A lot of people think that heavy armor is a good excuse to dump dex. I uhhhh strongly disagree.
Dex isn't completely useless on a heavy armor build... but it's certainly not highly valuable. Dex saves just don't do that much because most dex save abilities are save for half, not save for none, and most of the status effects applied on a failed dex save are terribly scary. Initiative is nice (it's probably more valuable than the dex saves) but it still does a lot less than the AC. The premier dex skill is stealth... which is pretty useless in heavy armor.
I tend to not use heavy armor at all because I am not going to dump dex. Medium armor can get me to within one of heavy armor anyways. When I DO use heavy armor, I keep at least a 10 anyways, negative initative feels bad.
As far as casters, I am far more concerned about them cranking up AC rather than hit points. I think that you as a group are seriously overstating the dangers of a high con caster, depending on the caster in question.
HP is the only thing that protects against everything, AC protects against attack rolls but does nothing against saving throws. DEX and CON are the only two ability scores that every class in the game wants, dumping DEX, even as a Paladin, is not good. You still want the best initiate you can get and when Aura of Protection comes in, you then actually have an okay chance of making DEX saves, so you don't want to sabotage that with a negative dexterity modifier, for sure.
So I agree with you on this point, but is DEX or CON better? I'd say CON is better for casters, and it goes beyond AC. Yes AC is important for when you take attacks but it's meaningless when you don't, such as being hit by an AoE spell with a saving throw. Casters often avoid the front lines, so they take significantly less attacks against them but AoEs can target multiple characters. CON gives both concentration saves and more HP, so while I still see the importance of DEX for casters to boost AC, it's still very much behind CON for HP and concentration, in my opinion.
Concentration only matters when you get hit, which AC can prevent. HP only matters when you get hit which AC can prevent. Con has 0 skill checks, Dex has multiple skill checks. Dex has initiative which can prevent damage. I’ll say you are 50/50 on AOE spells and attacks. In my experience they have normally been Dex saves, but I know there are some strong AOE con save attacks from monsters. Since Casters typically attempt to avoid damage, imo Dex is the superior stat for them. Of the big 3 only Wis gets dumped regularly and I think most people don’t know how nasty a failed Wis save could be. I think DMs are just nice to their players that dump Wis. In importance to overall play I would rank Dex above Con and Wis, but Con and Wis are equal to me when looking at all pillars of play. In combat Con is far more important than Wis, well until you get hit with hold person.
Concentration only matters when you get hit, which AC can prevent. HP only matters when you get hit which AC can prevent. Con has 0 skill checks, Dex has multiple skill checks. Dex has initiative which can prevent damage. I’ll say you are 50/50 on AOE spells and attacks. In my experience they have normally been Dex saves, but I know there are some strong AOE con save attacks from monsters. Since Casters typically attempt to avoid damage, imo Dex is the superior stat for them. Of the big 3 only Wis gets dumped regularly and I think most people don’t know how nasty a failed Wis save could be.
I'm far more willing to dump Dex saves than to dump Con or Wis saves. Saves really aren't for preventing damage (+1 to a save on a save for half is typically around 3% average damage reduction), they're for avoiding status effects.
A lot of people think that heavy armor is a good excuse to dump dex. I uhhhh strongly disagree.
Dex isn't completely useless on a heavy armor build... but it's certainly not highly valuable. Dex saves just don't do that much because most dex save abilities are save for half, not save for none, and most of the status effects applied on a failed dex save are terribly scary. Initiative is nice (it's probably more valuable than the dex saves) but it still does a lot less than the AC. The premier dex skill is stealth... which is pretty useless in heavy armor.
I tend to not use heavy armor at all because I am not going to dump dex. Medium armor can get me to within one of heavy armor anyways. When I DO use heavy armor, I keep at least a 10 anyways, negative initative feels bad.
As far as casters, I am far more concerned about them cranking up AC rather than hit points. I think that you as a group are seriously overstating the dangers of a high con caster, depending on the caster in question.
It's not just HP. You could build an extremely SAD character. And even more now that they have changed true strike so you can hit with your spell casting modifier. By maximizing CONS you would have HP, your spellcasting modifier, cons saves and your weapon attack modifier. Magic, attack, HP, all in the same stat. And being a caster, you can heal, buff, etc... And with a lot of room for feats. If that's not broken, I don't know what is.
and that wouldn't be stronger than a character with two stats. For full casters, even if they had full weapon stats, its still less effective to use weapons. It doesnt actually matter if I get my power from one stat or two stats, as long as I can get full power. You bring up true strike, it doesnt actually matter. you can true strike for weapon damage + 3d6 for 4d6+5 or you can toll of the dead for 4d12. you haven't actually gained any power there.
the difference in power comes down to two more feats, but lower stats. thats not OP thats just a different choice.
CON20/INT20 guy, same power as int20/CON20 guy. CON/STR GUY, he basically has better athletics, his weapon damage doesnt really improve him. CON/DEX guy is the most possibly OP, but not really, as fighter, and rogue can do that and not be OP.
INT20/CON14 guy, has -3hp per level, and 15% less chance on con saves, but they have 15% higher chance on Arcana/investigation/nature/history/religion, and general int checks. And INT SAVEs.
how valuable 3 hp per level is, and concentration saves is, depends entirely on how you play and what build you are. many would rather have Charisma skill stats, or wisdom skill stats.
now for me, if I was building a melee sorcerer, I might like that trade, but for most other sorcerer's, whose risk is low, they would probably prefer added utility over defensive overkill.
A wild mage, or any mage, that taps into raw magical energy would have physical consequences. This is a subclass or change to a core class of Wizard. This would let a wizard draw magic energy after expanding spell slots, or in case of a wilds mage, they do it all the time. This is a homebrew idea that has been around for a while, and no reason it cant be in core. So I would say a Wizard like that would use Con as Stat, either for casting or able to withstand the stress.
Your average civilian isn't going to be tripping over gods every 2nd step, the vast majority of characters aren't PCs.
Literally every cleric can channel a deity's power, a number of other priests can as well. And hell, the maority of people living in major cities in Faerûn will have experienced some kind of terrible attack fuelled by the power of evil deities, and seen it defeated by the power of good deities, within their lifetimes. Baldur's Gate is being attacked by the Dead Three and/or their avatars every other week, Waterdeep has eight giant living statues from the ethereal plane, the whole of Icewind Dale was nearly wiped out by the Frostmaiden, people are blessed and cursed for defying and worshipping the gods all the time, or are likely to know someone who was. Even with regards to adventurers, commoners have likely heard of some of their adventures via newspapers or word of mouth, or had the misfortune of being in the same village/town/city as one once.
But this is getting more and more off topic in your attempt to avoid the subject at hand. Once again, what I said was that Wisdom is a more obviously appropriate score for Paladins than Constitution is; you know the part you've completely neglected to explain. Cleric, Druid and Ranger clearly establish Wisdom as the channelling score, Paladins channel power, ergo Wisdom has a solid basis as a spellcasting score (or at least an option).
As for Aura of Protection, the comparison was against sorcerer, who gets con saving throw proficiency from level 1
Then the comparison remains as flawed as the argument, because I didn't compare Paladin only to Sorcerer and for very good reason.
Even so the Paladin without proficiency in the saving throw is competitive with the Sorcerer who is proficient, and for a significant chunk of the game, because it takes time for proficiency in the save to take the lead. But the Paladin is also capable of gaining proficiency if they want to enhance their concentration casting, in which case they have a clear advantage over the Sorcerer because that stacks even further with their Aura of Protection. Plus one of Sorcerer's big features is being good at concentration, it's one of their major selling points compared to Wizards who need to find other ways to protect their precious attention span.
