot of things I didn't like about 2E and that was one of them.

Even if that was the case, the difference between 7 and 14 was something like the difference between 55% and 88%. If the DM is throwing system shock at you, then that's a save-or-die, and a couple of those will catch up to you regardless of your Con.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Even if that was the case, the difference between 7 and 14 was something like the difference between 55% and 88%. If the DM is throwing system shock at you, then that's a save-or-die, and a couple of those will catch up to you regardless of your Con.

33% is a pretty big difference on a save-or-die roll. System shock rolls were not a common occurrence (if they were I probably would have quit the game lol), but I do remember them coming up.

 

[Lanliss]

What?

I play currently 5th level monk with 12 con and I will I'm made of cheap glass.

I have 33 HP. You would have 23 HP. on 5th level. CR5 creatures hit from 15-20 on average. You are down in 2 hits for sure. Maybe even one.

Constitution is like a seatbelt, no one likes to bucle up, but it will save your life.

I did alright until I got hit by a crit at level 2. 12 max HP, only 3 of it left, and 20 damage. Died a glorious death at the hands of a Damn mimic, literally clutching my character values until death.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm tired of Con being everyone's second or third choice. It's boring. It's a non-choice.

If that is your problem, you should lessen the impact on total hp your con bonus is having.

Now, Con does have other uses (such as being part of Barbarian's Unarmored Defense, and helping out with Concentration checks), but let's look at only this aspect.

Currently, a level 10 rogue (bard, etc) would have around 55 hp with a +0 con bonus. This rises (obviously) by +20 with a +2 con bonus.

Now, that represents a whopping 35% increase. That's a huge bonus to the character's staying power, easily encompassing two full levels worth. And hit points is the premier indicator of level and power in this edition.

That's your problem and solution right there.

Make a Constitution increase from 10 to 14 impact your hp total by less than two levels, or an increase of over a third. And you should see players making other choices.

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One possible houserule:

You only add your Con bonus to hit points at character levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 10.

That is, you gain your con bonus only at first tier and even levels of second tier. At levels 5, 7, 9 and every level from 11 upwards, you simply get your hit die's worth, with no con bonus added. You still add your Con bonus when you spend Hit Dice, no matter what your level is.

This should gently nudge your players to perhaps accept a 12 Con where they previously would have gone with a 14. And a 10 Con where they would previously have gone with a 12.

 

[n0nym]

I've had the same problem with Con for a long time. I hate the "primary stat, then Constitution" paradigm. Because of that (and because I hate HP inflation), I've ruled that :

- You add your Constitution score once to your hit points
- People get 1 + Constitution modifier hit dice

Those players with melee characters still want high Constitution since it allows them to regenerate hit points between fights, but the other players didn't feel compelled to have high Con. So far it has worked pretty well, and people have prioritized other abilities over Con.