Which is more important for Bbn: Dex or Con?

[Shard O'Glase]

Just a min-max thought:

You'll find items along the road to increase physical abilities. You can never have too much constitution or strength, but after a while, the primary benefit of dexterity, AC, is limited by your armor. Items can give a +6 enhancement bonus to dexterity (which equates to a +3 to AC). Chain shirts and medium armor cap out at a +4 bonus to AC from dexterity. That means that unless you get special (mithril) armor or don't get optimal dexterity increasing items, any dex bonus beyond +1 will eventually be lost to you.

ditto.

con before dex.

Seriously even when talking mithral all you do is bump the mithral into a medium armor and a +4 to AC from dex will likely max out or come close to maxing the armors benefit. If you go two wepaon or two handed style your AC might not = the fighters but then again there always is the animated shield.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ok, I'll play Devil's Advocate.

At first level, a Barbarian has 12 + CON bonus hit points. If you give him 14 CON and 12 DEX, he has 14 hit points and 11 AC. Throwing Studded Leather and a Large Wooden Shield into the mix, his AC goes to 16.

His opponents will have maybe +3 to hit on average (some higher, some lower) and will typically do D8+2 damage.

So, at AC 16, they hit 40% of the time for 6.5 points of damage. So, his 14 hit points (16 hit points AC 14 with Rage) will last 5.4 (non-raging) to 4.9 (raging) attacks on average.

At AC 17 and 13 hit points, they hit 35% of the time for 6.5 points of damage. So, his 13 hit points (15 hit points AC 15 with Rage) will last 5.7 (non-raging) to 5.1 (raging) attacks on average.

Overall, his chances of surviving combat are better at first level if he takes DEX over CON (not including the extra offensive round of raging which could dispose of an enemy).

At second level, this starts leaning slightly in favor of CON, but still solidly in the DEX camp.

22.5 hit points, AC 17 (better armor of chain shirt) and opponents hitting the same percentage 40% (since they too are one level higher) for the same damage (basically).

So, they hit 40% of the time for 6.5 points of damage. So, his 22.5 hit points (26.5 hit points AC 15 with Rage) will last 8.7 (non-raging) to 8.15 (raging) attacks on average.

At AC 18 and 20.5 hit points, they hit 35% of the time for 6.5 points of damage. So, his 20.5 hit points (24.5 hit points AC 16 with Rage) will last 9.0 (non-raging) to 8.4 (raging) attacks on average.

As can be seen, DEX is still helping him more than CON with regard to number of attacks he can survive.


Granted, as his levels get higher and AC starts taking a backseat to BAB, the CON will eventually overcome the DEX. But, this will take quite a few levels to even get to the break even point considering that a same level opponent can only boost his weapon and STR up with magic (typically) whereas the Barbarian can boost his armor, his shield, his DEX, and can even gain other protections like luck or deflection bonus items (i.e. there are more magical defensive options in the game than offensive ones, not that any given character will acquire them all).


However, the real key here is that you have to SURVIVE to get to those higher levels and DEX allows you to do that slightly better than CON at lower to mid levels. At mid levels though, CON takes over. All of this is identical to the sum of the squares issue of Power Attack. There is an optimum AC point at which taking CON or DEX is preferable, DEX at low level when it significantly affects AC, CON at high level when DEX no longer significantly affects AC.


In fact, I have been playing the ToEE computer game and I had 3 party members out of 5 take the Dodge feat at third level. The reason is that when your opponent has a 25% chance of hitting you lowered to a 20% chance of hitting you, you will average 20% less damage taken in a fight. Even when he has a 50% chance of hitting you, lowering it to 45% drops your damage taken by 10% in a fight (on average).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Just to be contrary, consider that AC is never totally useless. Having an extra +1 from Dex is always useful at low levels. At high levels, it can be the difference when the iterative attacks come your way - if the barbarian is going toe-to-toe with his opponents (to get his full attack action), then he'll take the same in return. Sure, the first attack may always (95%) hit, but what about the rest?

Depends on what you are fighting. A classed humanoid will get -10 on a third iterative attack and what you describe could matter. OTOH, a huge creature with a monstrous attack routine will only have a -5 mod (or a -2 mod) on all "secondary" attacks -- probably still good enough to hit with every attack. Keep in mind that monsters can have multiple "primary" attacks in their full attack routine, e.g. Dire Bear.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Good analysis, Karinsdad.

It is a close call at low levels.

The fundamental advantage of Con is it automatically scales up with level with no addition resources spent. That is not really true about Dex.

 

[green slime]

Good analysis, Karinsdad.

It is a close call at low levels.

The fundamental advantage of Con is it automatically scales up with level with no addition resources spent. That is not really true about Dex.

But that fact ignores that damage scales up with level as well. those goblins you meet at first level are unlikely to take down a Barbarian in one or two round, whereas an apropriate Red Dragon encounter is quite capable of taking down a high level barbarian in a round or two.

My reason for choosing Con before Dex is that there is a maximum benefit from Dex, which depends on the armour used, as opposed to Con, which has no limit. That is not to say that Dex is not as useful, it is just more cost efficient in the long term to choose Con. Place too high a score in Dex, and it will be "wasted" AC-wise.

