Is Constitution too mandatory? Would the game be improved by its removal?

[FMArthur]

By "removal" I don't mean just cut it out of the game and use 0 to substitute, so get that out of your head right away. The idea is not to trim characters down or make them more frail. :smalltongue:

I mean use a fixed HP bonus based on the 14 or 16 Con that everyone and their grandma aims for in every character build no matter the role. Use Strength for Fortitude saves, Constitution checks, and abilities that would otherwise use Constitution. Use Charisma or another mental for Concentration. Abilities that change Constitution instead directly affect Hit Points and if they don't also affect Strength, Fortitude saves (For example, Rage would not need a Fortitude bonus to come out even due to its Strength bonus).

What are the consequences? What I'm seeing is a reduction on MAD for all classes, which benefits melee classes most (a full-caster's 18 mental stat isn't getting any higher out of it, after all). It also condenses Strength and Constitution based activities into a smaller number of bonuses to track, although that would only reduce bookkeeping if the books themselves had been written with this in mind. It doesn't seem like too difficult a substitution. Thoughts, playground?

[Kefkafreak]

No more hellfire warlocks :smalltongue:

[Kylarra]

Certain con based classes become odd I think. DFA for example, will have a high strength for breath weapon dc, but poor BAB...

[Big Fau]

This also messes with Incarnum.


As for HP, only a 14 or 16 Con isn't that much, especially for mid-level play.

[Kefkafreak]

My Beguiler ended up with 30 Con (16 +2 racial +6 item +5 tome +1 level) :smallbiggrin:

Con is always my primary or secondary stat.

[FMArthur]

Would DFA and Incarnum be ill served by Charisma? They'd be down by 1 HP per level from their normal 18s, but what if they just got better HD by one step?

Big Fau, 16 Con isn't bad at all. Remember that anything increasing Con just improves your health the same way, so an Amulet of Health you'd have by mid levels would literally just be giving you the same health anyway. :smallconfused:

[Greensleeves]

My Beguiler ended up with 30 Con (16 +2 racial +6 item +5 tome +1 level) :smallbiggrin:

Con is always my primary or secondary stat.

This is precisely what OP wants to remove, if I understand things correctly.


As for the actual question... Not sure. May work, may not. Depends on the group, I'd say. If the group as a whole is fine with the change, I'd say go for it.

[Ravens_cry]

It may be mandatory, but I think an ability that helps simulate relative frailty and stamina is a good thing. I see no reason to drop it.

[Eldariel]

Con could afford to be de-emphasized; making it a smaller part of the composite HP (for example, maximizing all hit dice helps), making it grant extra HP for warrior classes, deriving Fort off Str too, etc. It's a fine stat with a reason to exist but right now it's perhaps a bit too important. Alternatively, it could be interesting to try and bump the general importance of other stats to match (right now it's only really Dexterity, Constitution and to a degree Intelligence up there).

[SPoD]

It may reduce MAD, but it would also remove the ability to excel at that one thing. While yes, every character aims for a 14 or a 16 or whatever, that's only for starting scores. If Constitution doesn't exist at all, then you can't later spend money on magic items that pump your hit points, like Amulets of Health or Tomes. Casters rarely waste their money on such things, but they're often a worthwhile investment for a warrior. So I think in the long run, you'd have d10 fighters with only a few more hit points than d8 clerics (5.5 average per level instead of 4.5), which takes away one more thing that the fighter could be good at. And that's never good.

A better solution, if you really want to reduce the MAD at all costs, would be to just take everything that Con does and add it to Strength, including bonus hit points. That would start to give the warriors the same sort of SAD that full casters have.

Though personally, I would rather reduce the SAD of casters than increase the SAD of warriors, but that's just me. Excessive SAD makes for less diverse characters--all wizards are geniuses, for example, while some fighters might be stronger than they are tough or tougher than they are strong.

[Kefkafreak]

My DM eliminated HP-rolls. We get a set amount of HP (75% of the maximum roll) + Con each level. Of course, the enemies have this too.

[FMArthur]

Yeah, my concern is mostly that it is the only stat that you cannot afford to organically generate, where 'ability nuance' is capable of stepping over the line into 'unplayable'.

[Telonius]

Concentration skill. Maybe base it on on Wisdom or Charisma?

