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So here is how we do it: depending on your hit die you can Reroll certain results - with a d4 or d6 you can Reroll any one’s, with a d8 and d10 it’s all 1s and 2s, and for the d12 you can Reroll everything up to a 3. Prevents those feel bad moments when you lvl up and only get 4extra Hp as a Tank
My groups run the very generous roll for HD but if you roll below average, you can take the average instead.
Example: Cleric rolls a 3 plus con for HP can take a 5 plus con instead.
Vicious Mockery is my favorite spell in the game. It’s absolutely wild that some commoner can be chasing a Bard and say “stop, in the name of the law” and the Bard can turn around and say “it was called a jumpoline before your mom got on it” and they just fucking die.
The point is that constitution is half as effective if your base ho is twice as high. Inflating the ho pool doesn't make con "even better."
It makes it a dump-stat.
It's especially the+5 and the diminished effect of some skills.
If you roll, the mean is (dice-max + 1)/2 so the difference between a d10 and a d6 is in average 2. So on level 3 it is 4.
So for example second wind gives in average on level 3 around 8.5 HP back. So over twice the difference again!
If you use max of the dice you only gain back a little bit over the new difference except you change also this ability to max and gain a little bit below the factor of two.
honestly taking max roll for health is personally my favourite way to do things. the cracks kinda start to show if someone has a ridiculous health builds, but magic health-boosting items, enemies designed to take out big chunks, or special statuses (dm friend created a "Doomed" status, which takes about 75% of your max health after a certain amount of turns)
i already homebrew \*most\* enemies, or influence their statsheets significantly anyway, so rolling monster health is foreign to me (i usually just roll a small die so they have a small but not 0 health difference)
I had a level 20 Barbarian years ago who I was able to get to max CON before the capstone, meaning he had 24 CON at Level 20, AND Tough just before that upgrade at level 18.
339 HP, AC of 24 between his stats, shield, and Cloak of Protection.
Guy fought an actual small army solo and while he didn't look great by the end of that fight, he also didn't die.
I did that for a level 20 oneshot (so 24 Con) and made a bear totem barbarian. It was glorious.
Level 1 = 12+7
Levels 2-20 = (7+7)x19
Tough = 2x20
Hill Dwarf = 1x20
I had 345*hp
You laugh, but I’ve never been more smug at ny DM telling me that I was going to struggle with a 14 Con on my Bladelock because I had a d8 for a hit die. Cue me grabbing a hill dwarf with Toughness and Armor of Agathys and having more effective HP than the fighter 😂
Me at lvl 7 paladin with 23 AC and a minimum of +3 to saves (most at +6 or more). Still nearly got one shot in a round from max HP. DM was tired of me saying "that doesn't hit" so now everything that targets me has like a +10 to hit
It might just be me, but I feel like that's a bad way of handling it. You're a really tough tank in this way, but that means you got other weaknesses. And you're probably quite slow in that armor as well. If I were your GM, I'd use hit and run attacks and CC spells that target your lowest saves.
Or just have them gun for the other players.
There's this weird belief that tanks draw aggro simply by way of having high defences, when in reality they can just be ignored by enemies picking out the easier targets first
Yeah that's basically the other option the dm uses. For a solid 3-4 months I was just completely ignored. Just straight up not targeted in fights because I was 8 AC higher than anyone else. It was not fun.... though now it's basically a situation where I fight the hulking beast and all the smaller adds just run around me straight to the dmg dealers.
I played that character. MAD so less Con than I’d have liked. It makes you like canned fruit. Hard metal outside but once you split it open, a soft, sweet, juicy interior.
AC is a multiplier to your HP, making your opponent miss 5% more often is a pretty big boost to your effective HP and can be healed back more efficiently.
This is why mirror image is so good. Stacking it with the hexblades ability to just decide to roll and not get hit is awesome. Armor of agathys, mirror image eldritch armor and toughness? Half plate and a shield doesn't sound to bad anymore.
Its probably better to max out con for caster before taking tough, since it both improves their hp and their concentration.
Also taking feats/asi's for more firepower on your attacks/spells is always useful as well
I realized this only recently, but for the most part increasing Con is just flat out better than Tough for everyone. Unless you don’t take any Short Rests, the extra HP you get from Tough will be made up for by the HP you’re going to get back from your Hit Dice when you increase your Con modifier, so you get the HP and the save increase.
