Dungeons & Dragons: The One Stat That You Must Never Dump

Six core attributes are taken into consideration when you create your Dungeons and Dragons character: strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, and construction. While all these attributes are important, many times players dump one of the stats to boost another they feel is core to their character’s design. As a whole, dumping is okay and acceptable, but there is one stat players must never dump, and that is constitution (CON). 

Constitution has to do with how much a character’s physical body can take. It has to do with endurance and durability, and it is a stat that every character needs to have a decent score in. Constitution may not have specific skills attached to it as we see with other stats, but it deals with how the character can cope with things like exhausting weather, extended running, poisoning, alcohol consumption, overeating, starvation, etc.  Beyond the physical body, the constitution stat also affects the mental clarity of characters, and this is why spell casters make CON checks to ensure concentration while casting spells. 

Another important reason not to dump CON has to do with a character’s available pool of hit points. With each level a player reaches, the player will have the option to increase their hit points by rolling the dice for the class they belong to and adding their CON modifier to the results. When a CON modifier is positive, even low die rolls can result in at least two new hit points.

This stat should never be dumped and even though it doesn’t have to be a character’s highest stat, it most certainly should be the second or third.