Meanwhile compared to every other caster they have a big advantage as standard, which kicks in at around the time when they start getting better concentration spells anyway. Once again your claim wasn't that Sorcerer had it better, it was that Paladin gets "nothing" to help them with concentration, when they clearly do; on top of higher base AC, which if they want to focus on concentration they can boost by going sword and board for another +2 AC, and they get Aura of Protection. So contrary to the claim of nothing they actually get multiple options.
But you know what? You're right, it isn't fair that Paladins are only good at some things; let's give them all the things that other classes are better than them at as well!
I was trying to point out how jumping to the first post you made as being a point is a ludicrous point.
Except it wasn't a ludicrous point it was entirely relevant and remains so, because that was the post you originally replied to, and I have had to keep reminding you of what my arguments actually were because you keep trying to spin off into increasingly unrelated tangents to either disprove arguments I never made, or to distract from the ones you know you have no answer for.
This thread is about Constitution as a spellcasting ability score; I am sorry that you are incapable of allowing me to have my own opinion on who should or should not have it as a spellcasting score and why.
Paladin is not one of the strongest classes, Paladin is a high AC class with good saves and good Nova, however it is still weaker than most of the full casters ... If we talk about one-on-one fights
D&D is not a game 1v1 player-vs-player duels.
Paladin as a class has many strengths and few weakness; it has the same base defence as a Fighter, solid base offence, it has spellcasting, it can heal (a lot) without spending any spell slots, it has channel divinity powers, it has strong party and self support via multiple aura abilities that include big saving throw bonuses and often additional condition immunities, advantage or resistance making them extremely resilient against magic and similar effects, and it can spend its spell slots for even greater offence without harming its action economy (in essence it can do spell casting minus the spellcasting, and requires zero Charisma to do this). So it's a class with what is in many ways both superior offence and defence than a Fighter until its resources run dry, while also getting to be a bit of a caster if you want it to be.
Pretty much its only weakness is that it's a little bit multi-ability dependent, so you have to choose which of its many excellent features you want to focus on, or try to balance them all with the compromises that entails. And that's a weakness you want to take away but don't seem to know why?
And again, you're introducing new tangents and distractions while completely ignoring what it was you were replying to in the first place, which was me saying why I don't think Paladin justifies having Constitution as a spellcasting ability score for either mechanical or thematic reasons, neither of which you have offered any good reasons for, except that you don't like being unable to maximise all of Paladin's strengths simultaneously. That's an opinion you're perfectly entitled to have, except you gave it four pages ago already, there was never any need to spin this nonsense out.
Which is why I'm not indulging you any further on this; I said my piece four pages ago as well, and if you still won't read what it actually was now then you never will. You have however succeeded in somewhat changing my mind on Paladin as a Constitution spellcaster, because I now also want them to never gain that purely because it's something that you want. Petty? Absolutely, but I cannot even begin to describe the savage delight I am going to take in seeing the final published class having literally any other casting score.
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But beyond the joke, you can't really compare a stat like Int with one like Cons. Actually they can be compared, but Int loses. Int is a dump stat for almost everyone, while cons is the second or third stat for almost everyone. And for good reason.
And don't get me wrong, I like to play characters with high Int. Basically because wizard is my favorite class, but also because arcane and investigation are the skills I like to use the most.
Since people keep bringing up how a con caster would be worse at skill checks:
Note that with no need to max more than one stat, a CON caster could have fairly good (albeit not maxed) skill checks. Most likely they’d start with 14 DEX and WIS most of the time.
Also, since it was also mentioned that a CON caster might not necessarily have CON save proficiency, I guess starting at CON 17 and going resilient:CON at 4th would be a common build.
I don't get the big desire to consolidate everything into a single stat that seems to be the theme behind all of these polls. Characters need flaws. They need places where they will get crushed without the help of a differently built character. A group where everyone builds around 20 con 20 wis/dex because that's optimal for saves and we have moved all classes to flexible main stat/saves/etc just sounds boring.
Your average civilian isn't going to be tripping over gods every 2nd step, the vast majority of characters aren't PCs.
Literally every cleric can channel a deity's power, a number of other priests can as well. And hell, the maority of people living in major cities in Faerûn will have experienced some kind of terrible attack fuelled by the power of evil deities, and seen it defeated by the power of good deities, within their lifetimes. Baldur's Gate is being attacked by the Dead Three and/or their avatars every other week, Waterdeep has eight giant living statues from the ethereal plane, the whole of Icewind Dale was nearly wiped out by the Frostmaiden, people are blessed and cursed for defying and worshipping the gods all the time, or are likely to know someone who was. Even with regards to adventurers, commoners have likely heard of some of their adventures via newspapers or word of mouth, or had the misfortune of being in the same village/town/city as one once.
But this is getting more and more off topic in your attempt to avoid the subject at hand. Once again, what I said was that Wisdom is a more obviously appropriate score for Paladins than Constitution is; you know the part you've completely neglected to explain. Cleric, Druid and Ranger clearly establish Wisdom as the channelling score, Paladins channel power, ergo Wisdom has a solid basis as a spellcasting score (or at least an option).
Paladin was moved to Charisma, so clearly this is no longer considered true but then Paladin was also shifted to no longer have a requirement of a Deity either. Since these changes can be made, there isn't much more reason to shift it to Charisma over Constitution. Paladin in 3.5 needed Strength, Wisdom and Charisma, so dropping one, Wisdom was the obvious choice since charisma aligned to Paladin's features more but there was no reason for it to be Charisma either considering it related to saves then constitution would have been a good ability too. For the same reason that Paladin was moved away from Wisdom is the same reason to move Ranger away from it, that is to reduce classes needing more ability score than other classes. As I've said from the start, and remains the fundamental point, it should either be all SAD or all MAD, not a mish-mash. And the only point anybody makes against this is that it would need more rebalancing of the features since they are no longer MAD, okay, then rebalance the features, it's not a hard concept.
As for Aura of Protection, the comparison was against sorcerer, who gets con saving throw proficiency from level 1
Then the comparison remains as flawed as the argument, because I didn't compare Paladin only to Sorcerer and for very good reason.
Even so the Paladin without proficiency in the saving throw is competitive with the Sorcerer who is proficient, and for a significant chunk of the game, because it takes time for proficiency in the save to take the lead. But the Paladin is also capable of gaining proficiency if they want to enhance their concentration casting, in which case they have a clear advantage over the Sorcerer because that stacks even further with their Aura of Protection. Plus one of Sorcerer's big features is being good at concentration, it's one of their major selling points compared to Wizards who need to find other ways to protect their precious attention span.
Meanwhile compared to every other caster they have a big advantage as standard, which kicks in at around the time when they start getting better concentration spells anyway. Once again your claim wasn't that Sorcerer had it better, it was that Paladin gets "nothing" to help them with concentration, when they clearly do; on top of higher base AC, which if they want to focus on concentration they can boost by going sword and board for another +2 AC, and they get Aura of Protection. So contrary to the claim of nothing they actually get multiple options.
But you know what? You're right, it isn't fair that Paladins are only good at some things; let's give them all the things that other classes are better than them at as well!
You mentioned Sorcerer and other casters, as other casters. The comparison to sorcerer is actually good, because Paladin again remains a class that takes damage and sorcerer is one that rarely takes damage and yet Paladin has nothing to compensate for this when it comes to concentration saving throws, which makes near all concentration spells for Paladin significantly riskier to use. Concentration works for other classes but not for a front liner, so either Paladin shouldn't have concentration spells at all or should have more than just Aura of Protection for keeping spells up.