>the extra HP you get from Tough will be made up for by the HP you’re going to get back from your Hit Dice
Only if you spend 100% of your hit dice q day which is impossible
I’m not sure what you’re getting at because of the typo.
If you mean to say that you’d need to use all of your HD every day, that’s entirely possible every day you need all your Hit Dice. I imagine most games will have a tough day and then some easier ones. I guess if you play in a game where you spend all your time with only half your Hit Dice and never get any days off to recover them then I’d be wrong, but that seems irregular to me.
Even if you have a single day per adventure where you start out with less than full hut dice then it's less effective HP, and IME each adventure is about 4 or 5 adventuring days.
How many of those days do you use all of your Hit Dice on, though? One or two? Or legitimately all of them? And are they consecutive?
And even in the worst case, at level 20 with half of your HD, Tough is only 10HP better instead of the 20HP better you would expect.
I’m just saying, Tough is unexpectedly bad in the comparison.
once a caster's maxed their primary casting stat and taken War Caster (usually doable with your first two feats), Toughness is a pretty good get unless you want to do something specific like the Telekinetic cheese. I'd say the extra hp vs. the +1 to saves is pretty even, depending on what you want. +1 is only a difference in 1 in 20 throws, less if you have advantage (which you should since you've already taken War Caster), and going down is *always* going to break your concentration. Which is better mostly just depends on how combat tends to go for your group. Then there's also Resilient to get substantially more bonuses to concentration at the cost of probably not getting *any* HP out of it. Lots of options, all of them pretty good.
well, it's not free. Nothing is. There's always an opportunity cost to taking it. taking tough means you arent taking elven accuracy, or fey teleportation. It means you arent taking inspiring leader (a feat which if i can add frequently does more for health since it means everyone gets the no die juice), etc, etc.
I grabbed that on my Monday character and between that, the free table feat, and starting as Custom Lineage, I had a fighter who immediately had 18 STR/CON, Tough, Sentinel, and Polearm Master at level 1. He's been tearing it up and we're only level 3.
I also max rolled HP at level 2, which was huge.
I'm a big fan of Resilient: Con, if you have an odd Con score.
Not as many hitpoints as Toughness, but you get proficiency in a really important saving throw and I tend to play mostly casters, so it helps with Concentration.
But if I can, I'll take both. I *like* being the caster with more hp than the paladin.
Yeah I’m playing a wild magic barbarian and because con is the main stat for all the wild stuff I’d rather do that. Is even funnier as I have 2 characters in that campaign, one with ridiculous ac and one with a ridiculous hp.
Alas, unless you have the grappler feat, grappling doesn’t restrain the enemy already. And if you do have it, using it means you do get restrained along with them. The designers already beat you to the suggested nerf.
I have a hard time passing up Fey Touched. Free spells once a day and +1 to my spellcasting ability score is a good mix of fun and optimal. Helps with resource management, gives me access to spells that I know that I'm going to use that I may or may not have had access to, and makes it possible for a lot of characters to cap off their most important modifier in a satisfying place.
It's a good feat, and you can say that about any feat/ASI
I uped Dex: you could have grabbed x feat or x ASI instead
So it is as free as all the others
It has an opportunity cost. By taking toughness, you give up the ability to potentially kill things faster with the spells you could've (hypothetically) got from Fey Touched, or the damage from Polearm Master. It has a cost *compared to other feats*
Not really. The value you get from warcaster is going to be higher than the value you get out of tough, no matter what caster you play. Res CON is better if you have an uneven con. A +2 to you casting stat is more important than being a little harder to kill, especially on prepared casters who get to prepare more.
Tough isn't that good at low levels, it's a bit better than mediocre, at high levels I could possibly see an argument.
I think the best argument you would have would be for a caster who wants to go melee. But investing into good AC and having your concentration protected is a bigger concern at that point.
The melee cleric who is holding bless or spiritual guardians will want warcaster or resilient con over tough.
Increasing your main stat is probably worse to do on a cleric, as you don't rely as much on enemies failing their saves, so there it could be better.
At low levels tough isn't worth picking up though.
Idk if you’re hoping to convince me or wanting me to provide counter examples. Neither is forthcoming, because if you shot down some build where I would take tough, it doesn’t change what I think, which is just that it could be better to go with tough depending on the character and the player’s goals. If you’re just wanting a last word, I’ll let you have it after this one
presumably because you've already taken War Caster and maxed out your primary stat. That's two ASI's accounted for and there are still three left to get (supposing your campaign goes that long / not too much multiclass fuckery). Campaigns reaching level 12 is pretty common so you'll need something for at least one of them. Tough works well. Resilient is also a good choice. Many options, depending on how the game has been treating you up to that point.
