Will CON become a dump stat?

[Stalker0]

The big question is this, will a defender use his healing surges before the strikers and controllers do?

For example, in the playtests I ran, the wizard frequently ran out of healing surges before the paladin did. So that results in a rest, as a result the paladin "wasted" his surges.

The reason? I targeted the wizard frequently in open field combat. With the way archery is now, and how movement works, its far easier to target someone in the back then it used to be, and the wizard has a garbage AC comparatively.

 

[drjones]

But then you get into 'healing surges are not always healing' thing, the cleric or pally with extra surges might be using them for other things, including healing the wizard who is SOL otherwise because he ran out.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Snark aside, healing surges are as valuable as the GM makes them. This says nothing about 4E, really. This is about GMs. If your GM lets you take Extended Rests after every fight, then Con is a 'dump stat'. If your GM does not let you take Extended Rests after every fight, then Con is not a 'dump stat'.

 

[Gargazon]

Snark aside, healing surges are as valuable as the GM makes them. This says nothing about 4E, really. This is about GMs. If your GM lets you take Extended Rests after every fight, then Con is a 'dump stat'. If your GM does not let you take Extended Rests after every fight, then Con is not a 'dump stat'.

Don't the rules say you can only take one six-hour extended rest a day?

 

[Engilbrand]

They do, which is something that a lot of people seem to forget.
The big benefit is the Healing Surges. As has already been pointed out, more Healing Surges means a lot more hit points. True, some spells use Healing Surges to operate, but you're still looking at a lot more innate hit points. High CON is still good.

 

[Bishmon]

In my opinion, based on what I've seen so far, Intelligence, Charisma, and Strength will be dump stats before Constitution.

While Str-based types can probably get away with keeping Con lower, I think other characters will put points in it. Most players will probably want to put some points in one of the two in order to bump their fortitude defense, and Con just seems a little more useful with the few extra hit points and few extra healing surges.

For similar reasons, I'm not liking the prospects of Intelligence and Charisma. For Int, it no longer adds to skills, the skills it modifies are traditionally meh, and for reflex and AC, Dex also modifies them, and Dex also modifies initiative. If I'm playing a Wis-based character, I'm upping my Dex long before I'm upping my Int.

Again, Charisma's got some of the same problems going up against Wisdom, but Wis has got some of the most useful skills, while Cha's skills tend to be either very useful (if you're the face of the party in a social campaign) or absolutely useless (if you're anything else). The new social challenge rules might make social skills less of a hit-or-miss, but still, Wisdom's skills are just so useful that I'd expect that if I was playing a Str-based character, I'd increase my Wisdom much more often than I'd increase my Charisma.

Now, some of this stuff is obviously dependent on class powers and abilities, so not all dumps will be universal across the board. But if you're a class who doesn't really have any powers dependent on Dexterity of Intelligence, I don't think it's much of a choice which you'd dump, from a min-max perspective.

 

[Dausuul]

Some characters will dump Constitution, just like others will dump Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's just fine. I don't think Constitution specifically will be any more of a dump stat than any of the others.

 

[Kishin]

Except we have encounter powers, higher hit points at low level, actions points, etc. There is less need to quit playing after the first one or two encounters.

This. Also, one of the recent scoops mentioned that at Paragon tier, PCs gain the ability to recover some of their limited use powers, thus further lowering the need for rest.

 

[malraux]

Some characters will dump Constitution, just like others will dump Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's just fine. I don't think Constitution specifically will be any more of a dump stat than any of the others.

This.

The big deal is that there are reasonable tradeoffs for a character wanting to either boost con or dump con. This is what the game should be like.

 

[Chibbot]

While I don't speak with any form of authority, the impression that I've gotten is that for the most part 4e has moved away from the universal dump-stat setup, where everyone (except bards and sorcerers) would dump cha, and everyone (but rangers druids and monks) would dump wis.

I don't have a problem with each class having its own dump stat, and I think its a much better setup than having all classes share a dump stat.

That said, my 3.x play style is usually pretty good at keeping me alive, so for the pure enjoyment of watching the people I play with wince, many of my characters have used Con as a dump stat. I can't count the number of 8-11 Con characters I've played... Its hillarious.