Poison rules would need to be totally re-jiggered, or there would be so few and not-too-useful poisons that nobody would ever use them. (Ditto for Wounding weapons). The most useful poisons do CON damage; if CON doesn't exist then there's no reason to use them. Poison save DCs are based on Constitution score, so those would need some other method of determination as well.

Drowning rules and Forced Marches would be affected.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, my concern is mostly that it is the only stat that you cannot afford to organically generate, where 'ability nuance' is capable of stepping over the line into 'unplayable'.

The problem is really that it's too important because the base values are too low for this game; characters with Con 10 just have too small HP total with how much damage this system dishes around. That is, Con is too big a part of characters' HP. The best solution would probably be to make base HP larger so Con is percentually a smaller part and thus, while higher Con characters would be tougher, the difference wouldn't be so major as to make a character from playable to unplayable.

[Jeraa]

What, so marathon runners (who would need a higher Constitution) now need to be body-builders as well?

[Steward]

Removing such an integral part of any build is... unconstitutional.

Personally, I kind of like Con but I can see the objection. The idea of reassigning it to strength seems fair, and it might even help Monks and other MAD characters out too since they can get the benefits of high Con without having to actually put skill points into it. However, the points mentioned above about having to reconfigure every other Con-based item, ability, and class is a good point. You really can't just lop off an ability score and leave everything else mostly unchanged.

[wayfare]

I wouldn't get rid of the stat, but I would change what it does. Back in AD&D, bonus HP was a Class Feature that only the most durable classes could fully exploit.

Try this: your Constitution modifier does not add to your HP. Instead, it determines the minimum number of HP you gain each level, capped by your hit die.

So sure, a Wizard might be cheap and bump it to 18 so he always gets 4 hp per level, but there is no real incentive to bump it higher. The fighters and barbarians of the gameworld have a lot better reason to invest in Con, as it provides a nice cushion for hp as you level up.

[ImperatorK]

Drop pointbuy/rolling and make it so every PC gets 18s in all stats. Done. Now everyone is equal (and monks MAD is more irrelevant).

[FMArthur]

It may reduce MAD, but it would also remove the ability to excel at that one thing. While yes, every character aims for a 14 or a 16 or whatever, that's only for starting scores. If Constitution doesn't exist at all, then you can't later spend money on magic items that pump your hit points, like Amulets of Health or Tomes. Casters rarely waste their money on such things, but they're often a worthwhile investment for a warrior. So I think in the long run, you'd have d10 fighters with only a few more hit points than d8 clerics (5.5 average per level instead of 4.5), which takes away one more thing that the fighter could be good at. And that's never good.

Come on, at least read the whole opening post. Please.

Anyway you guys are right. Directly improving HP in some way seems to be the simplest and most effective way to go. Any thoughts on exact numbers? I'm leery of doing something like 75% hit dice because d6s and d10s get hosed out of .5 HP. What about max, or a fixed bonus per HD? I've actually been in games that used max, and it seemed okay.

[SPoD]

Yeah, my concern is mostly that it is the only stat that you cannot afford to organically generate, where 'ability nuance' is capable of stepping over the line into 'unplayable'.

The only thing that makes a low Con character "unplayable" is the fact that they might die. As long as they're alive, they're as good as anyone else. Sure, they'll flub their Fortitude saves, but that's no worse than having a low Wisdom or Dex, and we all see characters with those all the time.

Therefore, an easier solution would be to introduce some sort of non-Constitution-dependent means of surviving being knocked to negative hit points. This could either be in the form of a house rule--I've played in games where PCs can't actually die unless they sacrifice themselves or the enemy takes the time to coup de grace them--or possibly a feat or something that lets them survive even when others would have died.

[Ravens_cry]

Drop pointbuy/rolling and make it so every PC gets 18s in all stats. Done. Now everyone is equal (and monks MAD is more irrelevant).
Are you serious? I rolled low on my Sense Motive. The whole point of statistics is to customize how good (and bad) one is at things naturally, before training.

[SPoD]

Come on, at least read the whole opening post. Please.

I did read your post. You didn't communicate as well as you think you did. I had to reread it twice more to get that when you say "abilities that change Constitution instead directly affect Hit Points," you also meant magic items, and not just class abilities. You know, since you used the word abilities and not effects.

At which point the entire exercise would be stupid, because removing an ability score without removing every single thing that ability score does but still keeping around awkward reminders that a score used to exist makes no sense at all. What happens if you read a Tome +1 now? Nothing? Because you need to have a bonus of +2 to the score in order to get an increase of +1 to the hit points, so who knows.