Paladin are a MAD class, so taking feats is actually less desirable since you need to be pumping up more ability scores than other classes, so yes, Paladin really does have it worse. Your wizard that hides behind the party takes how many attacks, your warlock casting eldritch blast and shifting hex around takes how many attacks and your paladin who is holding back 4 orcs on the front line takes how many attacks. Clearly the same concentration mechanics aren't going to work for Paladin. Concentration is only good for when you need to make it but if you're having to make 2/3 concentration checks a round (and yes, I've been there multiple times), it's quiet often that you lose the spell. With a +6 to a concentration saving throw (+2 CON, +4 CHA). even the small damage procs a DC of 10, so it's a 15% chance to fail, if you take 3 attacks, you're still talking around a 40% chance to drop concentration.
Paladins get concentration spells as soon as they get spells, in 5E that is level 2, in oneD&D that's level 1, that is bless, that is divine favour, that is shield of faith. That is not the same time they get Aura of Protection, so I have no idea what that statement is about.
People use spell casting as one of the methods as to a point as why Paladin is overpowered but this definitely forgets that Paladin is the weakest spellcaster of all the base classes. It is one of only 3 half-casters (2 if looking at PHB), and the other half-caster is Ranger. Ranger actually uses spells, Paladin mostly sacrifices spell slots for a feature instead of even spell casting, because spell casting is so weak for Paladin. Giving Paladin the ability to maintain concentration is hardly going to break the class, it'd just allow for shifting Paladin towards other tactics than "I attacks, I hits, I smites, I attacks, I miss".
I was trying to point out how jumping to the first post you made as being a point is a ludicrous point.
Except it wasn't a ludicrous point it was entirely relevant and remains so, because that was the post you originally replied to, and I have had to keep reminding you of what my arguments actually were because you keep trying to spin off into increasingly unrelated tangents to either disprove arguments I never made, or to distract from the ones you know you have no answer for.
This thread is about Constitution as a spellcasting ability score; I am sorry that you are incapable of allowing me to have my own opinion on who should or should not have it as a spellcasting score and why.
It is and remains a ludicrous point, you can live in belief that you're right but it take arrogance to proudly point towards something you did and proclaim that this thing is definitely 100% right and there is nothing wrong it, more so when somebody points out there is something wrong with it, which again, there is. You looked at Paladin and Ranger in a very limited away, assuming that moving them to concentration, thus removing MAD would mean that their features would not be rebalanced to match the removal of MAD. You even said that Paladin can drop strength or charisma but both of these in fact harm the class, less strength is less attack and damage while less charisma is less Aura of Protection and also multiple sub-classes have features that use charisma, also spell casting.
If you build a Paladin with 13 strength, you can't use plate, if you build one with 15 you can, so you need to be pushing at least 15 strength. If you build a Paladin with 13 charisma, you get literally the same +1 to aura of protection as if you had 7 charisma and while a +1 can still help, it's significantly reduced from how a +3 would help, also considering how it hamper save DCs, which if you do for some reason use the smite spells, a good number of them use. It also harms the sanctuary spell, which can be good to help save an ally in trouble.
Paladin is not one of the strongest classes, Paladin is a high AC class with good saves and good Nova, however it is still weaker than most of the full casters ... If we talk about one-on-one fights
D&D is not a game 1v1 player-vs-player duels.
Paladin as a class has many strengths and few weakness; it has the same base defence as a Fighter, solid base offence, it has spellcasting, it can heal (a lot) without spending any spell slots, it has channel divinity powers, it has strong party and self support via multiple aura abilities that include big saving throw bonuses and often additional condition immunitie, advantage or resistance making them extremely resilient against magic and similar effects, and it can spend its spell slots for even greater offence without harming its action economy (in essence it can do spell casting minus the spellcasting, and requires zero Charisma to do this). So it's a class with what is in many ways both superior offence and defence than a Fighter until its resources run dry, while also getting to be a bit of a caster if you want it to be.
Pretty much it's only weakness is that it's a little bit multi-ability dependent, so you have to choose which of its many excellent features you want to focus on, or try to balance them all with the compromises that entails. And that's a weakness you want to take away but don't seem to know why?
And again, you're introducing new tangents and distractions while completely ignoring what it was you were replying to in the first place, which was me saying why I don't think Paladin justifies having Constitution as a spellcasting ability score for either mechanical or thematic reasons, neither of which you have offered any good reasons for, except that you don't like being unable to maximise all of Paladin's strengths simultaneously. That's an opinion you're perfectly entitled to have, except you gave it four pages ago already, there was never any need to spin this nonsense out.
Which is why I'm not indulging you any further on this; I said my piece four pages ago as well, and if you still won't read what it actually was now then you never will. You have however succeeded in somewhat changing my mind on Paladin as a Constitution spellcaster, because I now also want them to never gain that purely because it's something that you want. Petty? Absolutely, but I cannot even begin to describe the savage delight I am going to take in seeing the final published class having literally any other casting score.
I know D&D is not a 1vs1 game, it is a PvE game and PvE games do not need the same type of balance as actual balance. The problem is people would complain about Paladin being overpowered even if it were underpowered, this isn't because of all the things Paladin can or can not do but because of how well Paladin does it's role.
Now you're gunna compare base class Paladin to base class Fighter like this but you only talk about what Paladin has over fighter and are ignoring what fighter has over Paladin. This is not a good comparison, let me go over pros and cons for both and see really how true this is.
Paladin
Pros: Heavy Armour and Shield Proficiency, has lay on hands (level * 5HP healing pool, action), half-caster, gets divine smite, gets choice of 4 fighting styles, gets auras, gets improved divine smite.
Cons: Bad at range, no AoE, has high ASI requirements, sucks at two-weapon fighting
Fighter
Pros: Heavy Armour and Shield Proficiency, has fighting style, can basically use any weapon or fighting style in the game, has second wind (bonus action self-heal), gets action surge, gets additional ASIs/feats, gets 3/4 attacks at later levels.
Cons: no AoE, no spellcasting.
Here is an alternative comparison
Okay, proficiencies we can just drop. Fighter gets more fighting style choices, giving more build variation. Fighter can go strength or dexterity and with point buy or stand array can get it's +5 at level 6, compared to level 8 for everybody else. Well it's only self-heal, fighter's second wind actually heals more than Paladin's lay on hands for a good portion of the early game, assuming level 6 and 2 short rests, over an adventuring day a fighter would heal 3d10+18HP or an average of 34.5 HP, a level 6 paladin has 30 HP in lay on hands, paladin can use it to heal others but as a further kick in the teeth, fighter's second wind is a bonus action so is more usable in combat. Of course with less short rests then lay on hands is an easy winner but I'm going with two as intended design of how an adventuring day would work.
Action surge is a powerful ability, people even dip 2 levels into fighter just to get action surge, which is likely more people than those that dip 2 levels into paladin to get divine smite. Divine Smite does NOVA higher and Paladin can use it more often once you hit about level 5. I believe it's also a fair note that some fighter subclasses are quiet a bit stronger than Paladin ones. Paladin does get some good subclasses but battlemaster for fighter stands out as likely one of, if not the most overpowered subclass in the PHB. As for late game, fighter doing 3 attacks per action is generally a bigger DPS increase then Paladin's IDS.
When it comes down to it, Fighter and Paladin just aren't as unbalanced as people generally infer, people infer Paladin is broken because of one thing, that is Divine Smite. Paladin can more easily hit the Nova damage to dramatically damage or even kill a BBEG, however people often act like Paladins do this as the first move of a combat when more often the case the Paladin is last in initiative and most of the party has already triggered a big effect against the BBEG. Overall the issues with paladin just needs mostly is a rebalancing of divine smite.
Great... a load of information to get back to Paladin being actually roughly inline with fighter for most of the game... which is where I already stated they were from one-on-one. But since we go to PvE, again most of this is due to the fact that Paladin does it's role well rather than paladin is overpowered, it's a very common mistake people make when discussing Paladin and it most often comes down to people NOVAing the BBEG, and just being subpar on the previous encounters and doing less damage than the fighter, barbarian or monk did, cas Paladin's nova is resource based and only recovers on a long rest.
