Dex vs. Con: Which is a Better Defense? | Pathfinder 2e

hello it is 1dm here today i'm going to ask a pretty fundamental question about pathfinder 2e's mechanics which is a better defense dexterity or constitution obviously the answer is that you need both stats they're each used for their own types of saving throw between reflex and fortitude both of which are about equal in importance dexterity affects your armor class while constitution increases your maximum hit points both are important defensive stats but if you have to pick between the two which is better this might seem like a pretty basic question but to answer to detail we're going to need a pretty detailed analysis and a good chunk of math that's right folks this is another math video to start this comparison let's assume a basic scenario your character has to choose between a boost of constitution or dexterity each stat is either below 18 or an odd number above 18 so that applying a boost will increase your modifier remember boosts to stats over 18 only increase them by one let's also assume that your current dexterity modifier is lower than your armor's dexcap so boosting it would increase your ac but that's all we need to assume from here on i'll be comparing the two by leaving all other variables free at this point it's important that i spell out a concept that might not be very intuitive take a character with 100 hit points if a creature hits them for an average of 10 damage it will take 10 hits to down them if the character gains 10 maximum hit points it will take the same attacker 11 hits at 10 average damage to down them a 10 increase if the character instead reduces their average damage taken by 10 percent they'll now be hit for 9 damage on average it will take the attacker 11.11 hits to down them this is an 11.11 increase i'll call that number the increase in effective hit points or ehp reducing your damage taken by x percent increases your effective hit points by one over one minus x so a 10 reduction increases effective hit points by 11.1 percent a 20 reduction gives a 25 increase or 50 reduction has doubled your ehp for the rest of the video i'll be concerned with this question how much does an increase to dexterity increase your effective hit points and is that more than constitution so now we get to the crunchy part how does an increased dexterity affect your ehp to find this i'm going to use table 2-9 from the game mastery guide giving strike attack bonuses for monsters i'll compare these attacks to possible armor values for player characters to find how much damage would be reduced by having plus one to their ac at this point i must acknowledge that my code is far more complicated than it had to be it's honestly pretty silly how much faster i could have done this but regardless it got results for characters of middling ac versus creatures of their level with moderate attack bonuses plus one to ac will generally give 11 to 13 percent more ehp it's less effective the higher the enemy's attack bonuses the percentage varies by a couple points for characters of low or high ac low ac characters actually get less benefit more like 9 to 10 percent high ac characters benefits are a bit more erratic but similar to or higher than moderate ac characters i'd compared to creatures of further variance and level and attack bonus but to be honest the numbers get less consistent and it's pretty hard to draw useful conclusions but we do have some very useful information here plus one ac will increase ehb by 11 as a very rough ballpark ac increases are less effective when your ac is low or the enemy's attack modifier is high ac increases are more effective against weaker enemies or for higher ac characters this is a key realization ac increases are better the more of them you have but what about constitution this is a less complex calculation but still takes some thought the effective hp increase you get from increasing your constitution modifier is equal to your level divided by your current hit points for example a level 10 character with 140 hit points would gain 10 hit points from a constitution boost an increase of about 7 percent that's pretty simple so to answer the question of how much ehp you gain from constitution we just have to know your level and how many hit points you already have like ac hit points will vary by level but we can create a reasonable set of values by taking values between the lowest and highest possible hit point totals we then simply divide the level by the value and get our ehb increase from a con boost what we can see very clearly is that lower hp characters gain a larger benefit from boost to con percentage-wise this is intuitively pretty obvious but we can see here how dramatic it is characters in the bottom half of the chart which is where almost all martial characters will be never get better than a seven percent ehb increase characters in the top half will be casters or maybe squishy or marshalls like rogues or magi and could get an 11 to 13 percent increase these numbers are a bit lower than the ehp increases we saw for ac previously except for low hp characters it's very important to note though that increasing your maximum hit points increases your ehp against all damage increasing your ac only increases your ehp against attack roles against your ac it doesn't help against effects with saving throws figuring out how much damage chromosome attacks or saving throws would be pretty complicated but anecdotally attack rules account for more than half of the damage delta characters maybe 60 to 75 so it makes sense that the ehp increases from constitution should be roughly 25 to 40 percent lower than from ac in other words my conclusion here is that the two are extremely well balanced to be honest i thought i might have been able to outsmart paizo this time and find a way in which one stat is by and large better than the other but no i don't know if they did the precise math i'm doing here but they definitely thought about the difference between ac and hit points as defenses that being said i can still draw some useful conclusions and leave you with some actionable advice for building your characters recall from all this analysis that ac boosts are better for characters with high ac con boosts are better for characters with low hp so a character with high ac and hp is better served by an ac boost a character with low hp and low ac is better served by a con boost and which characters will often end up with both low ac and low hp that's right casters the sorcerer witch and wizard have the lowest hit points in the game alchemist bard druid cleric investigator and oracle come in a little bit higher all of these classes except some druids will rely heavily on their decks for ac and also have the slowest armor proficiency track of any classes in other words they're going to end up with pretty low ac for their level so these classes are the perfect candidates for focusing on constitution first and dexterity second i hope you all enjoyed this deep dive into defenses i actually have another video planned that's a wider survey of defensive mechanics in pathfinder 2e if you have any thoughts on what often gets overlooked as a defense drop them in the comments and i'll make sure to point them out if you enjoyed this video also feel free to like and subscribe or even give me money on patreon if you didn't please let me know in the comments what i could do better or what you'd like to see instead but this is 1dm out have a great day