[Akal Saris]

It's literally been years since I made a character with a starting con lower than 14 in a 3.5/PF game, and I'm pretty sick of it being a mechanical quasi-requirement as well. You can play a character with less than 14 con, just like you can play a druid without natural spell. It just won't be a good decision.

As I see it, the problem is that Con is only tied to concentration checks, HP, and fort saves, and to a few oddball classes like DFA and incarnum. Meanwhile, dexterity is tied to AC, initiative, reflex saves, ranged attack rolls, and about 5-6 interactive skills like hide, move silently, tumble, and sleight of hand. Having a high dex is more fun to me than having a high Con score, because you can do a lot more with the stat.

[Eldariel]

Anyway you guys are right. Directly improving HP in some way seems to be the simplest and most effective way to go. Any thoughts on exact numbers? I'm leery of doing something like 75% hit dice because d6s and d10s get hosed out of .5 HP. What about max, or a fixed bonus per HD? I've actually been in games that used max, and it seemed okay.

Full HDs work; they reward normally weaker classes somewhat and reduce the necessity of high Con. Giving static +2 or so per level would work slightly differently, keeping the emphasis in HD difference static but reducing the percentile impact of Con a lot.

I'd almost lean towards the latter since I want to be able to play the archetypal Frail Wizard with Con 8 or so (think Raistlin); I mean, I can, but I gotta draw upon quite a bit of system mastery to get by while with Con 14 I can be quite lax about it.

[Amnestic]

Concentration skill. Maybe base it on on Wisdom or Charisma?


When I was folding some skills into others to reduce how much characters needed to spread their skillpoints around, I folded Concentration into Spellcraft and had it based off of the stat your spell DCs are based on. The one exception was Tome of Battle classes and...honestly I forget what I did for them :smalltongue: I think I just had it based on Con as normal, so I guess you could probably fold it into Strength or Dex for them.

[Socratov]

I dont think CON is that mandatory, it's just really nice to have... i once had a bard with just 8 con, felt fine, until I got stunned and drowned (no, con wouldnt have helped there seen as I was stunned). See saves, i usually neve rhave that much wis, so if i get a willsave, i prolly lose it, but you will have to work around that using strategy ad positioning. And even if you take con out, (or at least really de-emphasise it) what else for a fort save: str? anything else? the reason CON got it is because it's so damn fitting. If you get poisoned, you will need body strength, not muscle strength to overcome it, if you hold your breath underwater, you don't need to be a bodybuilder to be better at it, you just need a set of great lungs. So I would vote for keeping it as it is. Then again, I use WIS and str as a dumpstat often...

edit: also, can anybody tell me waht MAD means? never heard of it...

[ImperatorK]

Multiple Ability Dependency, or somthing like that.

[Eldariel]

I dont think CON is that mandatory, it's just really nice to have... i once had a bard with just 8 con, felt fine, until I got stunned and drowned (no, con wouldnt have helped there seen as I was stunned). See saves, i usually neve rhave that much wis, so if i get a willsave, i prolly lose it, but you will have to work around that using strategy ad positioning. And even if you take con out, (or at least really de-emphasise it) what else for a fort save: str? anything else? the reason CON got it is because it's so damn fitting. If you get poisoned, you will need body strength, not muscle strength to overcome it, if you hold your breath underwater, you don't need to be a bodybuilder to be better at it, you just need a set of great lungs. So I would vote for keeping it as it is. Then again, I use WIS and str as a dumpstat often...

Well, if you never take damage and roll saving throws, of course it's not a big deal how much HP and what saves you've got. But I hardly expect that's the status quo far as D&D games go. In games where combat happens, especially combat against respectable opponents, your defensive stats (HP, Saves, AC, other sources of defense like miss chance and active defensive actions) should all probably be rather high lest you expect to die.


edit: also, can anybody tell me waht MAD means? never heard of it...

Multiple Attribute Dependency. Basically, a character class (or character archetype) that needs a larger-than-average number of stats as absolute baseline to function. For example, Barbarian can work just fine with Strength and Constitution (yes, you miss out on cool feats but you can still smack face, get to wear your armor and such so lowish Dex doesn't matter, etc.).