Paladin was moved to Charisma, so clearly this is no longer considered true but then Paladin was also shifted to no longer have a requirement of a Deity either.
Paladin has always had a charisma requirement, what changed is that the supernatural features were merged (a 3.5e paladin is a poster child for MAD, they need strength for weapons, a bit of dex to optimize AC, constitution for hit points, wisdom for spellcasting, and charisma for lay on hands, smite evil, divine grace, and turn undead).
the only point anybody makes against this is that it would need more rebalancing of the features since they are no longer MAD, okay, then rebalance the features, it's not a hard concept.
It's not the only point, you've just very conspicuously chosen to ignore every other point raised. And this is yet another giant essay doing the same.
And actually, rebalancing clearly is a very hard concept judging by the fact that you've offered zero examples of how you expect a broken change like Constitution as a spellcasting ability score to be counterbalanced without requiring big new drawbacks to the class. Maybe you should spend 15+ paragraphs on that instead of the tangents you seem to want to drag the topic off on instead?
I've given plenty of reasons why it can't be done, because I've given examples of how it could be done and why those would be terrible. Feel free to offer literally anything as an actual counterpoint for once, because from where I'm standing it would require big new disadvantages to be added which would need to be at least as problematic as the "issue" you're determined to "solve".
And you've also yet to give a compelling reason why Paladin requires all this extra work to theoretically go nowhere; because it can't make it simpler if it has to introduce more complexity in order to do that, and there's just no good reason to go to all that trouble. Paladin is MAD by design, so it won't step on Fighter's toes quite so much if you focus on the spellcasting, or it won't be such a strong spellcaster if you focus on being a martial divine smite battery. This isn't a problem that needs solving, and your "solution" won't fix it, it will just require it to appear in another form you'll also hate.
And it still doesn't change the fact that Charisma and Wisdom have infinitely more thematic justification than Constitution does, which is why you keep ignoring that point to try and drag us off on a tangent about how you think a class variously described as blessed, holy and divine can't possibly have anything to do with deities, when you know that has nothing to do with anything I said in my first post.
I know D&D is not a 1vs1 game
So when you spent 3-4 paragraphs trying in vain to use that as an argument, you were arguing in bad faith? Well I'm glad that at least now you're admitting that you've been wasting all of our time for four pages, so I can enjoy wasting no more of mine.
Constitution as a spellcasting ability score raises more problems than it solves, and so far none of the alleged problems it solves has actually turned out to be a problems to begin with.
The only really reasonable stance I've seen here or elsewhere on Constitution casting is that Sorcerer could use Constitution because their casting is innate, but that's an entirely thematic justification, and I'd wager most who hold that opinion are aware of the mechanical reasons it can't happen without an overhaul to all ability scores (which we're not going to see in OneD&D) or some big drawbacks that will make it not worth having.
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the only point anybody makes against this is that it would need more rebalancing of the features since they are no longer MAD, okay, then rebalance the features, it's not a hard concept.
It's not the only point, you've just very conspicuously chosen to ignore every other point raised. And this is yet another giant essay doing the same.
And actually, rebalancing clearly is a very hard concept judging by the fact that you've offered zero examples of how you expect a broken change like Constitution as a spellcasting ability score to be counterbalanced without requiring big new drawbacks to the class. Maybe you should spend 15+ paragraphs on that instead of the tangents you seem to want to drag the topic off on instead?
I've given plenty of reasons why it can't be done, because I've given examples of how it could be done and why those would be terrible. Feel free to offer literally anything as an actual counterpoint for once, because from where I'm standing it would require big new disadvantages to be added which would need to be at least as problematic as the "problem" you're determined to "solve".
And you've also yet to give a compelling reason why Paladin requires all this extra work to theoretically go nowhere; because it can't make it simpler if it has to introduce more complexity in order to do that, and there's just no good reason to go to all that trouble. Paladin is MAD by design, so won't step on Fighter's toes quite so much if you focus on the spellcasting score, or it won't be such a strong spellcaster if you focus on being a martial divine smite battery. This isn't a problem that needs solving, and your "solution" won't actually fix it, it will just force it to be reintroduced in another form, and probably a more exploitable.
And it still doesn't change the fact that Charisma and Wisdom have infinitely more thematic justification than Constitution does, which is why you keep ignoring that point to try and drag the topic off on a tangent about how you think a class variously described as blessed, holy and divine can't possibly have anything to do with deities, when you know it has nothing to do with anything I said in my first post.
I know D&D is not a 1vs1 game
So when you spent 3-4 paragraphs trying in vain to use that as an argument, you were arguing in bad faith? Well I'm glad that at least now you're admitting that you've been wasting all of our time for four pages, so I can enjoy wasting no more of mine.
Constitution as a spellcasting ability score raises far more problems than it solves, and so far none of the alleged problems it solves have actually turned out to be problems to begin with. The only really reasonable stance I've seen here or elsewhere is that Sorcerer could use Constitution because their casting is innate, but that's an entirely thematic justification, and I'd wager most people who hold that opinion are well aware of the mechanical reasons why it can't happen without a major overhaul to the ability scores (which we're not going to see in OneD&D) or some kind of big drawbacks that will make it not worth having.
You've stated multiple times why you THINK it can't be done, it can be done. I could go out and redesign paladin to use constitution as it's spellcasting ability modifier but it'd take the better part of a week, designing a whole class, thinking of the interactions with features, feats... it takes a lot of time that I don't have. But mostly, the broken parts of paladin have little to do with ability scores/modifiers to begin with, mostly it's to do with the NOVA of Divine Smite, which is a tangent on to itself and has had many threads in here already discussing it. Personally, I reject your reasoning, you reject mine, I don't think we're going to agree and at this point we might as well just agree to disagree else we'll just keep going on pointlessly.
I am entirely unconvinced by your arguments and points and the only way I could make my point of how it could in fact be done would just take too much time for me to invest from real-life for a forum debate.
As for the one-on-ones, it is not pointless, PvP is also a part of D&D, it might not happen at every table and definitely doesn't happen every campaign but it does come up, however the point was more in how the classes actually would handle such situations but that what we normally see is a singular standard situation of every mob rushing the front lines, in cases where the paladin has to approach the enemy or it's out of range, Paladin can be left with little to nothing to do. However as I also made the point, that it's not that Paladin is actually overpowered, it's that people see Paladins go NOVA and see the BBEG die, even when the BBEG was already damaged, usually this involves something like a critical hit proccing, which is the ideal time to use a smite on top of that.
Since people keep bringing up how a con caster would be worse at skill checks:
Note that with no need to max more than one stat, a CON caster could have fairly good (albeit not maxed) skill checks. Most likely they’d start with 14 DEX and WIS most of the time.
Also, since it was also mentioned that a CON caster might not necessarily have CON save proficiency, I guess starting at CON 17 and going resilient:CON at 4th would be a common build.
the key is they are trading stats, Con is the only stat with no skills. So yeah, the Con caster has fairly good but not maxed skill checks, and the Int caster has fairly good but not maxed Con checks.
Same thing. simplely put, you are trading the same % increase in con saves, for your loss in skills.
simply it comes down to, would you rather have more hp, and better con saves, or better skill checks and better mental saves. Based on responses in this thread about how people build their casters, the answer is better skills. skill expert is picked over con, 1 per day spells picked over con, direct Hp picked over con saves+HP.
any one can pick resilient, not sure why you bring that up? if you mean it synergizes with con, yeah, they got a bunch of feats that synergize with mental stats, nothing is really changing here.
You could have both CON+mental but thats equal for both builds, and many mages aren't that interested in con.
You've stated multiple times why you THINK it can't be done, it can be done.