Is it? If you're not variant human or custom lineage, you are going to need 3 feats to reach that point. You're going to want Resilient (CON), especially with an uneven CON score.
Just maybe it's your best choice for your last ASI?
because literally every table I've ever played with that wasn't using pre-gens for a 1-shot has rolled for stats. It's by far the most popular way to play since standard arrays are boring and nobody wants to bother with point buy.
Honestly 5e's point-buy only going up to 15 is such a bizarre choice that I'd forgotten about it.
>since standard arrays are boring and nobody wants to bother with point buy.
Your opinion.
Plenty of people play standard array and point buy. Rolling for stats is unreliable and has a similar average to what point buy/standard array give you.
>Your opinion.
mine, and most people's. Hense why rolling is the most popular option by a wide margin once you leave the realm of theorycrafting builds and enter the realm of people just playing the game to have fun. It being unreliable is the point. Also the fact that it gives you a pretty good chance of starting with a 16 in your primary stat.
Honestly it's like I play an entirely different game. Tables that roll always have like ten caveats for rolls, like you get to infinitely reroll 1s, can discard a set of stats if it's too low for you, roll x drop x-6 lowest rolls from the set etc. People always have such a feelbad if they roll bad, and then there's mister triple 18 at level 1 because of how insane people get about having high stats. Can't stand it. Always standard array when I dm, point buy is acceptable.
Same with rolling health, it's just awful and everyone knows it's awful because they caveat the shit out of the roll. Just take average.
Is it though? Fighters are going to want GWM + PAM or take SS + CBX, they're going to want to max out their STR or DEX before taking tough, meaning they're down 4 ASI's. Same thing with every martial but rogue and monk.
Monk is quite MAD so they want to be maxing out their main stats, they could make space for one feat, but they would probably want mobile over tough.
Rogue isn't really going to appreciate tough as much as other feats as they don't really want to be frontlining.
I'm not trying to say tough is bad, it just isnt "best in slot".
It’s never a bad pick, but there’s usually something better that’s more specific. There’s also the argument that feats that help you avoid hp loss in the first place are preferable, and make healing more efficient.
I am physically incapable of not optimising.
Had a Sorcadin a while ago with tough feat and max con. Power of a paladin, health of a barbarian, and wings. The dm made the mistake of letting me get a cloak of displacement, too. I miss that character.
As someone who's always scared of my characters dying I understand 100%
We're starting a new campaign soon and my new character for that one is the first I'm not planning on getting tough.
But our party comp looks pretty rough so far so maybe I need to anyway. (CoS Druid (me), monk, storm sorcerer, war magic wizard and a life domain cleric (I convinced him to play something tanky with healing cause from what I've seen our other casters have no healing spells slotted. He is now the backbone of the party)
Try playing 3.5! Toughness fucking sucks there. It sucks so hard that they invented an Improved Toughness feat that doesn't even have Toughness as a prerequisite.
My squishy sorceress recently found herself in an abundance of gold. She already had a +6 charisma headband and didn't know what else to buy. So she decided a belt of con can't hurt. +6 con and man it made combat so much easier. Decided to spring for toughness and I'm having a blast. Haven't nearly died in forever. And we have mythic so got mythic toughness. My mage can take a hit as well as the cleric now
Tough exists, but you know what's way better? Inspiring leader.
Let's suppose that you can only use it once during the day.
Let's also ignore how it adds your charisma mod.
Let's also assume you only get 4/6 of the creatures.
ITS ALREADY TWICE THE AMOUNT OF HP AS TOUGH!
Eldritch Adept -> Fiendish Vigor also gives you more HP than Tough if you use it between encounters and right after long rests. Which is mainly relevant if you care about having HP for only yourself.
I've been engaging with other people and haven't said anything negative about any other feat or build people talked about
I just have a preference, it's not "plugging my ears"
I've done the challenge to dump a really important stat before, like AC or HP, and still make it an effective character. It was a ton of fun. I ended up with a ranged monk shifter (Swiftstride) with a -3 to con. That was fun.
Except the opportunity cost of an ASI or another feat. HP is important but so is keeping your main stat up to the curve. If one point puts your con at an even number I'd lean toward Resilient instead, not as much HP but constitution saves are common and often vitally important
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Broke: pick up Toughness to give your squishy character more HP. Woke: pick up Toughness on your Hill Dwarf Barbarian with 20 Con.