Druid only ever needs Wisdom and Constitution; you get your other physicals from Wildshape (Con too but HP comes from your innate Con), and with only those two stats you're already a caster/warrior. Wizard makes do with only Int, Con and Dex. That's one more stat, mind, but since he only ever needs moderate Dex and Con he's still fine. Those classes are SAD; they only need to have one stat really high (which is what the game system rewards since you only get 5 points on level-ups and they can all be based in the same stat) and some moderate numbers in one-two secondary stats and can have straight 8s in the rest for all it matters.


On the other hand, take a class like Monk. He's a melee warrior, right? He needs offensive stats (To Hit & Damage), defensive stats (especially AC and HP since he's melee) and he fancies being a skill monkey so he'd like some Int for some skill points. His base damage is very low early on. He really needs very high Strength; doubly so if he fancies Grappling and Tripping for which he gets feats as class features.

Then there's the built-in Stunning Fist which requires massive Wisdom. And since he's forbidden to wear armor, he needs both, high Dexterity AND high Wisdom to get a competitive Armor Class. AND he's still behind Fighter, let alone Barbarian, in HP with comparable Con so he preferably would have even HIGHER Con than those.


In other words, a Barbarian with 18 Str, 12 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 10 Wis, 10 Cha would probably perform as well as Monk with 18 Str, 18 Dex, 16 Con, 10 Int, 18 Wis, 8 Cha, because Monk has massive multi-attribute dependency while the Barbarian is quite single-attribute dependent. Or MAD vs. SAD.

[Essence_of_War]

Anyway you guys are right. Directly improving HP in some way seems to be the simplest and most effective way to go. Any thoughts on exact numbers? I'm leery of doing something like 75% hit dice because d6s and d10s get hosed out of .5 HP. What about max, or a fixed bonus per HD? I've actually been in games that used max, and it seemed okay.


I am in lust with full hp/HD. Max makes everyone feel good about their hp/level, but also makes the people with larger HD feel like they are the "tough cookies" as it were, and they like that. I've also seen and used a system like:

d4 = 2+d2
d6 = 3+d3
d8 = 4+d4
d10 = 5+d5
d12 = 6+d6

Which gives everyone a nice static base but still includes some randomness for those who just love rolling the dice every level. Downside is that this actually benefits the people with the smaller HD more because of the higher variance and the lower fractional gain on those with the larger hd. That is to say, the wizard is guaranteed 75% of his max hp and 50% of the time gets max! The Warblade is guaranteed only 60% of his max hp, and only gets max hp only about 17% of the time.

[KoboldCleric]

Stolen from swd20's living force, I use HD-2 for my games (so a barbarian gets 10+con and a wizard gets 2+con). As for dropping Con entirely ... seems viable if your group is really dishing out enough damage to drop characters in only a couple shots. Power Attack is largely considered a trap in my group, and anything that gives + to hit or AC (not damage, just hit) is considered very strong, so we have no trouble with low con scores. All in all, I like what it does for our games though: longer, more tactically involved combats, so I'm not exactly in a rush to prove otherwise.

[Socratov]

Well, if you never take damage and roll saving throws, of course it's not a big deal how much HP and what saves you've got. But I hardly expect that's the status quo far as D&D games go. In games where combat happens, especially combat against respectable opponents, your defensive stats (HP, Saves, AC, other sources of defense like miss chance and active defensive actions) should all probably be rather high lest you expect to die.



(and more)

sure, but that's what i built it on. I once played an undead (necropolitan , granted free by DM) archivist, with total: 9 AC, ref save not worth mentioning, and a fortsave beïng nonexistent. I never got into range of anything (at least not on purpose) but rahter flung spells from the backline having our enemies to worry about our pally of tyrranny on an ashworm trampling everyone, and a cleric drawing all the attention. Your attributes are all you want as long as you build right. If you build a crappy con score, go play a sniper or something, or a wizard. If you build a great con score, go build that melee (or hellfire warlock) who stands there being stallwart flashing his sword or whatever around etc.

tl:dr I build my scores around what my character is going to do, and not everyone needs CON.

also, thanks for the explanation :smallsmile:

[Eldariel]

sure, but that's what i built it on. I once played an undead (necropolitan , granted free by DM) archivist, with total: 9 AC, ref save not worth mentioning, and a fortsave beïng nonexistent. I never got into range of anything (at least not on purpose) but rahter flung spells from the backline having our enemies to worry about our pally of tyrranny on an ashworm trampling everyone, and a cleric drawing all the attention. Your attributes are all you want as long as you build right. If you build a crappy con score, go play a sniper or something, or a wizard. If you build a great con score, go build that melee (or hellfire warlock) who stands there being stallwart flashing his sword or whatever around etc.

tl:dr I build my scores around what my character is going to do, and not everyone needs CON.

