A Simple Fix To 5e's Ability Score Issues

[Amechra]

5e has a bit of an issue with ability scores. To put it simply, the game currently "forces" you to put a good ability score in Constitution and whatever ability score you use for AC, which means that building your character "optimally" pushes you towards building a character with 2-3 good physical ability scores and 0-1 good mental ability scores. This is my attempt to fix the issue with the lightest possible change.

For the purposes of this homebrew, I'm ignoring the existence of the Hexblade, because it's the reason we can't have nice things.

Armor Class Changes

Armor of Shadows (replaces the Eldritch Invocation)
You may use your Charisma modifier in place of your Dexterity modifier for the purposes of determining your armor class.

Primal Defense (replaces the Barbarian's Unarmored Defense - and before you ask, there's a multiclassing note that doesn't let you combine this with a Monk's Unarmored Defense.)
You gain the following benefits:

You may use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Dexterity modifier for the purposes of determining your armor class.
While you are not wearing any armor, your armor class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier. You can use a shield and still gain this benefit.


Constitution
Constitution no longer contributes to your hit-points. Instead, you gain +2 HP per level (+3 if that level is a level in Barbarian). Note that you still add your Constitution modifier to the hit-points you recover when you expend a hit-die.

In exchange, death saving throws are now Constitution saving throws.

With these changes, Constitution has gone from "everyone wants it at 14+" to "nice to have" — dumping it (because you want to play someone sickly) is no longer a death sentence.

As for why I only changed how two classes determined their AC and called it good...


With the current rules, Barbarians are kinda shoe-horned into putting all of their good ability scores into physical ability scores if they don't want their AC to suck... which is a bit annoying, since part of the class fantasy of the Barbarian is having sharp senses and an untamable will. On top of that, Unarmored Defense was kinda meh. Letting them use Wisdom in place of Dexterity both buffs the feature a smidge and gives you far more freedom when it comes to assigning your ability scores.
The new version of Armor of Shadows is pretty much designed to be appealing to Strength-focused Bladelocks, because they need the help. It also doesn't give the Abjuration Wizard an at-will Abjuration spell to abuse, and works with armor proficiencies if you pick them up from somewhere.



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Thoughts?

[BerzerkerUnit]

I really dislike class based HP bonuses.

Having flat HP totals isn’t a step in a direction I want the game to go. One of my most memorable PCs had rolled stats and that came with a 9 Con. At level 5 a high rolling fireball wiped him off the face of the Oerth.

I can see this working for a more “board gamey” Dnd and in conjunction with a dozen more abbreviations for rules it could make something fairly fast paced that covers an entire module in a few hours. But I think the choices presented in the current model are more rewarding long term.

How does that 10 Con influence choices over the course of a campaign?

[Amechra]

I mean, if you really want that to be a possibility, you can just roll for your HP.

To be entirely blunt, I'm always annoyed when people intentionally nerf their character's survivability, because that usually means that the rest of the group has to play babysitter. Because if your Rogue has Constitution 10 instead of Constitution 14, you're dumping more than a quarter of your HP.

[Twelvetrees]

Of note, this now means that barbarians, fighters, sorcerers, and artificers are now good at death saving throws. That seems fine to me.

Spellcasters who rely on concentration spells are still going to want a high Constitution, but other kinds of spellcasters now have more freedom with where they place their ability scores.

It looks like this accomplishes the broad strokes of your goal. There are still some cases where a high Constitution will be desired, but this fix covers about 80% of your problems.

[Breccia]

To be entirely blunt, I'm always annoyed when people intentionally nerf their character's survivability, because that usually means that the rest of the group has to play babysitter.

This is a valid opinion, but it's not one I share, and I don't agree with your change to Con, either. Simply put, you're pumping your PCs so full of hit points Death Saves will happen much more rarely and therefore Con will have far lower value. And as a result of this, your game will have power creep -- that's not a bad thing, just a heads-up is all.