Channel: 1dM

Views: 2,589

Rating: 4.9820628 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: -7a6UFqYhTs

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/johnnyudes]

How does the max DEX from different armor affects your conclusions (if it does)? While a high HP martial character might not benefit as much from his CON boost, it will always be useful while a boost in DEX does not necessarely mean a boost in AC due to the armor used right?

[u/Zephh]

I love your videos! This one was particularly interesting, I always felt that Dex had more of an impact, but maybe that's just skewed by me assuming that a huge portion of damage comes from Attack Rolls and attacks that target reflex saves.

Also, one defensive mechanic that I love is finding ways to apply the dazzled condition on enemies, or concealed condition on allies. The flat check is pretty brutal, and its impact can be felt a lot against big bosses.

One video suggestion that I think would fit your channel is the impact of true strike. Specially making a comparison about the options for martial classes that can power strike and stuff like that. I've ran the math on my own, as it's quite straighforward, and found it pretty lackluster due to the action cost, you're often better served by either striking -> power strike or striking thrice, I personally consider that it's mostly useful for high level caster that want to secure a hit on that high level spell slot. However, I'd love to see a more thorough analysis from you!

[u/MahjongDaily]

I figured that Con was markedly worse then Dex on low level characters, but I'm surprised that it catches up to Dex so quickly

[u/bananaphonepajamas]

Well now. That's very interesting.

[u/legend9791]

Left a subscribe. Waiting for your next video! Keep up the work! :)

[u/mizinamo]

Do you also have it written down, for those of us dinosaurs who prefer reading things ourselves rather than listening to someone reading them out loud for us on video?

[u/Human_Wizard]

So. Stack DEX on all characters?

[u/pyrocord]

Is there anyway you can take the script or slides for this video and make it a text post or Google doc or YouTube description? It would probably do a lot to help you out as well since it seems like more than one person is asking for it.

[u/ronaldsf1977]

Love your math videos! How does your analysis extend to 1st level, when many of the Boosts are taken? Due to ancestry HP, a CON increase has a markedly lower relative percentage increase to one's health. Also, I find that marginal increases in HP are less useful against higher level creatures at Level 1 - your health is so low already, that avoiding the crit or avoiding the hit is markedly better than having +1 HP.

All in all, I think it's a fun balancing question that further shows that Paizo made a fun game where there's an argument for boosting either, depending on circumstances.

Another "X factor" is that if your class gets an "Evasion" like ability that increases your regular success to a critical success at a higher level, which would make DEX or CON relatively more important because it boosts the relevant save.