humble minion
Legend
As a rule, most people when creating a wizard PC will put the highest stat into intelligence, and then the next highest into dex. Wizards don't have many hit points and so avoiding getting hit is a priority, obviously.
Has anyone had any experience with not doing this - with instead putting the second highest stat into constitution and planning to accept getting hit more often and just hope to soak it up? My gut feeling says that this would have real survivability troubles at low levels especially, but I'm interested in hearing if anyone's tried it on the table, or if anyone's got any ideas about the best ways to make it work.
I know I can go to various character optimisation pages and they'll all tell me to play a dwarf for the armour proficiencies, or a tortle abjurer who is continually casting Alarm as a ritual to cheesily max out his ward, but the concept I'm trying to make work here is a minotaur labyrinth wizard from Kobold Press's Southlands. So no special racial defensive abilities, and nothing from the subclass to help me avoid getting hit (although there's a nice short-ranged area confusion-like ability that would sometimes help).
Is mage armour worth it at low levels, or is the difference between getting hit all the time at AC 10 and getting hit almost all the time at AC13 not worth the expenditure of one of my very few spell slots? Is it practical to pick up the much-maligned Blade Ward and at low levels trying to rely on reaction spells like Hellish Rebuke? Are there any feats/backgrounds or more obscure spells that could help me out? Should i just bite the bullet and go fighter or barbarian at level 1 for the armour proficiencies, and then multiclass into wizard? The character history isn't entirely incompatible with that.
And to complicate the issue - the minotaur race's class features are heavily based around their horn attacks - and labyrinth magic has a bunch of horn-, charging-, and goring-related spells. Horn attacks are non-finessable natural weapons. So if i want to use any of this with any degree of effectiveness (and i do, for characterisation reasons) that pretty much means i have to at least gesture in the direction of a decent Strength score as well.
(On a more general note, this is one of my capital-I issues with sterotypically big brawny races in 5e. They tend to get melee-focused special abilities, which are very hard to use effectively or at all for any PC that's not melee-focused. So you get very little use out of a lot of your racial features unless you conform to the stereotype. And it's not like i'm playing against type TOO much here - Midgard minotaurs have all thie maze-based mysticism and religion, and all sorts of labyrinth-based specialty spells, and spells that want you to charge and gore people. This SHOULD be a concept that works ok. Oh, and the general uselessness of Strength in 5e unless you're a heavily-armed hitting-people person is something I have Opinions about as well...)
edit: Midgard minotaurs are +2 Ctr, +1 Con, darkvision, perfectly remembers paths taken through mazes etc, and a 1d6 natural attack that turns into 2d6 and a free shove if you move 10 ft in a straight line before attacking
Has anyone had any experience with not doing this - with instead putting the second highest stat into constitution and planning to accept getting hit more often and just hope to soak it up? My gut feeling says that this would have real survivability troubles at low levels especially, but I'm interested in hearing if anyone's tried it on the table, or if anyone's got any ideas about the best ways to make it work.
I know I can go to various character optimisation pages and they'll all tell me to play a dwarf for the armour proficiencies, or a tortle abjurer who is continually casting Alarm as a ritual to cheesily max out his ward, but the concept I'm trying to make work here is a minotaur labyrinth wizard from Kobold Press's Southlands. So no special racial defensive abilities, and nothing from the subclass to help me avoid getting hit (although there's a nice short-ranged area confusion-like ability that would sometimes help).
Is mage armour worth it at low levels, or is the difference between getting hit all the time at AC 10 and getting hit almost all the time at AC13 not worth the expenditure of one of my very few spell slots? Is it practical to pick up the much-maligned Blade Ward and at low levels trying to rely on reaction spells like Hellish Rebuke? Are there any feats/backgrounds or more obscure spells that could help me out? Should i just bite the bullet and go fighter or barbarian at level 1 for the armour proficiencies, and then multiclass into wizard? The character history isn't entirely incompatible with that.
And to complicate the issue - the minotaur race's class features are heavily based around their horn attacks - and labyrinth magic has a bunch of horn-, charging-, and goring-related spells. Horn attacks are non-finessable natural weapons. So if i want to use any of this with any degree of effectiveness (and i do, for characterisation reasons) that pretty much means i have to at least gesture in the direction of a decent Strength score as well.
(On a more general note, this is one of my capital-I issues with sterotypically big brawny races in 5e. They tend to get melee-focused special abilities, which are very hard to use effectively or at all for any PC that's not melee-focused. So you get very little use out of a lot of your racial features unless you conform to the stereotype. And it's not like i'm playing against type TOO much here - Midgard minotaurs have all thie maze-based mysticism and religion, and all sorts of labyrinth-based specialty spells, and spells that want you to charge and gore people. This SHOULD be a concept that works ok. Oh, and the general uselessness of Strength in 5e unless you're a heavily-armed hitting-people person is something I have Opinions about as well...)
edit: Midgard minotaurs are +2 Ctr, +1 Con, darkvision, perfectly remembers paths taken through mazes etc, and a 1d6 natural attack that turns into 2d6 and a free shove if you move 10 ft in a straight line before attacking
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