Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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There's a pretty significant dropoff to the value of Constitution saves after you reach +9, as most Concentration saves are DC 10, but that's usually not a factor before tier 3 (get an amulet of health, a ring/cloak of protection, and proficiency, and you can get a +9 as early as level 9, but that combination of items and bonuses isn't likely until later).
Barbarian, Fighter, Sorcerer. That's all the classes that get Con save proficiency. So either you're in one of those at level 1 or taking Resilient: Con to pull that off.
Also Con is a pretty important stat even for a backliner, if you have an effective DM who has units that know to target the wizard and/or healer.
EDIT: I'm dumb and included Paladin for some reason.
Resilient (Con) is a decent investment for a spellcaster... but usually not before tier 3.
I don't disagree. I'm also dumb and put Paladin on the list because I misread the saves on its preview pane, despite the fact I should know better. I have a Paladin 1/Sorcerer 19 in a server I play on that took Resilient Con specifically for that reason.
What is funny to me is I see stat conformity in barbarians the most. int, chr, wis all at 8 with str, dex, con all at 15.
With casters I frequently end up with the standard array even with point buy because the increased costs don't make it worth it imo. There are no stats outside maybe strength I want to dump as a caster. The occasional anti social wizard here and there sure so maybe 2 8s and I have a whopping 2 spare points to bump something else. Personally I wish they gave you less points but did not have the increased cost for higher stats thing. mechanically a +1 is a +1 so the cost should be the same to go from 8 to 10 as 12 to 14 etc. But oh well, they wanted to enforce high stat rarity or wanted it to map closer to rolls rarity or something.
I almost went off book a bit with my current warlock and was going to end up with starting stats like str 8, dex, 10 con 14, int 16, wis 8, chr 17. But I wanted a bit more dex due to his background and i didn;t want to dump wisdom. Con id of maybe gone a bit lower but my last campaign I played a 10 con monk and I decided not to do that 2 times in a row. But hey standard array won and its str 8 dex 12, con 14, int 14, wis 10 chr 17
First of all, that's just you and the people you play with. Or maybe the YouTube videos you watch. Literally nobody in my groups has ever done the 15/8 point-buy thing. In fact, one of the wizards in my game maxed strength before intelligence. Nor does everybody take alert and tough as their origin feats. (Also, because of background-based ASIs, I think you can only get the stats you want with the feat you want as a Crime Wizard.)
Secondly, the idea that's the way to be "most effective" has an incredibly narrow idea of what effectiveness is, and what the threats to a caster are. Specifically, it's assuming that stabbing is the only thing that happens to you. Wisdom and Charisma saves are actually quite common. Also, most casters operate in a party, and don't need to max out AC and HP because they have other people to fight on the front line for them. This lets them use their stats for skills, or other things.
As for people not roleplaying the 8s, that's just bad roleplaying. Which isn't surprising if it's coming from people who are thinking about their characters entirely in terms of how to be most effective, instead of who the character is. But that's not most people who play this game.
Mostly, I think you've made a trap for yourself, where you do things because they're "effective", and it sounds like it's making the game less fun for you. You can stop any time.
Minmaxing is valid.
But HOLY TOLEDO, is a group allegedly being locked into a specific setup is not worth this level of gnashing of teeth(ironic, considering OP's username)...
Getting trapped in one build & playstyle is encouraged by engagement types online. Perhaps you need to mix it up?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
If you have a base Con of 8 you have a 50% chance of making a DC 10 Con save. If you have a Con of 14, you have 65% chance of success. Mathematically, it is a fixed percentage of 5% for every +1 bonus you get, but the effectiveness of that +1 bonus decreases the higher your base bonus is because the higher your chances of success are, the less often raising your chances of success is going to actually going to matter.
Or to look at it a different way, if you needed a Nat 20 to make a save and you get a +1 bonus so you can make it on a 19-20, you've just doubled your chances of success. If you needed a 7+ to make a save and you get a +1 bonus, the increase is only 1/14th.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
This is a form of statistical manipulation. The difference is 1 in 20 rolls for every point of modifier you increase, no matter what the percentage difference is. The percentage difference is irrelevant in the face of the difference in percentages, as confusing as that sounds; 60% vs 65% is the same level of effectiveness as 90% vs 95% difference. The only time it doesn't matter is if your mod is too high to fail or too low to succeed.
That's not a good way of looking at it, because you don't actually care about proportions of rolls saved. You're interested in how often you'll change a failure to success. To look at the inverse of your example - you're going from failing 95% of the time to 90% of the time. Real big meh at that point, right? But it's identical, just changing perspective. What you're talking about is how it makes you feel. It makes you feel that it's less potent as you increase your bonus.