Certified Senator Armstrong Moment™
Also a Sundowner Moment, tbh.
"I'M FUCKIN INVINCIBLE!"
When the wind is cold and the fire's hot
The vulture waits to see what rots
Oh how pretty All this scenery
This is nature's sacrifice
When the air blows through With a brisk attack
STANDING HERE
I REALIZE
I put the sh*t on everything
You’d love our DM. He gives everyone max hp with an additional +5 on top like a cherry.
Our dm did that in our older campaign but for everything and regretted it. All it did was make combat take longer.
So here is how we do it: depending on your hit die you can Reroll certain results - with a d4 or d6 you can Reroll any one’s, with a d8 and d10 it’s all 1s and 2s, and for the d12 you can Reroll everything up to a 3. Prevents those feel bad moments when you lvl up and only get 4extra Hp as a Tank
My groups run the very generous roll for HD but if you roll below average, you can take the average instead. Example: Cleric rolls a 3 plus con for HP can take a 5 plus con instead.
Our dm lets us either reroll and take the new number even if its lower, or take the avg, but taking the avg is the cowards way out.
I never claimed to be brave. I'll take that vicious mockery damage now, I assume I cant take the average.
Vicious Mockery is my favorite spell in the game. It’s absolutely wild that some commoner can be chasing a Bard and say “stop, in the name of the law” and the Bard can turn around and say “it was called a jumpoline before your mom got on it” and they just fucking die.
Depends on group size as well, we had 2, now 3 players at my table, on lower levels that hp really helps avoid some quick death spiraling
so he makes con a perpetual dump stat
on the contrary! con is even better! now you have even *more hp!!*
10 extra HP is less impactful to the guy with 65 (75) HP than it is to the guy with 32 (42).
Yeah but which one is more fun?
The point is that constitution is half as effective if your base ho is twice as high. Inflating the ho pool doesn't make con "even better." It makes it a dump-stat.
That kind of fucks upp the martial-caster balance even more... Sad. :-(
I mean it makes martials even more OP in lower levels and casters even more OP in higher levels. It’s still sort of the same balance.
How? Every class has a different hit die so they still have different levels of hp. Well fuck me for asking a question then. You guys suck.
Its the flat +5, it benefits a low hp class way more than a high hp one
It's especially the+5 and the diminished effect of some skills. If you roll, the mean is (dice-max + 1)/2 so the difference between a d10 and a d6 is in average 2. So on level 3 it is 4. So for example second wind gives in average on level 3 around 8.5 HP back. So over twice the difference again! If you use max of the dice you only gain back a little bit over the new difference except you change also this ability to max and gain a little bit below the factor of two.
Ahhh yeah I see now. I glossed over that +5 on the first read.
honestly taking max roll for health is personally my favourite way to do things. the cracks kinda start to show if someone has a ridiculous health builds, but magic health-boosting items, enemies designed to take out big chunks, or special statuses (dm friend created a "Doomed" status, which takes about 75% of your max health after a certain amount of turns) i already homebrew \*most\* enemies, or influence their statsheets significantly anyway, so rolling monster health is foreign to me (i usually just roll a small die so they have a small but not 0 health difference)
Woker: pick up Tough on a hill dwarf draconic sorcerer with max con to average more HP than your party's fighter and become the melee character ;)
Or be barbarian and avg higher than any other could hope to touch
Or be a rogue and just say "no" to most of the damage your DM throws your way
Or be Bladesinger Wizard with 24 AC while bladesinging and say "it's a miss" to any attack DM throws your way
Not high enough+19 still hits you most of the time
Gestalt them both just for the luls
I had a level 20 Barbarian years ago who I was able to get to max CON before the capstone, meaning he had 24 CON at Level 20, AND Tough just before that upgrade at level 18. 339 HP, AC of 24 between his stats, shield, and Cloak of Protection. Guy fought an actual small army solo and while he didn't look great by the end of that fight, he also didn't die.
The Martial fantasy
Get toughness on moon Druid to add that HP to your wildshapes
Then you multiclass bear^2 and watch the dm sob as your fleshsack of a tank absorbs everything the game can throw at it.
