Undead and Constructs. Why no Con?

[Almarck]

This is mostly 3rd edition but PF is affected as well. Something I have been wondering lately is that I want to understand the justification of no Constitution on the non-living creatures, both from a game design and from an in story reason.

While I understand that none of the creatures in those types have no biological processes and are held together by magic, the fact of the matter is, undead and constructs are not created equally, especially in the case of say zombies on a base creature. Constitution is not Stamina.

I also wonder if the lack of hitpoints and constitution might be overly complicating game design a little. For instance, it's impossible to make a medium sized construct anything without it having atleast 20 hitpoints at level 1.

And the lack of constitution means that golems and such when their Fort saves are tested by magic are actually quite weak.

I want to know of the serious implications of adding Con scores to things that don't have them too.

[DeltaEmil]

4e and 5e do away with nonabilities, and they work well, and nobody misses such rules when playing those editions.

Nonabilities are just horribly clunky pseudo-simulationist rules complicating 3.x. They are inter-related with many more complicated rules (ability damage, ability drain, ability burn, ability penalty, ability reduction, based immunities), and in the end, it's just a set of things to keep player characters down in an arbitrary manner (no, you cannot make sneak attacks/critical damage against that thing, you cannot use poison to reduce its ability scores, you cannot stun it, you cannot make it nauseated, etc.) that you, the GM, all have to remember (is it immune to all those effects because of its creature type, its subtype, or because it has a nonability, and so on).

I'd say to Hell with all those clunky rules. They do not improve the game, and are just a long list of Nope, and because of them, every player character now tries to become a bunch of disgusting undead necropolitans, plant mutants, half-golemish cyborgs, immortal invincible mind-transferred god wizards residing in an invincible divine construct copy of themselves by blaspheming the deities on purpose to capture the invincible divine construct copies of themselves, telekinetic disembodied ghost-warriors, ever-shapechanging aberration-vermin hybrids, freakishly intelligent oozes and other such creatures simply because of all their immensely powerful immunities granted through a myriad of rules.

[Ilorin Lorati]

Constitution is not Stamina.

By RAW it is:


Constitution represents your character's health and stamina.

More specifically, it's the character's physical resistance to being pushed some way or another: this is why poisons, disease, running, and HP all scale with Consitution. In constructs, they don't have any of these concerns. They go as long as they're powered by something, be it magic, blood, electricity, or a ferret on a wheel.

[Almarck]

Well, certain non-immunities make sense, if only as a general ruling. I mean, aside from computer viruses how do you make a machine sick?

Honestly, I think wizards would do all of the creature type changing anyways no matter the immunities if they were convinced doing so was a worthwhile trade. Liches get immortality for a reason, you know. I'm more concerned about why they have no constitution entirely.

I really don't understand why they decided on putting size based "Construction bonuses" for constructs. That's not very simulationist when you think about it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

[...] every player character now tries to become a bunch of disgusting undead necropolitans, plant mutants, half-golemish cyborgs, immortal invincible mind-transferred god wizards residing in an invincible divine construct copy of themselves by blaspheming the deities on purpose to capture the invincible divine construct copies of themselves, telekinetic disembodied ghost-warriors, ever-shapechanging aberration-vermin hybrids, freakishly intelligent oozes and other such creatures simply because of all their immensely powerful immunities granted through a myriad of rules.
And the DM looked at it and said: this is a good world. I'm going to watch this one for a while, I'll see what stupid original things they come up with, and then I'll drop rocks for forty days and forty nights. No, you can't build an ark out of prismatic walls.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, certain non-immunities make sense, if only as a general ruling. I mean, aside from computer viruses how do you make a machine sick?

Honestly, I think wizards would do all of the creature type changing anyways no matter the immunities if they were convinced doing so was a worthwhile trade. Liches get immortality for a reason, you know. I'm more concerned about why they have no constitution entirely.

I really don't understand why they decided on putting size based "Construction bonuses" for constructs. That's not very simulationist when you think about it.

Bigger = more material = can absorb more damage before destruction. Seems pretty simulationist to me, really...a golf cart is going to have less HP than a city bus.

[Almarck]

Yeah, I just realized that was a bad thing to say. How about this: why an arbitrary hitpoint increase based on creature size instead of a boost to Constitution?

[Coidzor]

Yeah, I just realized that was a bad thing to say. How about this: why an arbitrary hitpoint increase based on creature size instead of a boost to Constitution?

Because if there's a Con score there's going to be a way to get around immunities and damage that Con score. At least that seems semi-plausible as a partial explanation for part of it.

[KillianHawkeye]

As far as I can remember, constructs didn't have a size-related bonus to hp in 3.0; it was added when 3.5 came around to make up for the fact that constructs didn't have enough hp due to lacking Con bonuses.

[Necroticplague]

Well, certain non-immunities make sense, if only as a general ruling. I mean, aside from computer viruses how do you make a machine sick?

Corrosion, rust, tarnish. All of them do the same thing to a machine that a disease, poison, or parasite does to a person.


On a more general note, I think it'd be best to just give them CON score back If anyone asks, just add a note "a construct's CON score represent the reselience of its materials and how tough its built, while the undead CON score represent how strong their link to the NEP that keeps them going is. " So an iron golem has high CON and a lot of hitpoints because its made out of a fairly tough material, while an evolved vampire has a high CON because their blood is very thick with Negative energy that keep them going when they would otherwise be dead.