Well, this approach certainly should work against many dumb monsters, but intelligent opponents (especially trained warriors) generally specifically go for those spellcasters in the back since they're the ones flinging the most pain and as such, provided DM plays the adversaries the players make up to their intelligence score (especially true for the more fearsome beings like Outsiders, Dragons, particularly formidable Aberrations, Humanoids & Undead and company), you're going to need defenses even if you're the mage in the back. Now, to be fair, you can of course go quite far with your spells but even then, low base values can prove quite the inconvenience especially early on.

In short, glad it worked out for you but it sounds like your DM didn't really make ranged types' life nearly as dangerous as he could provided martially minded creatures are given tactical awareness. Outside Undead/Construct PCs, I have yet to run into a case where you'd want Con undead 12 and that was with a d12 HD Archer with multiple good Fort progression classes.

[Metahuman1]

Have a set of feats that shift the lions share of Con based bonuses too other stats.Have theses for every stat.

Offer enough bonus feats at character creation too all the players that they can shift most things, like HP and fort saves, too another stat. For players that are using a class that is con dependent, have some additional feats that would let them shift things off other stats TOO con. If the player doesn't want to do anything to tweak there MAD/SAD around, off them a couple of other extra feats that don't do anything with stats, like say Combat expertise and improved trip, or Exotic weapons proficiency and weapons focus (You know, for going exotic weapons master with that Bastard sword/spiked chain.)

This way, everyone can reduce MAD as desired, but Con will still matter at times, like in a Forced March, when Drowning, When getting Con damaged form poison or wounding property or what have you, but it's not something you MUST have high all the time.

[thompur]

Didn't they kind of do this with 4E *don't hit me*.

[MeeposFire]

Didn't they kind of do this with 4E *don't hit me*.

Yes they did. you start with a base number (10-17) and then add your con score (8-30 depending on level) and then you get a set number of HP per level above 1 (4-7). This of course does not include your reserve HP in the form of surges which con governs. Each point of con mod essentially gives you another 25% extra HP but it is in reserve and you may not get access to it during a fight.

So in 4e con is generally very nice but not overwhelmingly needed. Only the vampire class would ever dump con to 8 but only con secondary or primary classes will boost it.

[stainboy]

So in a game without healing surges or Con-based classes, that would pretty much make Con a dump stat. I guess it would still affect your Fort save, but affecting a save doesn't stop people from dumping Wisdom.

[ericgrau]

So in 4e con is generally very nice but not overwhelmingly needed. Only the vampire class would ever dump con to 8 but only con secondary or primary classes will boost it.
I played one low level 4e campaign and the first thing I did was dump con purely because I could. Though I might have left it at 10 or some such. And in a couple levels I took toughness as one of my feats (right after I got the main damage feats I wanted) because that seemed more worth it for HP.

[Draz74]

Didn't they kind of do this with 4E *don't hit me*.

Well, they made ability scores a lot more abstract and malleable in general, which I don't like. But yes, they did succeed admirably in demoting CON from its "must-have" status. They made Fortitude depend on STR or CON, and they let you add your CON score (not modifier) to HP only once, instead of your modifier at every level. The latter change, I actually like.

[MeeposFire]

I played one low level 4e campaign and the first thing I did was dump con purely because I could. Though I might have left it at 10 or some such. And in a couple levels I took toughness as one of my feats (right after I got the main damage feats I wanted) because that seemed more worth it for HP.

For direct always on combat HP yes but you are subtly losing out a lot of HP from lost surges (which is alright). For instance if you have 200 HP then each surge is worth 50 HP each that is a lot of HP. But then already start with so many surges so it is still a small set of your extra HP. Of course the nifty thing is that due to how the system works you don't miss that as much as you do in 3e.

[Starwulf]

By "removal" I don't mean just cut it out of the game and use 0 to substitute, so get that out of your head right away. The idea is not to trim characters down or make them more frail. :smalltongue:

I mean use a fixed HP bonus based on the 14 or 16 Con that everyone and their grandma aims for in every character build no matter the role. Use Strength for Fortitude saves, Constitution checks, and abilities that would otherwise use Constitution. Use Charisma or another mental for Concentration. Abilities that change Constitution instead directly affect Hit Points and if they don't also affect Strength, Fortitude saves (For example, Rage would not need a Fortitude bonus to come out even due to its Strength bonus).

