Which is more important for Bbn: Dex or Con?

[Shard O'Glase]

I prefer to think of this as "If the wizard is played cowardly, he will live longer."

Likewise, if a barbarian is played cowardly, he will also live longer.

Most people who opt to play a Barbarian do not intend for their barbarian to be a coward.

I kind of expect everyone to play somewhat cowardly in a sense. I mean sure the wizard might survive longer than the barbarian when the barbarian charges all danger as soon as he sees it and the wizard hangs back, hides and snipes.

But in a game where both the barbarian and the wizard play intelligently/cowardly there's no contest the wizard gets smoked a lot more often. I expect all players to use cover and concelament when they can. The only thing that increases the barbarians danger is his expected role which I generally expect him to fullfill which is engaging foes in hand to hand combat and attempting to keep them away from your soft target artillery pieces like the wizard. Having 3 times the HP means the barbarian even after this expected roll is still better off survival wise by a ton.

The wizard generally is supposed to hang back, not that it helps much after round one in my games since either archers or mellee will target him fairly quickly. 1 only so many things can engage the barbarian, 2 archers unless they have precise shot target those who aren't in mellee, 3 lightly armed and unarmored guy in back can be either a spellcaster or maybe some loser they are protecting either way its a good target. Your either stoping spells or your inciting a reaciton from others that may open up AoO as they move to defend the guy in the back.

About the only time I find wizards somewhat safe is when I'm doing some dungeon crawl where the party can effectively block off the passageway so people really can't get back to the wizard in an easy way. And still there the wizard is just meat for the grinder in any ambush situaiton since he's usually a high priority target from intelligent foes.

 

[Darklone]

Hmm.

From my personal experience: The barbarian I played was a wildelven barbarian multiclass... with ranger.

Dex was priority, strength and con close seconds. He always considered it as his most important duty to protect the other "weak" group members, therefore he usually would have been the first to fall.

Gladly, he didn't till now.

 

[Gnome Berzerker]

I think it's verfy interesting to note that a Barbarian does NOT need a very high STR to be an effective character. I like the idea of a 14 STR Barb.

 

[Victim]

Yeah, true.

If you want to be effective when raging, and mediocore otherwise. Or you could be effective normally and a damage machine while raging.

 

[takyris]

Victim, it depends upon your intent.

I had a human barbarian with an Int of 13. I gave him ranks in every single Barbarian class skill. Ended up with a Str14, as I recall, and was just fine in combat and really interesting out of combat. He fulfilled something more like a Ranger role than a Damage Machine role, but that wasn't what I was going for. Hunter, tracker, survival expert, and could climb, ride, and swim places most of the other PCs couldn't.

He also referred to raging as "channeling the spirits of his ancestors". Complete change in flavor text, no change in mechanics.

 

[KarinsDad]

But in a game where both the barbarian and the wizard play intelligently/cowardly there's no contest the wizard gets smoked a lot more often.
...
Having 3 times the HP means the barbarian even after this expected roll is still better off survival wise by a ton.

I do not believe this for a second. All situations are different, but you cannot condense all of the variables of the game into more hit points = greater chance of survival.

Case in point, our game from yesterday.

Our group of 5 2nd level characters: Dwarven Fighter, Human Barbarian, Human Cleric, Human Monk, Halfling Rogue/Wizard.

The bad guys decide to pull out all of the stops. They attack the group in a large room with 8 Human 1st level fighters, 2 Gnolls, and a 4th level Human Illusionist.

Early on, the Rogue/Wizard is beset by 4 of the fighters, over a third of the enemy force, separated from the party. He Color Sprays 2 attackers, one fails his save, and the halfling eventually tumbles away to help the Monk who was attacked by 2 fighters.

The Barbarian is beset by 2 of the fighters and the 2 Gnolls.

The Illusionist puts the Cleric and the Fighter and one of his own fighters to sleep.

The Monk goes down. The Barbarian rages. The Rogue/Wizard wakes up the Cleric and then attempts sneak attacks. The Cleric wakes up the Fighter. Enemy fighters start to fall.

The Illusionist Color Sprays the Fighter and he goes down again, his only attack in the entire combat was an Alchemist Fire which did one point of splash damage to one enemy fighter. 24 hit points and a ton of combat ability lying the entire combat out on the ground.

The Barbarian goes down and is quickly dropping towards -10.

The Cleric and Rogue/Wizard are the only two standing. The Cleric casts Cause Fear on the Illusionist and he runs away.

The 2 Gnolls are still fresh. The 2 remaining enemy fighters are half damaged. However, with their leader the Illusionist fleeing and 6 of their comrades down, dead, or dying, they all separately miss morale rolls and end up fleeing as well.

The Cleric casts Cure Minor Wounds on the Barbarian at -9 hits (having used up all of her first level spells in the combat).