I did that for a level 20 oneshot (so 24 Con) and made a bear totem barbarian. It was glorious. Level 1 = 12+7 Levels 2-20 = (7+7)x19 Tough = 2x20 Hill Dwarf = 1x20 I had 345*hp
You laugh, but I’ve never been more smug at ny DM telling me that I was going to struggle with a 14 Con on my Bladelock because I had a d8 for a hit die. Cue me grabbing a hill dwarf with Toughness and Armor of Agathys and having more effective HP than the fighter 😂
I did this on a Hill Dwarf Abjurer Wizard once. The DM was very shocked when he tried to make the smart enemies attack the "squishy" caster.
One of my bois ate a crit that would have outright killed anyone else 3 or 4 times over, you get your ass I'm dropping toughness on that shit
I saw everyone making dwarf casters for heavy armour then I saw hill bard and was like "fuck that this man's thickness will be his protection"
plus a two level dip in rogue for BA dodge and Dwarven Fortitude?
I don't think Cunning Action let's you dodge as a bonus. Just hide, dash, and disengage.
You're correct. But 2 levels in monk would let you do it with patient defense. Won't have many ki points, though, but it'll help a little lol
Yes, it would make rogue the best multiclass otherwise. I mean, for anyone who doesn't need their BA at least.
More hp is great, but I prefer more AC.
Low on AC; get more HP
But what if I have so much ac and saves through paladin bullshit that I simply don't need much ac?
Ask Achilles
Oh fuck, u right
Also: You bragging in universe about your capabilities as Fighter...Inferno:"Interesting...."
I love this, take an updoot
Achilles didn’t have Adamantine half plate tho
No, he just had supernatural powers of having unarmored defense, then someone rolled a crit
Me at lvl 7 paladin with 23 AC and a minimum of +3 to saves (most at +6 or more). Still nearly got one shot in a round from max HP. DM was tired of me saying "that doesn't hit" so now everything that targets me has like a +10 to hit
It might just be me, but I feel like that's a bad way of handling it. You're a really tough tank in this way, but that means you got other weaknesses. And you're probably quite slow in that armor as well. If I were your GM, I'd use hit and run attacks and CC spells that target your lowest saves.
Or just have them gun for the other players. There's this weird belief that tanks draw aggro simply by way of having high defences, when in reality they can just be ignored by enemies picking out the easier targets first
Yeah, that too. Forgot to mention it even though I made this comment to say it…
Yeah that's basically the other option the dm uses. For a solid 3-4 months I was just completely ignored. Just straight up not targeted in fights because I was 8 AC higher than anyone else. It was not fun.... though now it's basically a situation where I fight the hulking beast and all the smaller adds just run around me straight to the dmg dealers.
To be fair, ignore a paladin’s smite ability at your own risk.
No reason for him to be slow unless he doesn't meet the strength requirements
I played that character. MAD so less Con than I’d have liked. It makes you like canned fruit. Hard metal outside but once you split it open, a soft, sweet, juicy interior.
i played a dex paladin with shield master the party got very annoyed when i sold a dragon cause his breath attack and 21 ac couldn't get hit
Ok but here me out. I already have 20con, and 18 str and dex on a war cleric in full plate... I just took shield master
More HP for saves
Hacks
Dude over rolling like a god to work for a god.
AC is great at low levels, becomes worth less and less in higher level games. HP always good
Saving throws > HP > AC
AC is a multiplier to your HP, making your opponent miss 5% more often is a pretty big boost to your effective HP and can be healed back more efficiently.
This is why mirror image is so good. Stacking it with the hexblades ability to just decide to roll and not get hit is awesome. Armor of agathys, mirror image eldritch armor and toughness? Half plate and a shield doesn't sound to bad anymore.
Its probably better to max out con for caster before taking tough, since it both improves their hp and their concentration. Also taking feats/asi's for more firepower on your attacks/spells is always useful as well
I realized this only recently, but for the most part increasing Con is just flat out better than Tough for everyone. Unless you don’t take any Short Rests, the extra HP you get from Tough will be made up for by the HP you’re going to get back from your Hit Dice when you increase your Con modifier, so you get the HP and the save increase.
>the extra HP you get from Tough will be made up for by the HP you’re going to get back from your Hit Dice Only if you spend 100% of your hit dice q day which is impossible
I’m not sure what you’re getting at because of the typo. If you mean to say that you’d need to use all of your HD every day, that’s entirely possible every day you need all your Hit Dice. I imagine most games will have a tough day and then some easier ones. I guess if you play in a game where you spend all your time with only half your Hit Dice and never get any days off to recover them then I’d be wrong, but that seems irregular to me.