By the way, different stats (including offensive stats) can affect combat in different ways. Let's take a look at the following three people:
Character A has 14 Str 10 Dex 10 Con
Character B has 10 Str 14 Dex 10 Con
Character C has 10 Str 10 Dex 14 Con
They all have a scale mail and a longsword, they're all 1st level with 8 base hp, and they're all fighting a standard Goblin in melee. Yeah yeah, other characters exist, so do Finesse weapons, any realistic PC should have better stats, etc etc bear with me.

Character A on average does 3.25 damage per round and takes on average 3.025 damage per round, as does Character C.
Character B on average does 1.8 damage per round, as does Character C, and takes 2.475 damage per round.

The character with the highest lifespan...is Character A. He does the Goblin's 7 hp in 2.154 rounds on average, while living 2.645 rounds on average. Character B and C both miss more often and do less damage when they hit, taking 3.8889 rounds to kill the Goblin, but both dying in 3.232 or 3.305 rounds, a lower amount of time, and both expected to lose. (Character B has a sligthly higher lifespan if you include Initiative...but one thing at a time)

So, in the absense of any specifics or context, there's something to be said about trading offense for defense. In particular, many characters have the option to take Dex which will add to their AC and their damage, easily worth the tradeoff for Con.

Character D has 10 Str 14 Dex 10 Con and a Finesse weapon handily wins the fight against the goblin, likely winning in 2.15 rounds and taking Character B's 3.232 rounds to kill. And his Con is still 10.

Also, there are heavy armor wearers for whom Dex is largely a dump stat, giving them all the excuse they need to boost Con. For example, put Character A in Chain Mail and he has the same damage and survivability as Character D. And he has a 10 Con, too.

Simply put, I get that you want to remove Constitution as a temptation by giving everyone a 14 Con for hp and letting everyone take stats you feel are more interesting or effective. I think your Armor of Shadows is pointing to a more interesting way to do that. Players can help their survivability by, for example, hitting more often for more damage, having more spells to cast, or making those skill checks that avoid damage entirely (looking at you, traps). I'm just asking you to take a second look and ask "are the changes I'm suggesting going to solve the probem?" Because, going as you currently list, you're going from "Everyone has to take Constitution or they're a detriment" (which, again, I disagree with) to "Nobody takes Constitution because the effects are minimal at best".

Think of it this way: if the only benefit to Con is +Con saves and Concentration checks....would you ever take it?

[Amechra]

I mean, at my table everyone already goes with 14 Con. Like, everyone. This isn't something we coordinated on or anything, it just kinda happened. If your group doesn't do that, then clearly the change isn't going to make much sense for you, and you should cut the HP bonuses from leveling by 1 (or 2, if people like being tissue paper). Or, you know, skip that part, because clearly your group isn't experiencing an issue related to over-prioritizing a stat that has no active uses.

And yes, I would put a decent score in Constitution if I were playing a frontline caster or a Barbarian. That puts it in the same general bucket as Charisma, Intelligence, and Strength, which is just fine in my book.

[BerzerkerUnit]

I mean, at my table everyone already goes with 14 Con. Like, everyone. This isn't something we coordinated on or anything, it just kinda happened. If your group doesn't do that, then clearly the change isn't going to make much sense for you, and you should cut the HP bonuses from leveling by 1 (or 2, if people like being tissue paper). Or, you know, skip that part, because clearly your group isn't experiencing an issue related to over-prioritizing a stat that has no active uses.

And yes, I would put a decent score in Constitution if I were playing a frontline caster or a Barbarian. That puts it in the same general bucket as Charisma, Intelligence, and Strength, which is just fine in my book.

Emphasis mine.

I actually use Con+Athletics when rolling to avoid exhaustion or as option for extended chases (this is technically RAW). Dhampir’s use Con for their bite. Aberrant Dragonmark grants a spell with Con as casting stat and if that spell requires a spell attack roll that could also be an active use.

Con mod adds to hit dice during short rest, the think that also technically counts as active use.

These are all admittedly edge cases, but there are some extant active con rolls. Likely to be more in the future if still very rare.