 

[Darklone]

Yupp, nice analysis, Karinsdad.

My chosen barbarian stats:
Str 15 (+1 at level 4, level 12+)
Con 14
Dex 13 (+1 at level 8)

For feats:
level 1: Power Attack, Cleave (assuming human barbarian)
level 3: Weapon Focus Great Sword
level 6: Great Cleave
level 9: Improved Critical Great Sword
level 12: Iron Will
level 15: other stuff

Hmm, Perhaps Power Critical instead of Iron Will at level12? If you are allowed to use it.

If you really want Iron Will, I'd take it instead of Great Cleave at level6.

 

[Al]

As for Power Attack, NPCs do not get to check the PC's character sheet when deciding how to boost the damage

No, but the likelihood is that when facing a raging barbarian in fairly light armour, the inclination of most opponents is to Power Attack unless they have a feeble to-hit, multiple iterative attacks or are two-weapon wielders. Certainly most two-hander brutes are going to want to do so.

If you fail a Fort save you typically die or take debilitating ability damage: Destruction, Disintegrate, Energy Drain, Finger of Death, Flesh to Stone, Horrid Wilting, Implosion, Poison, Slay Living, Wail of the Banshee.

I used to think this before I read an interesting argument about 'conspicuous targeting'. The argument goes that enemy casters will target those against whom their spells are most likely to work. As such, few casters will blow their top level save-or-dies such Finger of Death and Destruction on the barbarian- they will target the rogue and the wizard first and other classes with poor Fort saves. The barbarian is likely to be targeted by Will-based spells.

With Reflex saves, however, 'conspicuous targeting' is less of an issue. Because most high level Reflex saves are from area effect spells, the caster is likely to encompass as many of his enemies as he can, thus the barbarian will be forced to make the save.

All things being equal, therefore, the notion of 'conspicuous targeting' would imply that the barbarian actually has to make *fewer* Fort saves than Ref saves- the notion of the high-Con high-Fort barbarian is a solid deterrent against targeting individual Fort-based spells against the barbarian (there are a few mass Fort save spells, but they are usually extremely high level).

after a while, the primary benefit of dexterity, AC, is limited by your armor.

That's very true. The optimised AC for a barbarian is mithril full plate (medium armour) + Dex 16 or more, so a +4 Dex item is likely to cap out if the 13 in placed in Dex.

What must be borne in mind, however, is KarinsDad's notion of surviving through the low levels. A +4 Dex item costs 16,000gp, and is not first on the barbarian's list of must-buy items. As a barbarian I would be surprised if I spent more than 10% of my total resources on Dex-boosting items, and this figure is slightly generous. Your assets won't reach this level until at least 15th level.

As you rise in levels, you are taking a greater percentage of your damage from things which aren't even making attack rolls - such as area effect and targetted damage.

Of course, area effect spells usually have a Reflex save and targeted damage frequently required a RTA...and speaking of RTAs, Dex helps you against those annoying non-HP damage rays which can cripple regardless of Con, such as Enervation, Ray of Exhaustion and Ray of Enfeeblement.

 

[green slime]

With regard to those Dex boosting items, in a party with a decent amount of co-operation, it will be possible to purchase these at reduced rates (More than 8,000 gp creation cost, but less than 16,000 gp) if one of the spellcasters has Craft Wonderous Item. This substantially lowers the threshold for when these items become available. Given a 10% wealth limit (not unreasonable) a +2 item would be available around 8th-9th level, +4 at 12th (IIRC). Which is perfectly reasonable.

And I would be more likely to spend this money, if I had made a conscious decision during character creation to follow this route.

 

[two]

In a stringent world

In a low point-buy or otherwise low-stat world, I think the Barbarian has a pretty nice advantage, i.e. it's trivially easy to get a STR=18 for the big battles (that really count).

At the same time, it's almost impossible for a standard fighter to match this.

My point being? Don't get greedy. Put your strenth=14, and during a big fight (usually a low levels there is only one "big" fight per day) rage and get it to 18. That's really enough. You don't need more, particularly when the rest of the world (presumably) has low stats as well.

Since Rage stacks with everything, the str=14 barbarian will always be "stronger" than the equal level fighter (matching magic items, etc.). So, instead, put your highest stat in con.

Str=14, Con=15, Dex=13. Bump up Con at level 4.

You might also want to consider a "low strength" barbarian.

Str=13, Con=15, Dex=14. This way you get great low-level survivability (dex, con) plus the odd stats are the ones you will increase at levels 4/8, strenth and Con. As before, Str=17 when raging is very solid. I'm not greedy when it comes to strength; I like to spread my love around (as it were).

 

[Joshua Randall]

I would like to commend everyone posting in this thread for their thoughtful replies. I am truly impressed not only by the level of discussion but by its even-tempered nature as well.

I agree that surviving at low levels can often cause you to build a PC differently than you would if you were building him at mid to high levels. Everything from ability score allocation to feat selection to equipment purchasing can be much different. So, let's focus this discussion on an assumed new, 1st level barbarian. (Of course if everyone feels the topic has been sufficiently discussed, we can just stop!)