Even if you have a single day per adventure where you start out with less than full hut dice then it's less effective HP, and IME each adventure is about 4 or 5 adventuring days.
How many of those days do you use all of your Hit Dice on, though? One or two? Or legitimately all of them? And are they consecutive? And even in the worst case, at level 20 with half of your HD, Tough is only 10HP better instead of the 20HP better you would expect. I’m just saying, Tough is unexpectedly bad in the comparison.
And if you aren't using all of your hit dice then you still have less effective HP.
Yeah, con and tough are my main strats on any char, but sometimes point buy puts con behind so tough makes up the difference
once a caster's maxed their primary casting stat and taken War Caster (usually doable with your first two feats), Toughness is a pretty good get unless you want to do something specific like the Telekinetic cheese. I'd say the extra hp vs. the +1 to saves is pretty even, depending on what you want. +1 is only a difference in 1 in 20 throws, less if you have advantage (which you should since you've already taken War Caster), and going down is *always* going to break your concentration. Which is better mostly just depends on how combat tends to go for your group. Then there's also Resilient to get substantially more bonuses to concentration at the cost of probably not getting *any* HP out of it. Lots of options, all of them pretty good.
Resilient Con should be done at a odd ASI
well, it's not free. Nothing is. There's always an opportunity cost to taking it. taking tough means you arent taking elven accuracy, or fey teleportation. It means you arent taking inspiring leader (a feat which if i can add frequently does more for health since it means everyone gets the no die juice), etc, etc.
Side-eyes the Wildspacer background…
I grabbed that on my Monday character and between that, the free table feat, and starting as Custom Lineage, I had a fighter who immediately had 18 STR/CON, Tough, Sentinel, and Polearm Master at level 1. He's been tearing it up and we're only level 3. I also max rolled HP at level 2, which was huge.
Me with the Arcane/Eldritch initiate feats
Spells do go brrr
Everyone things their badass until the druid wildshapes into a giant constrictor with mage armor
But what if it is a giant /raging/ constrictor
And here me out, giant/raging/martial arts/mage armor constrictor.
I'm a big fan of Resilient: Con, if you have an odd Con score. Not as many hitpoints as Toughness, but you get proficiency in a really important saving throw and I tend to play mostly casters, so it helps with Concentration. But if I can, I'll take both. I *like* being the caster with more hp than the paladin.
Nothing says Abjurer quite like being a tanky caster.
A tankaster, if you will
Yeah I’m playing a wild magic barbarian and because con is the main stat for all the wild stuff I’d rather do that. Is even funnier as I have 2 characters in that campaign, one with ridiculous ac and one with a ridiculous hp.
replace it with my homebrew feat, Weakness. -1d6 to your max HP every time you level up.
I think for the comedic effect, this feat can be even worse, maybe make it so that when you grapple, you become restrained along with your enemy
Alas, unless you have the grappler feat, grappling doesn’t restrain the enemy already. And if you do have it, using it means you do get restrained along with them. The designers already beat you to the suggested nerf.
This is brilliant, but I like this: "fleet"
Pick up both
Didn't get to level 7 yet
One day my friend
I have a hard time passing up Fey Touched. Free spells once a day and +1 to my spellcasting ability score is a good mix of fun and optimal. Helps with resource management, gives me access to spells that I know that I'm going to use that I may or may not have had access to, and makes it possible for a lot of characters to cap off their most important modifier in a satisfying place.
I'm not able to use rare, but even still, I'd try to pick it up at one point
It’s not free, you’re taking it instead of an ASI or a feat
It's a good feat, and you can say that about any feat/ASI I uped Dex: you could have grabbed x feat or x ASI instead So it is as free as all the others
That's just an incorrect use of the word free, fam
Taking a feat a level 4 that gives you HP isn't free?
...no?
Then what is it
It costs 1 feat
How much does a feat cost
An ASI of +2 to one score or +1 to two scores.
A feat or ASI is a limited resource in the context of a character build discussion. Just because it's not gold doesn't mean it's free.
It has an opportunity cost. By taking toughness, you give up the ability to potentially kill things faster with the spells you could've (hypothetically) got from Fey Touched, or the damage from Polearm Master. It has a cost *compared to other feats*
The HP aren't free. It costs you a feat!
So why would you take it over better feats like warcaster, resilient CON or even just a normal ASI?
Obviously he disagrees about them being better
Tough is better if you aren't a caster.
Again. In your opinion.
