Will "any" class be hindered by armor then? ..and elimination of CON?

[Emirikol]

The talk fo wizards not worrying about armor anymore begs the question: will ANY class be hindered by armor? Will the rogue be hindered in armor? WIll the ranger? If they're dropping armor penalties for the wizard, I would think they'll do it across the board. Why bother with modifiers?

Also, what's the point of constitution? Every other stat has a class associated with it..yet CON does not. WHy make it aprime stat? WHy not have a class associated with it?
I think if it's just going to be the petty modifer that it is, they should do away with it. It has very little game effect..it's essentially your hit points anyways, so why bother to have the extra statistic? Why not just base your FORT off ofyour hps?

jh

 

[Seeten]

Isn't it being the second best stat for every class good enough?

 

[Sir Brennen]

I think there was a mention somewhere of a special ability that allows a character to retain their Dex bonus while wearing heavy armor. To me that implies that instead of an specific armor check penalty per specific armor, you simply lose your Dex bonus for the entire Heavy Armor category (maybe 1/2 Dex bonus for medium armor?). If this applies across the board, and not to just AC, the rogue would be severely handicapped, since it looks like most of their powers will rely on Dex. That's just one example. The same will probably hold true for the ranger.

Also, they may be dropping armor penalties for arcane casters, but that same wizard is going to have to spend at least three feats to take advantage of it. And possibly another feat if they want to effectively use a shield, too. Same for any other class which doesn't have all the armor proficiencies as a part of their class.

As for Con, there's been hints that certain fighter styles may rely more on Con than Str. We also don't know the details on every class yet, including ones in future PHB's. I could easily see the Barbarian being Con based.

 

[Voss]

Wait, what?

They're dropping spell failure. They aren't necessarily giving armor proficiency to wizards, which would still be a hindrance. There isn't anything to suggest that they're dropping armor penalties, speed penalties or encumbrance.

Con has been mentioned for fighters. Using it with warhammers I believe. I could see it used for rangers as well. And barbarians, when they get added in.

It also isn't your hit points. At... all. Its an additional modifier to the stack of hit points you get from class and level. And basing Fortitude off hitpoints would be... complex. Would the modifier for fortitude be one-tenth of your hit points? Something else? Would it change as you took damage?

 

[Emirikol]

Yes, I think that it would be (to quote a whiner), unfair to drop spell failure for armor, but still jack Rogues and Rangers (and druids?) for wearing armor for their abilities.

It should be standard across the board.

jh

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I can see an eventual Barbarian/Berserker like class relying on Constitution. A Monk-like class might also want to rely on Con and Wis.

But if you think about it, this is definitely the way in 3rd edition, too. Every class needs its constitution score (hit points matter!), but few classes rely on it for its major effects. (Except a variant of the 3.0 Psion, IIRC).
Outside of the core rules, in Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, i think the Champion class had a few abilities relying on Constitution.

But it's still a rarity. I guess constitution as an ability is just too passive, and it doesn't fit too spellcasting, either.

--

About armor. I don't know, but I can totally see it. I wouldn't mind a few armor-clad rogues (it's not like they were not possibly in 3.x, either!)

 

[Alikar]

Ugg. People they are not getting rid of spell failure, they are adding feats into the game that allow a wizard to ignore it.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Ugg. People they are not getting rid of spell failure, they are adding feats into the game that allow a wizard to ignore it.

According to the thread on Wizard tidbits from the Races and Classes preview book:

Wizards spell failure due to armor is gone (hurray!). Picking the right feats wizards can go around in heavy armor.

Granted, that could have been mis-read/reported by the poster, but it sure sounds like ASF is gone to me. (And it would make sense to drop the extra die-roll ASF required, which was often "forgotten" in play anyway.)

 

[Goken100]

I dropped spell failure in my house rules, but armor modifies Concentration checks when somatic components are needed.

 

[ShinRyuuBR]

Also, what's the point of constitution? Every other stat has a class associated with it..yet CON does not. WHy make it aprime stat? WHy not have a class associated with it?
I think if it's just going to be the petty modifer that it is, they should do away with it. It has very little game effect..it's essentially your hit points anyways, so why bother to have the extra statistic? Why not just base your FORT off ofyour hps?

Interesting point. I could totally see hp and Fort based on Strength. Then, base hp could be an universal progression, as long as the game somehow forced the standard hierarchy of hp: wizard, sorcerer < bard, rogue < cleric, druid, monk, ranger < fighter, paladin < barbarian. One way to enforce that would be to define different starting ability arrays for each class and capping them (only for the purpose of point-buying at 1st level). For example, the wizard could start with Str 6, Dex 10, Int 12, Wis 10, Cha 6, capped at 12/16/18/16/12. There are many other possible approaches.

The fact is, while conceptually Strength and Constitution are very different, in practice, when you account for classes and their hp and Fort progressions, the link is clear and strong: classes that focus on Strength always have high base hp and high base Fort, while classes with little to gain from Strength always have low base hp and low base Fort.

If you look at the mental abilities, they are distinguishable by flavor but mostly by skill use. What would be the point to have an INT-based wizard and a WIS-based cleric if there weren't Knowledge and Sense Motive checks? You could have a single ability for mental faculties, as in GURPS. But Int and Wis (Cha too, of course) have each a respectable array of specific game elements that enforce their differences. Not so with Con vs. Str. Not only are hp and Fort tied to Str-classes, but there is also only a single Con-based skill, and in my opinion, it shouldn't be. While it makes sense to use Con to avoid losing focus when phisically harmed, most of the skills applications are not about harm but about distractions: motion, weather, physical restraints and extra care to cast defensively. Concentration should be Wis-based, and thus we strike the finishing blow to Constitution.