You've stated multiple times that you THINK it can be done, I've actually given clear reasoning why it can't be done without watering down Paladin so much as to not be any fun; people like Paladin as it is for good reasons, you seem to want to throw those away because you don't like not being able to have your cake and eat it too.
I could go out and redesign paladin to use constitution as it's spellcasting ability modifier but it'd take the better part of a week, designing a whole class, thinking of the interactions with features, feats... it takes a lot of time that I don't have.
You clearly do, because you've spent the past four pages of this thread writing giant essays on literally anything else, specifically to avoid addressing the points I raised on page one. And it means for all you've said it boils down to "it's not a problem because I refuse to believe it's a problem".
Which is precisely why I'm done with this, because I have no reason to expect any of that to change. If all you wanted to do was state your opinion and move on, you should have done it without attacking the opinions of another, especially when it's only exposed the fragility of your own position.
But I would like to apologise to everyone else in the thread for responding in the first place; I will be blocking R3sistance and unsubscribing now.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
But mostly, the broken parts of paladin have little to do with ability scores/modifiers to begin with, mostly it's to do with the NOVA of Divine Smite, which is a tangent on to itself and has had many threads in here already discussing it.
Paladin nova is greatly overrated; battle master nova is consistently higher because action surge > divine smite (and, of course, UA has nerfed paladin nova). It's aura of protection that makes paladin stand out as exceptional.
You've stated multiple times why you THINK it can't be done, it can be done.
You've stated multiple times that you THINK it can be done, I've actually given clear reasoning why it can't be done without watering down Paladin so much as to not be any fun; people like Paladin as it is for good reasons, you seem to throw those away because you don't like not being able to have your cake and eat it too.
I could go out and redesign paladin to use constitution as it's spellcasting ability modifier but it'd take the better part of a week, designing a whole class, thinking of the interactions with features, feats... it takes a lot of time that I don't have.
You clearly do, because you've spent the past four pages of this thread writing giant essays on literally anything else, specifically to avoid addressing the points I raised on page one.
Which is precisely why I'm done with this, because I have no reason to expect any of that to change. If all you wanted to do was state your opinion and move on, you should have done it without attacking that of another.
But I would like to apologise to everyone else in the thread for responding in the first place; I will be blocking R3sistance and unsubscribing now.
This is just being asinine now. There is a difference between making points on a forum and actually designing a balanced character, but it's the type of statement I expected you to make. At the point I have time to do this, I have better things to do, I am not Jeremy Crawford or any other member of the team at WotC who is paid to work on these classes, I'd rather work on making my own system then put in that type of effort just for a debate on a forum.
But mostly, the broken parts of paladin have little to do with ability scores/modifiers to begin with, mostly it's to do with the NOVA of Divine Smite, which is a tangent on to itself and has had many threads in here already discussing it.
Paladin nova is greatly overrated; battle master nova is consistently higher because action surge > divine smite (and, of course, UA has nerfed paladin nova). It's aura of protection that makes paladin stand out as exceptional.
Oh, it's very over-rated, I agree, but even if you produce the numbers that show just how much damage classes actually do over an adventuring day, people still see Paladins save nova for the BBEG and Paladin still is most likely to be last in the initiative order. Partly the issue also stems from how the game was designed vs. how people play, since classes like fighter & warlock are design to have a lot of short rests where paladin gets everything but channel divinity basically on a long rest... overall, it's issues that have already been discussed else where.
But mostly, the broken parts of paladin have little to do with ability scores/modifiers to begin with, mostly it's to do with the NOVA of Divine Smite, which is a tangent on to itself and has had many threads in here already discussing it.
Paladin nova is greatly overrated; battle master nova is consistently higher because action surge > divine smite (and, of course, UA has nerfed paladin nova). It's aura of protection that makes paladin stand out as exceptional.
Oh, it's very over-rated, I agree, but even if you produce the numbers that show just how much damage classes actually do over an adventuring day, people still see Paladins save nova for the BBEG and Paladin still is most likely to be last in the initiative order. Partly the issue also stems from how the game was designed vs. how people play, since classes like fighter & warlock are design to have a lot of short rests where paladin gets everything but channel divinity basically on a long rest... overall, it's issues that have already been discussed else where.
Paladin has the same problem as Moon Druid, in that in one specific situation it is very OP - that is getting a critical hit and dumping your max spell slot into the smite - which sticks in people's minds as "a problem" and demands for nerfing. But the nerfing doesn't actually fix that one specific case of OP-ness that people hate.
Oh, it's very over-rated, I agree, but even if you produce the numbers that show just how much damage classes actually do over an adventuring day.
I wasn't talking about damage per adventuring day, I was talking about nova damage. The combination of superiority dice and action surge is just straight up more damage than smites at most levels.
What would be the response if the original question posed changing the stat that impacts concentration saving throws, currently CON, to become the same one a spellcaster uses presently for their spellcasting ability modifier? A Wizard makes an INT check for concentration; a Cleric makes a WIS check for concentration, etc.
So let’s just look at what Con casting would look like on each class.
Artificer- While this is one of the strangest Con casters for me the potential is there. You inject a piece of your own vitality into everything you create or you channel the weaves raw power into your inventions through your craftsmanship. Some better writer can come up with the lore excuse. Any features that scale off Int probably get left scaling off Int or some other mental stat. Battle Smith is the one subclass I would have problem with because it’s attacks wit weapons other than those created by a feature scale off its Spellcasting stat. That would need to change.
Bard- A Con Casting Bard is truly picking what it wants to be good at. They aren’t all the face of the party. With each spell you cast you endure the use of the echoes of creation that would destroy most who attempted to use them. Mechanics a question would be would bardic inspiration become con based or stay charisma based. Either seems okay to me.
Cleric- A Con cleric is vessel for divine power that would destroy a feeble bodied host. They a filled with divine energy by their Deities and channel it into the world. I’m not really worried about anything mechanically.
Druid- A Con Druid channels primal energies into their bodies allowing them to transform. They also can project those energies to cast spells. Mechanically I’m fine with everything I can think of right now.
Paladin- A Con Paladin cast through sheer conviction to your oath, you harness divine energy into your own body to use against your foes or bring aid to your companions. Paladin might need to figure out how to adjust Aura of protection. Technically Hexblade already broke it, so Con casting can’t break it any more. It should probably be hard locked to half your proficiency bonus.
Ranger- A Con Ranger learns to store primal energy within there bodies. I don’t see a mechanical issue with Ranger right now.
Sorcerer- A con Sorcerer would read like, Arcane energy pours from every inch of your body. You are the source of your magical power. My only mechanical troubles are Dragon’s additional hp and AC calculation.
Warlock- A con Warlock must contain the power granted by their Patron. By your own choice or some cosmic mistake you are the vessel of other worldly power. My mechanical fears are obviously Pact of the Blade which is already a problem as Cha.
Wizard- A Con Wizard would just be required to channel the Arcane energies through there own bodies. You have learn to be a conduit for the arcane energies. I can’t think of any mechanical concerns. I would still have bonus spells prepared scale off Int.
Honestly for me I would only have Con casting as a flexible Stat option. Really Flexible casting stats I would save for the DMG and be optional like Flanking rules
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Concentration only matters when you get hit, which AC can prevent. HP only matters when you get hit which AC can prevent. Con has 0 skill checks, Dex has multiple skill checks. Dex has initiative which can prevent damage. I’ll say you are 50/50 on AOE spells and attacks. In my experience they have normally been Dex saves, but I know there are some strong AOE con save attacks from monsters. Since Casters typically attempt to avoid damage, imo Dex is the superior stat for them. Of the big 3 only Wis gets dumped regularly and I think most people don’t know how nasty a failed Wis save could be. I think DMs are just nice to their players that dump Wis. In importance to overall play I would rank Dex above Con and Wis, but Con and Wis are equal to me when looking at all pillars of play. In combat Con is far more important than Wis, well until you get hit with hold person.