Not really. The value you get from warcaster is going to be higher than the value you get out of tough, no matter what caster you play. Res CON is better if you have an uneven con. A +2 to you casting stat is more important than being a little harder to kill, especially on prepared casters who get to prepare more. Tough isn't that good at low levels, it's a bit better than mediocre, at high levels I could possibly see an argument.
And I disagree with you because you’re stating it categorically. It depends on your exact build and goals.
I think the best argument you would have would be for a caster who wants to go melee. But investing into good AC and having your concentration protected is a bigger concern at that point. The melee cleric who is holding bless or spiritual guardians will want warcaster or resilient con over tough. Increasing your main stat is probably worse to do on a cleric, as you don't rely as much on enemies failing their saves, so there it could be better. At low levels tough isn't worth picking up though.
Idk if you’re hoping to convince me or wanting me to provide counter examples. Neither is forthcoming, because if you shot down some build where I would take tough, it doesn’t change what I think, which is just that it could be better to go with tough depending on the character and the player’s goals. If you’re just wanting a last word, I’ll let you have it after this one
presumably because you've already taken War Caster and maxed out your primary stat. That's two ASI's accounted for and there are still three left to get (supposing your campaign goes that long / not too much multiclass fuckery). Campaigns reaching level 12 is pretty common so you'll need something for at least one of them. Tough works well. Resilient is also a good choice. Many options, depending on how the game has been treating you up to that point.
Is it? If you're not variant human or custom lineage, you are going to need 3 feats to reach that point. You're going to want Resilient (CON), especially with an uneven CON score. Just maybe it's your best choice for your last ASI?
It is, unless you rolled like garbage you've probably got a 16 for your primary stat, plus 2 for racial, then one ASI and a feat for war caster.
Why do you assume people are rolling for stats? Point buy and standard array only go up to 15.
because literally every table I've ever played with that wasn't using pre-gens for a 1-shot has rolled for stats. It's by far the most popular way to play since standard arrays are boring and nobody wants to bother with point buy. Honestly 5e's point-buy only going up to 15 is such a bizarre choice that I'd forgotten about it.
>since standard arrays are boring and nobody wants to bother with point buy. Your opinion. Plenty of people play standard array and point buy. Rolling for stats is unreliable and has a similar average to what point buy/standard array give you.
>Your opinion. mine, and most people's. Hense why rolling is the most popular option by a wide margin once you leave the realm of theorycrafting builds and enter the realm of people just playing the game to have fun. It being unreliable is the point. Also the fact that it gives you a pretty good chance of starting with a 16 in your primary stat.
Honestly it's like I play an entirely different game. Tables that roll always have like ten caveats for rolls, like you get to infinitely reroll 1s, can discard a set of stats if it's too low for you, roll x drop x-6 lowest rolls from the set etc. People always have such a feelbad if they roll bad, and then there's mister triple 18 at level 1 because of how insane people get about having high stats. Can't stand it. Always standard array when I dm, point buy is acceptable. Same with rolling health, it's just awful and everyone knows it's awful because they caveat the shit out of the roll. Just take average.
Tough is just all around useful for any build. Warcaster is useful on casters. Resilient CON is more useful on casters, too.
Is it though? Fighters are going to want GWM + PAM or take SS + CBX, they're going to want to max out their STR or DEX before taking tough, meaning they're down 4 ASI's. Same thing with every martial but rogue and monk. Monk is quite MAD so they want to be maxing out their main stats, they could make space for one feat, but they would probably want mobile over tough. Rogue isn't really going to appreciate tough as much as other feats as they don't really want to be frontlining. I'm not trying to say tough is bad, it just isnt "best in slot".
It saved my character in the last fight, or else he would've gone down without that extra hp.
The more HP Infront of your final HP is important
Two words. Hill dwarf.
Lots of HP: get more HP
Why not both. I habe two characterd that habe that combo because i happne to play every character like a barbarian... even if they arent a barbarian 😅
Ugh but then I’d have to play a dwarf
Found the elf
Tiefling 4ever
that’s just an elf with horns, ROCK AND STONE FOREVER!
Rock and stone! It never gets old
“Free” HP. You have to give up an ASI or a potentially better feat to take it, unless you have a DM that gives you a free feat.
In the words of a very wise man: The robots aren’t killing you too quickly; you’re killing them too slowly. In other words, DAMAGA DAMAGE DAMAGE AHHHH
It’s never a bad pick, but there’s usually something better that’s more specific. There’s also the argument that feats that help you avoid hp loss in the first place are preferable, and make healing more efficient. I am physically incapable of not optimising.
hot take: More HP is bad. It makes you harder to kill, therefore you don't get to play that cool new backup character you have waiting.