[Rilmani]

I have a suggestion if you want to stick to the current static hit point gain you outlined. Give characters damage reduction equal to their constitution modifier. Establish that some Conditions disable constitution’s damage reduction or slip by it (sneak attack, psychic damage…).

Adding constitution to death saving throws is rarely useful. It is not worth the trade off your changes propose. Now, if you changed what happens at 0 hit points, then it could be worthwhile.
“When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you gain the Teetering condition and must immediately make a death saving throw with a DC of 10 + half of the remaining damage which reduced you to 0 hit points (round down). On a failure you fall prone and become incapacitated, which replaces the Teetering condition. While in this state at the end of your turn roll a DC 10 Death Saving Throw.”

3 successes to stabilize you, 3 failures kill you, and a natural 20 ends the incapacitated condition and restores 1 hit point. Until you fail your first death saving throw, you stay standing and able to act. In that case, adding constitution to death saves would be quite worthwhile. Most characters still would not be proficient in death saves, but that is fine. The Teetering condition would mostly say “if you push yourself, you gain a level of exhaustion which ends when you take a short rest or are restored to half of your maximum hit points.” There are other ways to handle this condition, such as forcing more death saving throws if you take an action, bonus action, and move more than half your speed.


Edit: Ohhhh… I just realized. The “constitution mod damage reduction” would completely break Barbarians due to their rage. Hrm.

[Breccia]

I mean, at my table everyone already goes with 14 Con. Like, everyone.

Is your campaign high-damage or something? Because (assuming standard array) if literally everyone puts their second-highest stat in Con, a stat which is nobody's attack stat and very few people's cast stat, I'm going to guess they evolved that way as a defensive mechanism.

High-damage campaigns are fine, if everyone knows what they're getting into, and I'm starting to see the problem if players "have to" reduce their own effectiveness just to remain standing. But
a) I promise you, what you described, that's not the standard. Like, ask anyone.
b) If the issue is "players are taking too much damage" there are ways to handle that without changing Constitution.

As a note, removing the hit point effect of Con means that, if someone wants to play an absolute brick, they can't. They have the same +hp/HD as everyone else. Iron Faceson the Dwarf plate-mail defender and Fencius McSabre the Duellist will have the same hp.

[Yakk]

This moves Constitution from very strong to extremely weak as an ability score.

...

Counter suggestion that is only a bit more complex:
1. Combine Str and Con. This is called Brawn. (Unless otherwise mentioned, something mentioning "Con" or "Str" now mentions "Bra").
2. Add Fate.
3. On odd levels, Fate adds to HP; on even levels, Brawn does (instead of Con).
4. Death saving throws are Fate saving throws. When damaged you don't get an automatic failure, instead you make a Fate saving throw. Rolls of 20+ mean you start your next turn at 1 HP.
5. Saving throws: Classes that gain Con or Str now have Brawn. Classes that gain Str and Con get Brawn and Fate.
6. Proficiency times per long rest, you can roll a fate saving throw in place of a failed saving throw. If it succeeds, some external bit of luck saved your bacon.
7. Fate checks are used when luck would determine the result of something. Gambling, who is hit by an arrow or trap, etc.

Brawn and Fate are now both pretty decent attributes.

...

If you want to tweak the importance of Dex a bit, you could have medium armor grant 1/2 dex bonus (rounded up, max 2). So in medium armor, 12 dex and 16 dex are the break points; 16 dex is a bit high to invest in for most PCs.

Other tweaks can include
1. Make mage armor be medium armor. Now each point of dex doesn't add to AC.
2. Make the shield spell be a shield: it doesn't add to shields.
3. Boost monster ATK in general. Higher ATK makes AC matter less.
4. Have monsters with melee attacks generally attack the melee front line, not go after soft underbelly.

[rel]

I like the con change.
May I suggest you further differentiate the classes with more variations on bonus HP per level.

I think back line characters like wizards would be more balanced with only a +1 bonus per level for example.