I'm far more willing to dump Dex saves than to dump Con or Wis saves. Saves really aren't for preventing damage (+1 to a save on a save for half is typically around 3% average damage reduction), they're for avoiding status effects.
and that wouldn't be stronger than a character with two stats. For full casters, even if they had full weapon stats, its still less effective to use weapons. It doesnt actually matter if I get my power from one stat or two stats, as long as I can get full power. You bring up true strike, it doesnt actually matter. you can true strike for weapon damage + 3d6 for 4d6+5 or you can toll of the dead for 4d12. you haven't actually gained any power there.
the difference in power comes down to two more feats, but lower stats. thats not OP thats just a different choice.
CON20/INT20 guy, same power as int20/CON20 guy. CON/STR GUY, he basically has better athletics, his weapon damage doesnt really improve him. CON/DEX guy is the most possibly OP, but not really, as fighter, and rogue can do that and not be OP.
INT20/CON14 guy, has -3hp per level, and 15% less chance on con saves, but they have 15% higher chance on Arcana/investigation/nature/history/religion, and general int checks. And INT SAVEs.
how valuable 3 hp per level is, and concentration saves is, depends entirely on how you play and what build you are. many would rather have Charisma skill stats, or wisdom skill stats.
now for me, if I was building a melee sorcerer, I might like that trade, but for most other sorcerer's, whose risk is low, they would probably prefer added utility over defensive overkill.
A wild mage, or any mage, that taps into raw magical energy would have physical consequences. This is a subclass or change to a core class of Wizard. This would let a wizard draw magic energy after expanding spell slots, or in case of a wilds mage, they do it all the time. This is a homebrew idea that has been around for a while, and no reason it cant be in core. So I would say a Wizard like that would use Con as Stat, either for casting or able to withstand the stress.
Literally every cleric can channel a deity's power, a number of other priests can as well. And hell, the maority of people living in major cities in Faerûn will have experienced some kind of terrible attack fuelled by the power of evil deities, and seen it defeated by the power of good deities, within their lifetimes. Baldur's Gate is being attacked by the Dead Three and/or their avatars every other week, Waterdeep has eight giant living statues from the ethereal plane, the whole of Icewind Dale was nearly wiped out by the Frostmaiden, people are blessed and cursed for defying and worshipping the gods all the time, or are likely to know someone who was. Even with regards to adventurers, commoners have likely heard of some of their adventures via newspapers or word of mouth, or had the misfortune of being in the same village/town/city as one once.
But this is getting more and more off topic in your attempt to avoid the subject at hand. Once again, what I said was that Wisdom is a more obviously appropriate score for Paladins than Constitution is; you know the part you've completely neglected to explain. Cleric, Druid and Ranger clearly establish Wisdom as the channelling score, Paladins channel power, ergo Wisdom has a solid basis as a spellcasting score (or at least an option).
Then the comparison remains as flawed as the argument, because I didn't compare Paladin only to Sorcerer and for very good reason.
Even so the Paladin without proficiency in the saving throw is competitive with the Sorcerer who is proficient, and for a significant chunk of the game, because it takes time for proficiency in the save to take the lead. But the Paladin is also capable of gaining proficiency if they want to enhance their concentration casting, in which case they have a clear advantage over the Sorcerer because that stacks even further with their Aura of Protection. Plus one of Sorcerer's big features is being good at concentration, it's one of their major selling points compared to Wizards who need to find other ways to protect their precious attention span.
Meanwhile compared to every other caster they have a big advantage as standard, which kicks in at around the time when they start getting better concentration spells anyway. Once again your claim wasn't that Sorcerer had it better, it was that Paladin gets "nothing" to help them with concentration, when they clearly do; on top of higher base AC, which if they want to focus on concentration they can boost by going sword and board for another +2 AC, and they get Aura of Protection. So contrary to the claim of nothing they actually get multiple options.
But you know what? You're right, it isn't fair that Paladins are only good at some things; let's give them all the things that other classes are better than them at as well!
Except it wasn't a ludicrous point it was entirely relevant and remains so, because that was the post you originally replied to, and I have had to keep reminding you of what my arguments actually were because you keep trying to spin off into increasingly unrelated tangents to either disprove arguments I never made, or to distract from the ones you know you have no answer for.
This thread is about Constitution as a spellcasting ability score; I am sorry that you are incapable of allowing me to have my own opinion on who should or should not have it as a spellcasting score and why.
D&D is not a game 1v1 player-vs-player duels.
Paladin as a class has many strengths and few weakness; it has the same base defence as a Fighter, solid base offence, it has spellcasting, it can heal (a lot) without spending any spell slots, it has channel divinity powers, it has strong party and self support via multiple aura abilities that include big saving throw bonuses and often additional condition immunities, advantage or resistance making them extremely resilient against magic and similar effects, and it can spend its spell slots for even greater offence without harming its action economy (in essence it can do spell casting minus the spellcasting, and requires zero Charisma to do this). So it's a class with what is in many ways both superior offence and defence than a Fighter until its resources run dry, while also getting to be a bit of a caster if you want it to be.
Pretty much its only weakness is that it's a little bit multi-ability dependent, so you have to choose which of its many excellent features you want to focus on, or try to balance them all with the compromises that entails. And that's a weakness you want to take away but don't seem to know why?
And again, you're introducing new tangents and distractions while completely ignoring what it was you were replying to in the first place, which was me saying why I don't think Paladin justifies having Constitution as a spellcasting ability score for either mechanical or thematic reasons, neither of which you have offered any good reasons for, except that you don't like being unable to maximise all of Paladin's strengths simultaneously. That's an opinion you're perfectly entitled to have, except you gave it four pages ago already, there was never any need to spin this nonsense out.
Which is why I'm not indulging you any further on this; I said my piece four pages ago as well, and if you still won't read what it actually was now then you never will. You have however succeeded in somewhat changing my mind on Paladin as a Constitution spellcaster, because I now also want them to never gain that purely because it's something that you want. Petty? Absolutely, but I cannot even begin to describe the savage delight I am going to take in seeing the final published class having literally any other casting score.
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The incredibly common int saves.
But beyond the joke, you can't really compare a stat like Int with one like Cons. Actually they can be compared, but Int loses. Int is a dump stat for almost everyone, while cons is the second or third stat for almost everyone. And for good reason.
And don't get me wrong, I like to play characters with high Int. Basically because wizard is my favorite class, but also because arcane and investigation are the skills I like to use the most.
Since people keep bringing up how a con caster would be worse at skill checks:
Note that with no need to max more than one stat, a CON caster could have fairly good (albeit not maxed) skill checks. Most likely they’d start with 14 DEX and WIS most of the time.
Also, since it was also mentioned that a CON caster might not necessarily have CON save proficiency, I guess starting at CON 17 and going resilient:CON at 4th would be a common build.
I don't get the big desire to consolidate everything into a single stat that seems to be the theme behind all of these polls. Characters need flaws. They need places where they will get crushed without the help of a differently built character. A group where everyone builds around 20 con 20 wis/dex because that's optimal for saves and we have moved all classes to flexible main stat/saves/etc just sounds boring.
Paladin was moved to Charisma, so clearly this is no longer considered true but then Paladin was also shifted to no longer have a requirement of a Deity either. Since these changes can be made, there isn't much more reason to shift it to Charisma over Constitution. Paladin in 3.5 needed Strength, Wisdom and Charisma, so dropping one, Wisdom was the obvious choice since charisma aligned to Paladin's features more but there was no reason for it to be Charisma either considering it related to saves then constitution would have been a good ability too. For the same reason that Paladin was moved away from Wisdom is the same reason to move Ranger away from it, that is to reduce classes needing more ability score than other classes. As I've said from the start, and remains the fundamental point, it should either be all SAD or all MAD, not a mish-mash. And the only point anybody makes against this is that it would need more rebalancing of the features since they are no longer MAD, okay, then rebalance the features, it's not a hard concept.
