Hit Points?

[Surgoshan]

It seems wisdom will be the dump stat, not constitution. Time (and a full book of rules) will tell.
But we can agree that constitution won't be the most important stat.

From Dunamin's link:

“Yeah. I thought about going high Con and using a hammer, but I wanted to start with the chance to make a couple of attacks, so I’m using rain of blows as my good weapon attack, and I went with high Wis so that I can switch to the better oppy powers later.”

Bolding mine. I think we're looking at a core that focuses on making very different builds possible, with no dump stats and no stats that are vital to all gameplay.

 

[Bishmon]

Finding a use for a particular ability score is largely irrelevant, because no one is saying that any particular ability score is useless. Charisma wasn't considered a dump stat in 3E because it had no uses. Hell, there were a couple core classes built around it. It was a dump stat because unless you were playing a character whose prime stat needed to be Charisma, you didn't need it at all.

In my opinion, from what I've seen, I think Intelligence is going to be largely ignored by most classes. The skills it affects aren't great, and it doesn't give extra skills anymore. It affects AC and reflex, but so does Dexterity, which also affects initiative. I just don't see many uses for Intelligence unless it's the prime stat that affects a class.

 

[DandD]

Or perhaps some weapons, and some at-will/encounter/daily powers. We really don't know yet which one's the least useful stat.

 

[fnwc]

Or perhaps some weapons, and some at-will/encounter/daily powers. We really don't know yet which one's the least useful stat.

Comeliness.

 

[lukelightning]

In my opinion, from what I've seen, I think Intelligence is going to be largely ignored by most classes.

Considering so many people in the real world seem to have used INT as their dump stat (present company excluded, of course!), I think we can call this "realism".

 

[lexoanvil]

from what ive gathered 4ed wont have dump stats : / with diffrent class builds i wouldn't be suprised to see fighters with high int and wis. its great for roleplaying fighters are not the dumb peice of meat in front of the wizard. maybe the rogue is charming and wise. or the cleric at the peak of human fitness.

 

[Victim]

Meh. It just means that a character will need an extended rest a few encounters earlier. Since there's no real benefit to fighting those extra encounters except in rare cases when a party is time-constrained, then having a couple more healing surges doesn't help all that much.

I'm a bit underwhelmed by Constitution is 4E. The difference between a 16 Con and 12 Con are 4 HP and 2 healing surges. Like I said, I don't think the extra healing surges matter much since there's rarely a need or a benefit to soldiering on through a lot of encounters in a day. The 4 HP are nice, I suppose, but I'm guessing it'll be pretty easy to find another ability score to bump up that will provide nicer bonuses to a certain class than an extra 4 HP.

Healing Surges don't just determine how many encounters a character can go through. Most healing powers and abilities seem to be based off healing surges. If you want the cleric to be able to put your character back together either via magic or the heal skill, it sounds like there will be trouble if you don't have a Surge available.

But yes, Con seems to have dropped in importance since it's no longer the universally desired stat. That's probably a good thing.

 

[Bishmon]

Healing Surges don't just determine how many encounters a character can go through. Most healing powers and abilities seem to be based off healing surges. If you want the cleric to be able to put your character back together either via magic or the heal skill, it sounds like there will be trouble if you don't have a Surge available.

Well, yeah, that's why you wouldn't choose to keep adventuring if you were low on healing surges.

I mean, if after 4 encounters you see you've used up 7 of your 10 healing surges, you'll probably decide you can get at least a 5th encounter in because you have enough healing surges left to fall back on in case that 5th encounter gets tough.

But if you only had 8 healing surges and you've used up 7 of them so far, you'll probably just call it a day after that 4th encounter.

That's what I mean when I say the number of healing surges only really affects how many encounters you can go through in a day. And since there's almost no incentive for doing more encounters, except the rare instances of a time-sensitive mission, being able to go through another encounter or two isn't much of a benefit.

 

[DandD]

Who says that you get the time to rest? D&D 4th edition doesn't make the assumption that a party has roughly 4 encounters per day anymore. And it doesn't have anything to do with time-sensitivity. It suffices that you get attacked again and again, or you have to attack again and again, for one day. The game system isn't meant that the party is now ganging up on one lonely monster with a Challenge Rating equal their average Character level, but either an enemy party consisting of monsters, or one really big monster with many actions per round, and this time, they're supposed to wander around, instead of waiting in their litttle 3x3 room.
It does help for a little bit more organic story-telling...

 

[Stalker0]

I think con is definitely not the all stat it once was, but I doubt it will be a dump stat. The question is will it ever be a primary stat, would someone be willing to throw their 18 in it like some classes do now?

As for toughness, I agree it seems like a very strong feat. In general wotc was saying that feats are slightly weaker than what we are used to, but toughness is amazingly strong especially for a wizard (25% hp bump!!)