You need to look at what actually changes. In your example, the change is that if you roll 19, you've now succeeded when you otherwise would have failed. In every other situation (1-18, 20), the situation is identical. That's also true if you had a +15 (moving from a +14) - that difference is meaningful on when you roll a 5. It's exactly the improvement.
When utility goes down is when there is a hierarchy. For example, if you have a number of uses - going from 1 to 2 doubles the number of uses you have, and so allows you to be much less conservative in how you use it - you can afford to use it in a non-clinch point because you still have one left in case that happens. The difference between the most important potential use and the second is substantial, so getting a second use is really meaningful. On the other hand, if you have 9 uses, getting a tenth isn't that meaningful. What you're spending those uses stops mattering all that much. Whether you use your tenth Fireball on that annoying goblin archer on the left or the annoying goblin archer on the right is not a meaningful choice, so that +1 doesn't really matter. Similar with spell learnt/prepared. Getting a second spell is really meaningful but the a tenth isn't because there is a hierarchy (not necessarily an objective one, but for your character there is). 5.5e is moving away from linking how many choices you get to your Ability Scores, though.
With Saves and Bonuses though, there isn't really a hierarchy though. There's a bit of one, but it's not that meaningful. So really, any buff is more or less the same as another of equal size.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
For completeness, Artificers get Constitution saving throw proficiency too.
I do find that a lot of the time you end up putting your top three scores into fairly fixed combinations of stats: for a caster, it’s normally your Spellcasting ability, CON and DEX (unless you have access to heavy armour, when you might take STR). For a Barbarian, it’s STR, DEX and CON; for a Monk, DEX, CON and WIS. It can feel like you need to be brave to deviate from that.
I wouldn’t want to dump three stats though: often I find where I put my fourth stat matters to my concept of the character. My Alchemist has WIS as her fourth ability, because she’s trained as a physician and I don’t want her to be rubbish at Medicine checks, for example. For my Centaur Ranger/Monk, who was an itinerant musician, I took CHA (and is now a Fey Wanderer).
(Addendum: I can’t work out why the original poster highlighted this as a 5.5 problem. It was just the same in 5.0.)
It is actually the opposite of what 6thLyranGuard suggests. The higher your modifier is, the more impactful it is for your saving throws to increase the modifier further (up to the point where you're guaranteed to succeed). This is because what matters is not how often you succeed on a save, but how often you fail.
As a simple example, assume that you're concentrating on a spell and need to make a series of DC10 saves to maintain that concentration. Taking your modifier from +2 to +3 decreases your probability of failure from 35% to 30%. As a result, you lose concentration 1/7 times less frequently. Taking the modifier from +5 to +6, on the other hand, decreases the probability from 20% to 15%, meaning you lose concentration 1/4 times less frequently. And of course going from +8 to +9 eliminates failure completely.
That being said, being a one trick pony is usually not good overall.
Edit: Also, to clarify, those saying every increase is equally important are correct when considering a single saving throw. It is only in the context of making a series of saves that my above comment applies.
To quote Soren Johnson, lead designer for Civilisation IV “Given the opportunity players will optimise the fun out of a game.”
Personally I’ve never seen anyone dump three stats in the way OP is complaining about, as others have pointed out just the WIS handicap is hitting most of the most commonly rolled things out of combat, but the implication they are would point to the fact they’re only focusing on one very specific aspect of the game and only caring about combat. If that’s true just throw more social and exploration at them and they’ll soon realise their mistakes. Or more simply if it’s really that much of a problem just stop using point buy. Roll for stats or use standard array and straight away the chances of dumping three stats goes away
Interesting premise actually. In my group the most dedicated minmaxer usually has two dump stats, the newer players (started with 5th edition) typically have one dump stat while the grognards (started playing original D&D and 1st edition AD&D) usually have no dump stats, or one thematically tied to their species/class. My halflings and gnomes typically have a low strength for example. I have never seen a three dumpstat character at our table.
Top 3 stats ending up the same happens more often than 3 max, 3 dump stats. And to the original posters point yes people with heavy armor and a reason to bump strength only focus on 2 stats so there is a bit more freedom, or rogues with dex only also really need con. Hit points and Ac are important and the stats they are tied to also have good saves.
to get into this a bit there is a fairly large stat disparity in the game. How that manifests will be different at every table. The OPs table seems a big of an extreme case, but it is the logical conclusion of having good stats and bad stats. It has always been part of the game I think less so pre 3e as you rolled for stats and you rarely saw a benefit before a stat hit like 15. I think 4e is the only edition that made an attempt to mitigate it a bit. But 3e with its skill point system at least gave a reason for intelligence.
It is kind of funny to me that a game like D&D would make intelligence the least valuable stat in the game by far for everyone who isn't a wizard or artificer.