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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7567023" data-attributes="member: 4937">While that sounds intuitive, it practice fighter's in 3e tended to have lower CONs than wizards.The reason is that a fighter typically wants a combination of Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity, while a Wizard can safely dump stat everything but Intelligence and Constitution.&nbsp; In my experience the players of fighters typically don't want to completely neglect intelligence or wisdom, because they end up with no useful skills and poor Will saves.&nbsp; The result is that they tend to rely on less CON and rely more on their large d10 HD.&nbsp; By contrast, the only attribute a Wizard player cares about aside from Intelligence and Constitution is Dexterity, even if it is of limited value depending on your build and play style.&nbsp; It's perfectly valid to play a wizard with 18 Int, 18 Con, and everything else 8's.&nbsp; In 3e, CON is every classes second most important ability score, and in practice wizards will tend to have higher CON than fighters.&nbsp; This is one of the reasons spellcasters are much more effective in 3e than they were in 1e.1e AD&amp;D is the only system where I've seen the large disparity in squishiness you suggest, and that's because one of the class abilities of fighters was they got bonus hit points from 17 or higher CON, where as the maximum bonus hit points for other classes capped at +2/HD (at 16 CON).&nbsp;&nbsp; Because players tended to roll first and then decide what to play, it wasn't unusual to have a party with a fighter of 17-19 CON, and a wizard with say 10 CON.&nbsp;&nbsp; In this case, you very much would see a disparity of 100 hp versus the 25 hit point of the squishy wizard, which is precisely the sort of thing that helped keep high level spellcasters in check in 1e AD&amp;D.&nbsp;&nbsp; When that squishiness went away, as it did in 3e, it was part of the reason that balance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters was lost.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7567023, member: 4937"] While that sounds intuitive, it practice fighter's in 3e tended to have lower CONs than wizards. The reason is that a fighter typically wants a combination of Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity, while a Wizard can safely dump stat everything but Intelligence and Constitution. In my experience the players of fighters typically don't want to completely neglect intelligence or wisdom, because they end up with no useful skills and poor Will saves. The result is that they tend to rely on less CON and rely more on their large d10 HD. By contrast, the only attribute a Wizard player cares about aside from Intelligence and Constitution is Dexterity, even if it is of limited value depending on your build and play style. It's perfectly valid to play a wizard with 18 Int, 18 Con, and everything else 8's. In 3e, CON is every classes second most important ability score, and in practice wizards will tend to have higher CON than fighters. This is one of the reasons spellcasters are much more effective in 3e than they were in 1e. 1e AD&D is the only system where I've seen the large disparity in squishiness you suggest, and that's because one of the class abilities of fighters was they got bonus hit points from 17 or higher CON, where as the maximum bonus hit points for other classes capped at +2/HD (at 16 CON). Because players tended to roll first and then decide what to play, it wasn't unusual to have a party with a fighter of 17-19 CON, and a wizard with say 10 CON. In this case, you very much would see a disparity of 100 hp versus the 25 hit point of the squishy wizard, which is precisely the sort of thing that helped keep high level spellcasters in check in 1e AD&D. When that squishiness went away, as it did in 3e, it was part of the reason that balance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters was lost. [/QUOTE]

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