The Cleric casts Cure Minor Wounds on the Monk at -7 hits.

The Fighter, Barbarian, and Monk were down and two of them were dying.

The Cleric and Rogue/Wizard were hardly touched.

Bottom line, the Rogue/Wizards AC 19 is what kept him alive, not his 12 hit points.

The Barbarians AC 17 and 26 hit points (AC 15 and 30 hits when raging) was not enough to keep him up and he came extremely close to dying.


In this combat, all PCs played intelligently. However, circumstances are such that this time, the combatant types went down and the spell casters were left standing. Next time, that might not be the case.

But, spells can easily take the place of hit points. In this particular combat, the Rogue/Wizards Mage Armor spell kept him alive.

One cannot state that hit points give the Barbarian an edge in survivability over a Wizard. There are too many other variables. There is no doubt that the hit points help the Barbarian survive, but that does not mean that "Wizards get smoked a lot more often". This is not a true statement in all games.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Cowardly "intelligent" play, IME just means the bad guys kill you last. I've seen parties nearly die becasue their rogue spent the entire combat climbing a tree and hiding, hoping to get a sneak attack with his crossbow. It's not as if the rogue is going to last long when the fiendish centaur has collected all of his companions' heads on his longspear. Similarly, I've seen a party go down in a TPK because the fighter/wizard spend the first three rounds casting defensive spells. By the time he was ready to fight, his companions had taken enough damage that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

I've also seen a fighter needlessly spend her attack bonus on expertise when it was obvious that all the enemies were attacking the raging barbarian. When she missed by that margin, she put the whole party at risk but those two points of AC didn't make her any safer. (She's in much more danger if the combat lasts two more rounds because of her expertise and the barbarian goes down halfway through the first round of overtime--then the enemies will be attacking her).

Cowardly play =/= intelligent play. Not by a long shot.

 

[Darklone]

Hmmm... I am surprised the gnolls ran away. Sure, it saved your group... but I think they were winning and they should have known it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmmm... I am surprised the gnolls ran away. Sure, it saved your group... but I think they were winning and they should have known it.

Possibly.

A few things to consider:

1) As DM, it is my responsibility to challenge the group, but not to outright slay them if possible (there are living people playing the PCs after all). In this particular case, although the enemies outnumbered the party considerably and it was supposed to be the major finale, the party had made a strategic mistake where 3 of their members were in a different room (the Barbarian, Cleric, and Fighter), hence, they did not join the fight until a round after it started (and it took even another round to get within range of melee). That gave the opposition time to gather their forces and concentrate their attacks against the Monk and Rogue/Wizard which set the tone early.

2) I make all combat rolls out in front of the group of players. Hence, the failed save for the Illusionist and the morale rolls. In fact, I made the morale rolls very low and still missed all 4 rolls (I made the first roll DC 8 and every roll after that where one NPC failed +2 DC, so since everyone failed, the DCs became 8, 10, 12, and 14 Will saves). The chances of all 4 NPCs missing their saves was less than 6%, but that is what happened. C'est la guerre.

3) If some or all of the morale rolls were made, the NPCs would have continued to fight to their advantage (attempting to flank, etc.). If that would have happened, the Monk would probably have died and possibly the Barbarian as well (the Cleric had stabilized the Barbarian with Cure Minor Wounds the round before the enemy retreated, but if they would have stayed, they may have done a quick swipe at the prone PCs just because the Cleric was healing them). The party would still have had a fair chance of winning though since the Fighter was going to come out of the Color Spray in a few rounds, but it would have been close.


Some DMs would not even consider morale rolls and have all NPCs fight to the death. I do not find that plausible play. With nearly two thirds of their forces including their leader gone and half of their remaining forces wounded, I think it important for there to be at least a chance that morale fails and they run away. The Gnolls did not know that it was a Cleric and a Rogue/Wizard who were both out of first level spells and down to zero level spells, the Gnolls knew that nobody could hit the pesky little Halfling although he had killed a few of their allies and the female in armor was able to cast a spell which made their leader run away (and also had not been wounded yet). As DM, you have to put yourself in the NPCs shoes from their point of view, you cannot rely on metagaming knowledge that the Rogue/Wizard only has 12 hit points and will be easy to kill in two shots.

Just like it is important for prone PCs to be valid targets if the enemy thinks that other PCs are trying to revive them (the Fighter in fact had been attacked while unconscious on the ground once and if the Gnoll didn't have to move to do it, it would have been a Coup De Grace attempt). I do not spoon feed my PCs, but I do attempt to make all aspects be fair (attack mean when it appears that you have the advantage, run away to fight another day when it appears that you do not). As can be seen, I did not give the NPCs a high chance of retreating, that is just how it worked out.