Hi everyone! I'm going to be running Lost Mines of Phandelver for a group of 5, 4 of whom have never played before but have really wanted to. We've got a half-orc barbarian, a tiefling rogue, a drow ranger, a wood elf druid, and a rock gnome wizard.
Most players only invest in what makes their character strong at combat. There's only 2-3 stats for every character that help combat.
1. Primary Stat
2. Secondary Stat
3. Constitution
For combat - the only time to take away from these stats is to boost another stat is to meet a multiclass requirement.
The Barbarian has a Strong 16, everyone else has a Strong 8. The Barbarian and Wizard have Con 16, the ranger has Con 14, and the rogue and druid have Con 12.
Strength adds very little. As long as it's not needed for damage or armor it's a nearly worthless stat - which is what you see reflected.
That said - all you need is a few str athletics challenges that are life and death situations to change that perspective.
12 is actually the lowest Con scores I've seen in a game before.
It has me, yet again, for my homebrewed houserules (this game is by the book, unless the ranger wants to go beastmaster, then I'll offer beast of air or earth) thinking about how to change Constitution and possibly nerfing Dex.
Why do you want to change them?
Constitution is a tough one. I don't think Constitution is too good. The trouble is that it's good for everyone, and it feels important to everyone. It might be possible to adjust Constitution, taking away it's +HP/level but making it so HD recover entirely on a long rest (and have HD still apply Constitution modifier). This way, high Con characters would recover faster, but they wouldn't necessarily be tougher than others.
A stat that makes you tougher than others is important. If you remove that from Con what stat can I take to make me tougher?
For Strength vs Dexterity, I think they can be brought more to balance if Finesse weapons only applied Dex to hit and ranged weapons used Str to damage still (except the crossbow). Perhaps using the variant carrying capacity more would help too, as the carrying capacity for 8 Str makes even light armor pretty encumbering.
They are balanced as long as both are either an important stat to a character. Str has access to two handed weapons, is better at knocking prone, is better at grappling, ability to use heavy armor and ability to carry more. A big part of str seeming worse than dex is due to grappling and shoving being view as less useful than they actually are.
The issue is that dex is the secondary stat for all characters that don't wear heavy armor - because it increases AC - a combat ability - whereas strength doesn't do that for them.
So if you want to see strong wizards/bards/sorcerers/warlocks/etc - give them heavy armor proficiency. They will actually have a decision to make then about whether to be strong or dexterous.
Now, it is partially class choice, as only one chose a class that prioritizes Str, but I just found it particularly interesting that no one put 10s or 12s in Str (everyone used Standard Array).
I don't. Everyone that doesn't go str and heavy armor needs dex for AC. It's not hard to imagine why str comes into play so little in those situations.
