Hacking 2e: Constitution

The sick man of the ability scores. It is occasionally suggested that Constitution’s role as a measurement of “physique, fitness, health, and physical resistance” is unnecessary, as it impacts only hp and some edge cases, and one could implement a distinct sub-mechanic to determine overall health.

Certainly it’s an odd ability score; unlike its siblings, it has no easily actionable interpretation. You can be strong with Strength, wise with Wisdom, or charismatic with Charisma, but you can’t be constitute with Constitution. For ability checks, you’ll end up using it for actions which push beyond the limits of normal endurance, such as holding one’s breath underwater or forced marching, but these are reactive; they determine if you don’t drown or collapse. As a result, Con checks become a new saving throw.

Still, I can’t bring myself to cut it out of the group. Sure, it represents a static attribute rather than a true ability, but it represents a personalized difference in the character that isn’t directed by class and level, which is the hallmark of ability scores. As such, I can make peace with this ability saving score throw. Instead of extricating it from the game, let’s try to improve its benefits and clean up the table.

 And what a peach of a table.

 

Column 1. Hit Point Adjustment

As per the previous tables, these bonuses should start at 13, but what is to be done about the horrid mess starting at 17? Parentheses and asterisks? These mark two high-score conditionals: warrior only bonuses and minimum die results, but the presentation issues make me want to burn both of these mechanics to the ground.

In the case of warrior-only bonuses, burning it down is exactly what I’ll do. Why do only warriors get the good bonuses to hp at such extreme levels? We want warriors to feel tougher than other classes, but this doesn’t seem the place to do it. Yet it’s the only place that it’s done. Why does the wizard with 18 in Strength or Dexterity get the full bonus, but they get shafted in the Con table? It’s a silly exception; if the not-warrior has invested one of their rare high results in Constitution of all abilities, they should see a payoff for it.

For the minimum die results, I like the increase even if I despise the mechanic. Considering that it only kicks in starting at a score of 20, this seems like something you could just add to a small sidebar in the Constitution section of the guide and call it a day.

Alternatively, we can just add a flat bonus to the Hit Point Adjustment at these higher levels. The math roughly works if you throw an extra +1 to scores of 21-23, and a +2 at 24-25. Assuming we’re rolling a d10 for the warrior, that provides a slight nerf to low rolls and a nice bonus to high ones, as seen on the table below.

Constitution	Minimum Die Roll (Min Result)	Flat Bonus (Min Result)	Minimum Die Roll (Max Result)	Flat Bonus (Max Result)
20	7	6	15	15
21	9	8	16	17
22	9	8	16	17
23	10	8	16	17
24	11	10	17	19
25	11	10	17	19

 

Yeah, I’m happy with that. Let’s use that.

 

Column 2 and 3. System Shock and Resurrection Survival

Many think these are silly mechanics. They only serve to kill a character who gets polymorphed or magically aged, or to keep a character dead when their friends try to make them not dead anymore. They’re a bit of a screw job, but I like them. They make that type of magic far more serious, while creating a unique moment of uncertainty when such serious events occur. Getting turned to stone or coming back from the dead should be incredible events with a real chance of failure and death; I think these rules map nicely to that. Also, it’s an AD&D eccentricity that adds to gameplay, and that’s what I’m going for.

However, they don’t need to be on the table or the character sheet. This can be done. First, the value differences between each are only 5% (mostly); I’ll smash them into one value and use the higher. Then, since we have 5% jumps throughout most of the scale, these can be neatly mapped to the score itself. In the same manner in which I folded Strength’s door-opening mechanics into the ability check, I’ll let a modifier do the heavy lifting here.

With this goal in mind, I’ll use the Resurrection Survival chance for both checks, since it’s the higher value. Converting this target to a d20 rather than percentile (rounded up), then subtracting from the score to determine the needed modifier, you get this:

 

Constitution	Resurrection %	d20 Target	Needed Modifier
1	30%	6	+5
2	35%	7	+5
3	40%	8	+5
4	45%	9	+5
5	50%	10	+5
6	55%	11	+5
7	60%	12	+5
8	65%	13	+5
9	70%	14	+5
10	75%	15	+5
11	80%	16	+5
12	85%	17	+5
13	90%	18	+5
14	92%	19	+5
15	94%	19	+4
16	96%	20	+4
17	98%	20	+3
18	100%	20	+2
19	100%	20	+1
20	100%	20	/
21	100%	20	/
22	100%	20	/
23	100%	20	/
24	100%	20	/
25	100%	20	/

 

Great. Elegant, even. Aside from a score of 15, everything can be mapped to a +5 to the ability score or a -5 to the roll. Therefore, the survival mechanic for body alteration and returning from death (which we can just call ‘System Shock’) is an ‘easy’ Con check, with auto success from 15 and up. Again, if the player has invested into Constitution, let’s give them the win.