You mentioned Sorcerer and other casters, as other casters. The comparison to sorcerer is actually good, because Paladin again remains a class that takes damage and sorcerer is one that rarely takes damage and yet Paladin has nothing to compensate for this when it comes to concentration saving throws, which makes near all concentration spells for Paladin significantly riskier to use. Concentration works for other classes but not for a front liner, so either Paladin shouldn't have concentration spells at all or should have more than just Aura of Protection for keeping spells up.
Paladin are a MAD class, so taking feats is actually less desirable since you need to be pumping up more ability scores than other classes, so yes, Paladin really does have it worse. Your wizard that hides behind the party takes how many attacks, your warlock casting eldritch blast and shifting hex around takes how many attacks and your paladin who is holding back 4 orcs on the front line takes how many attacks. Clearly the same concentration mechanics aren't going to work for Paladin. Concentration is only good for when you need to make it but if you're having to make 2/3 concentration checks a round (and yes, I've been there multiple times), it's quiet often that you lose the spell. With a +6 to a concentration saving throw (+2 CON, +4 CHA). even the small damage procs a DC of 10, so it's a 15% chance to fail, if you take 3 attacks, you're still talking around a 40% chance to drop concentration.
Paladins get concentration spells as soon as they get spells, in 5E that is level 2, in oneD&D that's level 1, that is bless, that is divine favour, that is shield of faith. That is not the same time they get Aura of Protection, so I have no idea what that statement is about.
People use spell casting as one of the methods as to a point as why Paladin is overpowered but this definitely forgets that Paladin is the weakest spellcaster of all the base classes. It is one of only 3 half-casters (2 if looking at PHB), and the other half-caster is Ranger. Ranger actually uses spells, Paladin mostly sacrifices spell slots for a feature instead of even spell casting, because spell casting is so weak for Paladin. Giving Paladin the ability to maintain concentration is hardly going to break the class, it'd just allow for shifting Paladin towards other tactics than "I attacks, I hits, I smites, I attacks, I miss".
It is and remains a ludicrous point, you can live in belief that you're right but it take arrogance to proudly point towards something you did and proclaim that this thing is definitely 100% right and there is nothing wrong it, more so when somebody points out there is something wrong with it, which again, there is. You looked at Paladin and Ranger in a very limited away, assuming that moving them to concentration, thus removing MAD would mean that their features would not be rebalanced to match the removal of MAD. You even said that Paladin can drop strength or charisma but both of these in fact harm the class, less strength is less attack and damage while less charisma is less Aura of Protection and also multiple sub-classes have features that use charisma, also spell casting.
If you build a Paladin with 13 strength, you can't use plate, if you build one with 15 you can, so you need to be pushing at least 15 strength. If you build a Paladin with 13 charisma, you get literally the same +1 to aura of protection as if you had 7 charisma and while a +1 can still help, it's significantly reduced from how a +3 would help, also considering how it hamper save DCs, which if you do for some reason use the smite spells, a good number of them use. It also harms the sanctuary spell, which can be good to help save an ally in trouble.
I know D&D is not a 1vs1 game, it is a PvE game and PvE games do not need the same type of balance as actual balance. The problem is people would complain about Paladin being overpowered even if it were underpowered, this isn't because of all the things Paladin can or can not do but because of how well Paladin does it's role.
Now you're gunna compare base class Paladin to base class Fighter like this but you only talk about what Paladin has over fighter and are ignoring what fighter has over Paladin. This is not a good comparison, let me go over pros and cons for both and see really how true this is.
Paladin
Pros: Heavy Armour and Shield Proficiency, has lay on hands (level * 5HP healing pool, action), half-caster, gets divine smite, gets choice of 4 fighting styles, gets auras, gets improved divine smite.
Cons: Bad at range, no AoE, has high ASI requirements, sucks at two-weapon fighting
Fighter
Pros: Heavy Armour and Shield Proficiency, has fighting style, can basically use any weapon or fighting style in the game, has second wind (bonus action self-heal), gets action surge, gets additional ASIs/feats, gets 3/4 attacks at later levels.
Cons: no AoE, no spellcasting.
Here is an alternative comparison
Okay, proficiencies we can just drop. Fighter gets more fighting style choices, giving more build variation. Fighter can go strength or dexterity and with point buy or stand array can get it's +5 at level 6, compared to level 8 for everybody else. Well it's only self-heal, fighter's second wind actually heals more than Paladin's lay on hands for a good portion of the early game, assuming level 6 and 2 short rests, over an adventuring day a fighter would heal 3d10+18HP or an average of 34.5 HP, a level 6 paladin has 30 HP in lay on hands, paladin can use it to heal others but as a further kick in the teeth, fighter's second wind is a bonus action so is more usable in combat. Of course with less short rests then lay on hands is an easy winner but I'm going with two as intended design of how an adventuring day would work.
Action surge is a powerful ability, people even dip 2 levels into fighter just to get action surge, which is likely more people than those that dip 2 levels into paladin to get divine smite. Divine Smite does NOVA higher and Paladin can use it more often once you hit about level 5. I believe it's also a fair note that some fighter subclasses are quiet a bit stronger than Paladin ones. Paladin does get some good subclasses but battlemaster for fighter stands out as likely one of, if not the most overpowered subclass in the PHB. As for late game, fighter doing 3 attacks per action is generally a bigger DPS increase then Paladin's IDS.
When it comes down to it, Fighter and Paladin just aren't as unbalanced as people generally infer, people infer Paladin is broken because of one thing, that is Divine Smite. Paladin can more easily hit the Nova damage to dramatically damage or even kill a BBEG, however people often act like Paladins do this as the first move of a combat when more often the case the Paladin is last in initiative and most of the party has already triggered a big effect against the BBEG. Overall the issues with paladin just needs mostly is a rebalancing of divine smite.
Great... a load of information to get back to Paladin being actually roughly inline with fighter for most of the game... which is where I already stated they were from one-on-one. But since we go to PvE, again most of this is due to the fact that Paladin does it's role well rather than paladin is overpowered, it's a very common mistake people make when discussing Paladin and it most often comes down to people NOVAing the BBEG, and just being subpar on the previous encounters and doing less damage than the fighter, barbarian or monk did, cas Paladin's nova is resource based and only recovers on a long rest.
Paladin has always had a charisma requirement, what changed is that the supernatural features were merged (a 3.5e paladin is a poster child for MAD, they need strength for weapons, a bit of dex to optimize AC, constitution for hit points, wisdom for spellcasting, and charisma for lay on hands, smite evil, divine grace, and turn undead).
It's not the only point, you've just very conspicuously chosen to ignore every other point raised. And this is yet another giant essay doing the same.
And actually, rebalancing clearly is a very hard concept judging by the fact that you've offered zero examples of how you expect a broken change like Constitution as a spellcasting ability score to be counterbalanced without requiring big new drawbacks to the class. Maybe you should spend 15+ paragraphs on that instead of the tangents you seem to want to drag the topic off on instead?
I've given plenty of reasons why it can't be done, because I've given examples of how it could be done and why those would be terrible. Feel free to offer literally anything as an actual counterpoint for once, because from where I'm standing it would require big new disadvantages to be added which would need to be at least as problematic as the "issue" you're determined to "solve".
And you've also yet to give a compelling reason why Paladin requires all this extra work to theoretically go nowhere; because it can't make it simpler if it has to introduce more complexity in order to do that, and there's just no good reason to go to all that trouble. Paladin is MAD by design, so it won't step on Fighter's toes quite so much if you focus on the spellcasting, or it won't be such a strong spellcaster if you focus on being a martial divine smite battery. This isn't a problem that needs solving, and your "solution" won't fix it, it will just require it to appear in another form you'll also hate.