What are the consequences? What I'm seeing is a reduction on MAD for all classes, which benefits melee classes most (a full-caster's 18 mental stat isn't getting any higher out of it, after all). It also condenses Strength and Constitution based activities into a smaller number of bonuses to track, although that would only reduce bookkeeping if the books themselves had been written with this in mind. It doesn't seem like too difficult a substitution. Thoughts, playground?

I haven't read any of the rest of this thread, just your first post, and, all I can say, is, wow, people actually aim for 14-16 con? Con is almost always my dump stat. I don't think I've ever built more then 2 characters with a con score over 12, and one of them is a character I literally just built who happens to get a +8 con from his race(so he has a 20, see, again, I went with 12). More often or not, I leave con at a flat 10, sometimes I drop it down to 8. HP is important, yeah, but I find CON tends to come at a cost of other, more useful ability scores. I'd rather have a high STR or a high INT, or a high DEX, or WIS, or CHR. Ya know, things that usually have an effect on actual abilities and stuff, not just my HP.

[navar100]

You can keep Constitution for fortitude saves but move the hit point bonus to an ability score depending on the class. Classes keep their HD.

Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian = Strength. Muscle power keeps them going.
(You may consider it appropriate Barbarian keep hit point bonus in Constitution, if anything just for variety and uniqueness.)
Rogue, Bard, Ranger = Dexterity. They know how to avoid the blows.
Wizard = Intelligence. They're smart enough to avoid danger.
Monk, Cleric = Wisdom. Zen defense or divine providence.
Sorcerer = Charisma. They have that quality to provide just enough of a distraction to make that hard hit a glancing blow.

Obviously everyone's hit points inflates, but it helps to reduce MAD. Constitution is still needed for fortitude so dumping it would be a disadvantage.

Other classes extrapolate from there.
Beguiler = Charisma, Psion = Intelligence, Warblade = Strength, etc.

[MeeposFire]

I think at that point you might as well dump con from the game because it does not bring anything to the game. You might as well take it out and give its remaining stuff to other ability scores such as fort saves based on str.

[Fizban]

I'm kinda split on this issue. On the one hand, I know that every time I build a caster, they'll have that 14 constitution, and it'll be annoying. Everyone needs hit points. But then I look at the wizards in the game I'm running right now: The first had 14 con for hit points, and only took damage once, from a fireball, and was the only person who made his save. He would have been just fine without the 14. But then he was replaced by the current wizard, who has lower (a 12 or 10, not sure), who has been knocked unconscious in every single battle since his introduction. If he had an 18 he'd still be praying for more hp.

As always, it depends on build, playstyle, and combat tactics. With less optimization, not everyone needs tons of hit points, and monsters often end up having too many to try and blast, due to having twice the hit dice and con mod of anyone in the party. With more optimization, everyone needs tons of hp and monsters don't even have enough.

So I'd say: if low-op, reduce the effect of constitution on hit points for everybody. Cut the modifier in half for hit points, add hit points based on some other stat, use it as a minimum for the roll, whatever. Maybe roll it back to 2e where only the fighter types get the bonus if you really want to get extreme about it. For hi-op, straight up maximize all hit dice, neverwinter nights style (where my wizard often had just as many hit points as the tanking henchmen).

[NichG]

I'd say my preference would be to inject a way to build a character the de-emphasizes Con but still has survivability, in such a way that its hard to combine the two (e.g. make it based on another stat, and make it only useful if you have a lot of it). Of course this is a more severe change.

Imagine if Dex gave you a miss chance that included AoEs (like blink or incorporeality), Int gave you an opposed roll to avoid attacks, Con gave you hitponts, Wis gave you the ability to act until deeper in the negatives (how that's different from more hitpoints is a tricky issue though...), and Str gave you DR/Energy Resist. Cha of course is the joker stat that can do anything with the right PrCs/etc but nothing on its own.

Balancing it would be fairly hard though, and you might have to remove other sources of those things to keep it relevant (if you can get maximum miss chance via a 3rd level spell, why bother with Dex, etc).

[navar100]

Pathfinder allows you a free hit point per level in your favored class, usually whatever class you start at 1st level. If you intend to stay single class, you could afford to put a 12 in Constitution and with the free hit points have the equivalent of a 14 for hit points.