 

Column 4. Poison Save

We come to the first of the Deities & Demigods feature additions. As with the others (regeneration and illusion/spell immunity) this starts at 19 Con, putting it out of range for anyone but those affected by magical items and those who are – as the rules which this was pulled from assumes – gods. 2e puts in its two-cents by adding penalties for Constitution scores below 3. If your PC has a Con of 2, I think poison is the least of your worries.

All ability scores from 19 to 25 are pulled
directly from this source. I have no clue where
they got the stats for scores of 1 and 2.

 

I think this one is a good idea. Saving throw bonuses are currently only found in Dexterity (which affects dodging) and Wisdom (which affects mental saves). A save vs poison bonus makes sense for characters with high Constitution. Obviously, we need to bring this back from orbit, and can follow the example of Dex’s add-on to a saving throw by starting at 15.

The PHB states that dwarves and halflings don’t get to use this because they already have poison resistance. That’s fair given the racial bonus; by level 11 they’re getting a -3 vs poison, and giving another -2 would mean that the dwarf cleric is immune to poison by this point. I don’t see a huge problem with this 10% jump in probability resulting in ‘the dwarf that can’t be poisoned.’ It can be slightly mitigated by nerfing the racial feature (and conveniently removing an awful fraction from the rules, but we’ll get to races later).

 

Column 5. Regeneration

Auto-healing should probably stay with monsters, but it’s an interesting concept. This is the second Deities & Demigods addition, adding in a weak regeneration power for characters above 20 Con. It’s heavily nerfed compared to monstrous regeneration, being the equivalent of a permanent ring of regeneration at 25 Con. 2e clarifies that it also has the same weaknesses as monster regeneration. 

Wait, wrong game.

 

I want to save it, not only because it has that AD&D oddity factor, but because someone in very good health should heal well compared to the average. I’m for pulling this down to 15 as well.

There’s still two problems with it.

First, it uses turns, which I dislike. It’s not that I dislike 10-minute segments of time; that’s fine, we need to cut up time somehow. However, calling it a ‘turn’ is maddening. The word ‘turn’ is commonly understood as referring to an individual player’s time to perform actions or make choices. Here, turns have been expanded into a bloated block of time that doesn’t correspond to anyone’s actual turn. Why? Chainmail ancestry is not a good enough reason. We’ve been saying “it’s your turn” since the 14th century; why would you abandon this convention? Considering that all post-TSR editions have used ‘turn’ in the way that other games do, AD&D’s use of the word as a unit of 10-minutes becomes a strange artifact that adds another hurdle to playing this game. I’ll toss turns and we’ll use actual time: minutes, hours, days.

Second, it’s still too powerful. Anything providing power equivalent to a magical item as an innate ability, even at only a sixth of its power, shouldn’t be in the rollable stats. The rules here keep it out of the reach of the dwarf by starting at 20, which we should keep. A bonus to daily healing when resting sounds fair, but implementing this edge case on the table threatens to return the dreaded asterisk, which we just got rid of in the Hit Point Adjustment column. The only solution I can see is to make it a bit weaker and place no restrictions on it, so I’ll try that. If it doesn’t work, we’ll amputate.

 

Final Table

Constitution	Hit Point Bonus	Poison Save	Regeneration
1	-4	-4	–
2	-3	-4	–
3	-3	-3	–
4	-2	-3	–
5	-2	-2	–
6	-1	-2	–
7-8	-1	-1	–
9-12	–	–	–
13-14	+1	–	–
15	+1	+1	1 / 2 days
16	+2	+1	1 / 2 days
17	+3	+2	1 / day
18	+4	+2	1 / day
19	+5	+2	2 / day
20	+5	+3	2 / day
21	+7	+3	1 / hour
22	+7	+4	1 / hour
23	+7	+4	1 / 30 minutes
24	+9	+4	1 / 30 minutes
25	+9	+5	1 / 10 minutes

 

I’m pleased with the HP and Poison changes. They add a small bonus to the mid-range scores, opens the good HP bonuses to all, and makes for an admirable stat above 15. I’m still on the fence about regeneration; it’s fiddly, but it’ll serve for the time being. Add a sidebar explaining the -5 modifier for System Shock and we’re done here.

Next, I’ll look at Intelligence, and try to figure out what to do with Illusion Immunity.