And it still doesn't change the fact that Charisma and Wisdom have infinitely more thematic justification than Constitution does, which is why you keep ignoring that point to try and drag us off on a tangent about how you think a class variously described as blessed, holy and divine can't possibly have anything to do with deities, when you know that has nothing to do with anything I said in my first post.
So when you spent 3-4 paragraphs trying in vain to use that as an argument, you were arguing in bad faith? Well I'm glad that at least now you're admitting that you've been wasting all of our time for four pages, so I can enjoy wasting no more of mine.
Constitution as a spellcasting ability score raises more problems than it solves, and so far none of the alleged problems it solves has actually turned out to be a problems to begin with.
The only really reasonable stance I've seen here or elsewhere on Constitution casting is that Sorcerer could use Constitution because their casting is innate, but that's an entirely thematic justification, and I'd wager most who hold that opinion are aware of the mechanical reasons it can't happen without an overhaul to all ability scores (which we're not going to see in OneD&D) or some big drawbacks that will make it not worth having.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
You've stated multiple times why you THINK it can't be done, it can be done. I could go out and redesign paladin to use constitution as it's spellcasting ability modifier but it'd take the better part of a week, designing a whole class, thinking of the interactions with features, feats... it takes a lot of time that I don't have. But mostly, the broken parts of paladin have little to do with ability scores/modifiers to begin with, mostly it's to do with the NOVA of Divine Smite, which is a tangent on to itself and has had many threads in here already discussing it. Personally, I reject your reasoning, you reject mine, I don't think we're going to agree and at this point we might as well just agree to disagree else we'll just keep going on pointlessly.
I am entirely unconvinced by your arguments and points and the only way I could make my point of how it could in fact be done would just take too much time for me to invest from real-life for a forum debate.
As for the one-on-ones, it is not pointless, PvP is also a part of D&D, it might not happen at every table and definitely doesn't happen every campaign but it does come up, however the point was more in how the classes actually would handle such situations but that what we normally see is a singular standard situation of every mob rushing the front lines, in cases where the paladin has to approach the enemy or it's out of range, Paladin can be left with little to nothing to do. However as I also made the point, that it's not that Paladin is actually overpowered, it's that people see Paladins go NOVA and see the BBEG die, even when the BBEG was already damaged, usually this involves something like a critical hit proccing, which is the ideal time to use a smite on top of that.
the key is they are trading stats, Con is the only stat with no skills. So yeah, the Con caster has fairly good but not maxed skill checks, and the Int caster has fairly good but not maxed Con checks.
Same thing. simplely put, you are trading the same % increase in con saves, for your loss in skills.
simply it comes down to, would you rather have more hp, and better con saves, or better skill checks and better mental saves. Based on responses in this thread about how people build their casters, the answer is better skills. skill expert is picked over con, 1 per day spells picked over con, direct Hp picked over con saves+HP.
any one can pick resilient, not sure why you bring that up? if you mean it synergizes with con, yeah, they got a bunch of feats that synergize with mental stats, nothing is really changing here.
You could have both CON+mental but thats equal for both builds, and many mages aren't that interested in con.
You've stated multiple times that you THINK it can be done, I've actually given clear reasoning why it can't be done without watering down Paladin so much as to not be any fun; people like Paladin as it is for good reasons, you seem to want to throw those away because you don't like not being able to have your cake and eat it too.
You clearly do, because you've spent the past four pages of this thread writing giant essays on literally anything else, specifically to avoid addressing the points I raised on page one. And it means for all you've said it boils down to "it's not a problem because I refuse to believe it's a problem".
Which is precisely why I'm done with this, because I have no reason to expect any of that to change. If all you wanted to do was state your opinion and move on, you should have done it without attacking the opinions of another, especially when it's only exposed the fragility of your own position.
But I would like to apologise to everyone else in the thread for responding in the first place; I will be blocking R3sistance and unsubscribing now.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Paladin nova is greatly overrated; battle master nova is consistently higher because action surge > divine smite (and, of course, UA has nerfed paladin nova). It's aura of protection that makes paladin stand out as exceptional.
This is just being asinine now. There is a difference between making points on a forum and actually designing a balanced character, but it's the type of statement I expected you to make. At the point I have time to do this, I have better things to do, I am not Jeremy Crawford or any other member of the team at WotC who is paid to work on these classes, I'd rather work on making my own system then put in that type of effort just for a debate on a forum.
Oh, it's very over-rated, I agree, but even if you produce the numbers that show just how much damage classes actually do over an adventuring day, people still see Paladins save nova for the BBEG and Paladin still is most likely to be last in the initiative order. Partly the issue also stems from how the game was designed vs. how people play, since classes like fighter & warlock are design to have a lot of short rests where paladin gets everything but channel divinity basically on a long rest... overall, it's issues that have already been discussed else where.
Paladin has the same problem as Moon Druid, in that in one specific situation it is very OP - that is getting a critical hit and dumping your max spell slot into the smite - which sticks in people's minds as "a problem" and demands for nerfing. But the nerfing doesn't actually fix that one specific case of OP-ness that people hate.
I wasn't talking about damage per adventuring day, I was talking about nova damage. The combination of superiority dice and action surge is just straight up more damage than smites at most levels.
What would be the response if the original question posed changing the stat that impacts concentration saving throws, currently CON, to become the same one a spellcaster uses presently for their spellcasting ability modifier? A Wizard makes an INT check for concentration; a Cleric makes a WIS check for concentration, etc.
So let’s just look at what Con casting would look like on each class.
Artificer- While this is one of the strangest Con casters for me the potential is there. You inject a piece of your own vitality into everything you create or you channel the weaves raw power into your inventions through your craftsmanship. Some better writer can come up with the lore excuse. Any features that scale off Int probably get left scaling off Int or some other mental stat. Battle Smith is the one subclass I would have problem with because it’s attacks wit weapons other than those created by a feature scale off its Spellcasting stat. That would need to change.
Bard- A Con Casting Bard is truly picking what it wants to be good at. They aren’t all the face of the party. With each spell you cast you endure the use of the echoes of creation that would destroy most who attempted to use them. Mechanics a question would be would bardic inspiration become con based or stay charisma based. Either seems okay to me.
Cleric- A Con cleric is vessel for divine power that would destroy a feeble bodied host. They a filled with divine energy by their Deities and channel it into the world. I’m not really worried about anything mechanically.
Druid- A Con Druid channels primal energies into their bodies allowing them to transform. They also can project those energies to cast spells. Mechanically I’m fine with everything I can think of right now.
Paladin- A Con Paladin cast through sheer conviction to your oath, you harness divine energy into your own body to use against your foes or bring aid to your companions. Paladin might need to figure out how to adjust Aura of protection. Technically Hexblade already broke it, so Con casting can’t break it any more. It should probably be hard locked to half your proficiency bonus.
Ranger- A Con Ranger learns to store primal energy within there bodies. I don’t see a mechanical issue with Ranger right now.
Sorcerer- A con Sorcerer would read like, Arcane energy pours from every inch of your body. You are the source of your magical power. My only mechanical troubles are Dragon’s additional hp and AC calculation.
Warlock- A con Warlock must contain the power granted by their Patron. By your own choice or some cosmic mistake you are the vessel of other worldly power. My mechanical fears are obviously Pact of the Blade which is already a problem as Cha.
Wizard- A Con Wizard would just be required to channel the Arcane energies through there own bodies. You have learn to be a conduit for the arcane energies. I can’t think of any mechanical concerns. I would still have bonus spells prepared scale off Int.
Honestly for me I would only have Con casting as a flexible Stat option. Really Flexible casting stats I would save for the DMG and be optional like Flanking rules