Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Sure! I'd love to play more :PI've not had a character die yetI will talk to Auke about that and see if we can't correct that little oversight ;-)
Got any requests? I'm feeling like GMing more high-level stuff. And next time I won't forget to use the rockets :)
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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Got any requests? I'm feeling like GMing more high-level stuff. And next time I won't forget to use the rockets :)Sure! I'd love to play more :PI've not had a character die yetI will talk to Auke about that and see if we can't correct that little oversight ;-)
Ah, yes! The rockets! I'll let you know :)
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I honestly can't remember how many characters I've had die over the years. I know that number is far larger then the number who got retired. In fact, I think the number of D&D, then later pathfinder, characters I've had reach level 10 can be counted on both hands with fingers left over. Then again in 2nd edition AD&D I favored half elf fighter/mages. So unless my con was really high, I'd have 7 hit points, at most at level 1. And would often end up being the party's 'tank'. I've played a wizard in AD&D who had more hit points then the fighter until around level 7.
If I can help it, I try to have at least 12 con, but more is better. I make more characters for Pathfinder with 12 con then 14 though. This is mostly due to the point buy attributes making 14 con problematic if I need multiple good stats. Which I often do.
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Nosig, please don't include my sorcerer in your totals, as he died to a failed save to an assassin's death attack. He easily survived the damage from the attack, and you didn't include another person's death to phantasmal killer.
I didn't list the con scores on the other guys because they all had 16 dex, 14 con. So even dropping their con scores to 10 wouldn't be able to meaningfully increase their dex scores. And since the crux of your argument seems to be "higher dex is more important than con" I didn't include them, my bad.
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Nosig, you should not assume that only having one death out of 30+ characters is typical. I cringe at the thought of only having two stats above ten, myself, but whatever works for you. I cringe at you drawing such ridiculously skewed results from a handful of people, and using that to back your assertions. Wait, the people in the front protecting the squishies are often the ones that die of HP damage? Amazing! Any other pearls of wisdom to share?
The thing we should take out of this thread is that we should all shut the hell up and let each other play what we choose, without judgment. Also, we should let a character's actions during a scenario decide whether or not we decide to chip in on a raise, and not their build.
Edit: That came off slightly more caustic than I intended.
Caustic or not, I think you have it right, Mitch. Actions speak louder than words... Players speak louder than builds. It is all about what you get out of your characters.
I am sure many in this thread would tell me I build characters wrong... The only stat other than Con I will not tank is INT... I like having skills. I build generalist characters for the most part (excepting my wizards, and they have an aspect of generalist in them just because of their high INTs). My melee characters are usually built with STR14, not 18, for example. Sure, I could use the extra to hit and damage, butI can also use the mental stats!
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Only one of my PFS PCs has 'died' (he got better) - an 8th-level cleric with 14 Con. This was in a session of 'The Sealed Gate' that ended in a near-TPK. A number of PCs had already dropped (somewhat more easily than my cleric) - I suspect (but don't know for sure) that one or two of them hadn't boosted Con to any great degree.
Of course, my cleric would've never got there if he hadn't survived being taken to -12 in a surprise round of one infamous scenario while still 3rd-level.
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I think he's talking about the times the monster never even swings on the PC with a good AC. Even the ones that LOOK like they don't have one...
First encounter:
Judge: "What's you AC again?"
Player with a grin: (something ridiculous)Following encounters the monsters ignore the "hard to hit guy"....
My channeling/buffing cleric with levels of Holy Vindicator was rocking an AC in the upper 30s with options to buff into the low 40s. He was quite happy to be left alone to do his job. :)
He's my only level 12 PC thus far. 10 Dex, 12 Con, no deaths.
I've only had one PC die thus far and it was due to direct damage with a Con of 12. Con didn't really have much to do with it, because the entire party got overwhelmed in a certain scenario dealing with a village in Tian. I hated that scenario...
I think he's talking about the times the monster never even swings on the PC with a good AC. Even the ones that LOOK like they don't have one...
First encounter:
Judge: "What's you AC again?"
Player with a grin: (something ridiculous)Following encounters the monsters ignore the "hard to hit guy"....
*THIS*
"My AC is at 29 with fighting defensively currently. I'm wearing a pretty nifty wooden shield and it looks like some sort of fine clothing. "
All the critters/opponents:
Hmm. This gal over here with chain mail on looks a lot easier to hit than that guy in the fine clothing. Let's focus fire on her instead!
Indeed. This strikes me as very much problematic in an RPG, particularly PFS. In an ongoing campaign, I can see a PC gaining a reputation for being untouchable and that affecting some encounters down the road. But in PFS, this strikes me as beating the role right out of role playing game.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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So far no one has listed one of their KIA PCs as having a CON of less than 12.
And of the dozen PCs so far listed, only two have 12s....