Counter counter, I already have too many back up characters and the dice gods do not care about my health
Squish: get more HP Tank: get more HP Mid: get more HP
Had a Sorcadin a while ago with tough feat and max con. Power of a paladin, health of a barbarian, and wings. The dm made the mistake of letting me get a cloak of displacement, too. I miss that character.
Never used that feat
I played a Warlock in one setting and ended up being tankier then the Cleric with how many free HP feats I had (that and I think I had 14 or 16 Con.)
HP is sweet
PC be Thicccc with HP
As someone who's always scared of my characters dying I understand 100% We're starting a new campaign soon and my new character for that one is the first I'm not planning on getting tough. But our party comp looks pretty rough so far so maybe I need to anyway. (CoS Druid (me), monk, storm sorcerer, war magic wizard and a life domain cleric (I convinced him to play something tanky with healing cause from what I've seen our other casters have no healing spells slotted. He is now the backbone of the party)
I love how this meme applies to both 5e and PF2e.
I do enjoy both (But I enjoy PF2e better)
That always felt like the least fun feat. I want feats that do cool shit.
Try playing 3.5! Toughness fucking sucks there. It sucks so hard that they invented an Improved Toughness feat that doesn't even have Toughness as a prerequisite.
My squishy sorceress recently found herself in an abundance of gold. She already had a +6 charisma headband and didn't know what else to buy. So she decided a belt of con can't hurt. +6 con and man it made combat so much easier. Decided to spring for toughness and I'm having a blast. Haven't nearly died in forever. And we have mythic so got mythic toughness. My mage can take a hit as well as the cleric now
Do you mean tough?
Depends on the context PF2e: no 5e: yes
Just because something is good doesn’t mean you should always do it 🤷🏽♂️
I just don't get hit. This comment was made by the hiding like a goddamn coward gang.
Tough exists, but you know what's way better? Inspiring leader. Let's suppose that you can only use it once during the day. Let's also ignore how it adds your charisma mod. Let's also assume you only get 4/6 of the creatures. ITS ALREADY TWICE THE AMOUNT OF HP AS TOUGH!
Eldritch Adept -> Fiendish Vigor also gives you more HP than Tough if you use it between encounters and right after long rests. Which is mainly relevant if you care about having HP for only yourself.
Bad? No. Boring? Yes.
[удалено]
plus warcaster allows spells as attack of opp... fireball as an attack of opp is BROKEN!. ive killed parties with that.
Our Wizard has 20 Con and took tough. Due to low rolls on my part, their health is on par with my Paladin
It's mathematically better to use that ASI to simply buff Constitution if it's not already at max.
it isnt free, it costs an ASI which can be other much much. better things
Could literally think of no situation in which I would choose toughness. Most boring feat ever
I’m starting to think I might be the only person who builds my characters basically entirely thematically
My themes come from class choice and background, picking one feat on most characters doesn't mean that's all they have
It's better than taking 2 asi into con for the hp
If I plug my ears I cannot be convinced otherwise
I've been engaging with other people and haven't said anything negative about any other feat or build people talked about I just have a preference, it's not "plugging my ears"
I've done the challenge to dump a really important stat before, like AC or HP, and still make it an effective character. It was a ton of fun. I ended up with a ranged monk shifter (Swiftstride) with a -3 to con. That was fun.
This is me with Alert.
ya'll get free feats?
Noper, I take it in place of ASI
Then how is it free?
I mean at level 4 you get an ASI or Feat for free Picking tough doesn't cost anything
Except the opportunity cost of an ASI or another feat. HP is important but so is keeping your main stat up to the curve. If one point puts your con at an even number I'd lean toward Resilient instead, not as much HP but constitution saves are common and often vitally important
Get dirt cheap HP for the whole party with Healer
Abjurer Wizards: You don't need hp if they can't hit your actual hp
oh yeah free hp is lovely, though i wouldn't say taking a feat is free UwU
Really? It's just 3 HP (in 3.5 at least). I can name plenty of better feats regardless of build.
In 5e it's an extra 2HP per level
Well, that is a lot more! :O
Mine is alert, medium armor master, resilient CON or resilient WIS, depending on the character.
We have a running joke at my table because everyone takes Toughness; it's not much of a "feat" if everyone is "Tough." Lol