Totals are
CON 16, 5 PCs KIA
CON 14, 5 PCs KIA
CON 12, 2 PCs KIA...
Hey I have a bard in a core game that just died recently which had a constitution of 10. Only other death is the pregen mesmerist which I don't know if I want to blame the scenario or the pregen. Technically you can throw in my mesmerist too because if I dont play her precisely correct she dies. Incredibly useful and probably has prevented TPKs completely in her entirety (In one case due to a failed fortitude save) but she still she needed more HP because high tier non core is pretty wonky too.
EditAll this talk about bypassing the heavily armored person makes me think of the 70 ft movespeed brawler I'm working on. Spellcaster want to focus fire on someone? Youre probably going to do it against the character who can run across the map board to attack you.
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I had a Con 14 hunter die to bunch of failed fort saves vs. ghoul fever at level 1... haven't had anyone else kick the bucket, though.
My Con 10 bard has been remarkably resilient so far, although he just bumped up his con to 12 with a belt now that he's level 10. When you get your Perception mod ridiculously high, I think that reduces the amount of unexpected melee you can get into.
I have a couple other lower-level con 10 characters who haven't had much trouble, although they like to be far far away from anything sharp and pointy and function accordingly. We'll see how that goes.
I risked it, once, with a Con 8 archer in a home game. He kept nearly kicking the bucket, but that was my first campaign with a GM who runs games like Gygax. I think, with a consistent GM who doesn't pick on vulnerable characters quite as much, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. But that's not PFS.
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Oh, I don't figure I am "typical" - LOL! I'm far from it. It appears that my play style is very different from other people's.
Let me try to explain how that sort of statement is coming across
It sounds like you're saying -I can get away with having less than a 12 con because I'm a better player than people telling you you need a 14-
To which i call bull. The vast majority of time your character is taking damage they're just standing there, out of turn, unable to do anything. Due to the stop motion nature of the game its not like you can dart in and out of combat. Unless you can explain what the allegedly better play-style is I'm going to insist its some combination of luck, different dming styles (you avoid killer DMs), bowing out of the all wizard party, and most importantly always having a character in subtier as well as tier.
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Unless you can explain what the allegedly better play-style is I'm going to insist its some combination of luck, different dming styles (you avoid killer DMs), bowing out of the all wizard party, and most importantly always having a character in subtier as well as tier.
Hmmm. Not sure about this, Norse.
I have a bard that played 'up' for the first three levels (excepting The Confirmation) with a CON 10. There have been three spots where it's gotten dicey for him.
One situation where he was given the rogue 'group hug' of love -- they stopped hitting him when he dropped incap.(and an extra +3 HP at that point would NOT have helped)
One situation where he was Blinded and didn't know he was walking into a fiendish wolverine.
The rougher situations have been when he's had to play 'down'...
Also, nosig had to eject from the thread, something about RL issues roaring through his front lawn or somesuch like a tarrasque.
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Hmmm. Not sure about this, Norse.
I have a bard that played 'up' for the first three levels (excepting The Confirmation) with a CON 10. There have been three spots where it's gotten dicey for him.
A bard. You can contribute by sitting in the back and playing a mandolin. What about a melee combatant?
If you were a 10 con bard playing up and in melee, what exactly did you do that let you live?
One situation where he was given the rogue 'group hug' of love -- they stopped hitting him when he dropped incap.(and an extra +3 HP at that point would NOT have helped)
Its effectively a +7 hp if you're tracking to death.
Also, nosig had to eject from the thread, something about RL issues roaring through his front lawn or somesuch like a tarrasque.
He usually lands back there. Also as usual most of discussing things on here is for the audience at home :)
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bowing out of the all wizard partyBut all wizard parties wreck faces and make it highly unlikely anyone in the group will take even a single point of damage. When you have six people capable of shutting down enemies hard rather than just one or two monsters rarely get to do anything.
Also imagine the veritable cloud of mirror images any enemy actually allowed to do something will be faced with!
Surprise round rogues! Gank (because stealth works differently for NPCs)
Readied action for when you open the door fireball
Grapple monster from stealth surprise round
You didn't SAY you were expecting an ambush when youw ere told to expect an ambush! CHOMP
An all wizard party is powerful but its VERY swingy.
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Hmmm. Not sure about this, Norse.
I have a bard that played 'up' for the first three levels (excepting The Confirmation) with a CON 10. There have been three spots where it's gotten dicey for him.
A bard. You can contribute by sitting in the back and playing a mandolin. What about a melee combatant?
If you were a 10 con bard playing up and in melee, what exactly did you do that let you live?
One situation where he was given the rogue 'group hug' of love -- they stopped hitting him when he dropped incap.(and an extra +3 HP at that point would NOT have helped)Its effectively a +7 hp if you're tracking to death.
Also, nosig had to eject from the thread, something about RL issues roaring through his front lawn or somesuch like a tarrasque.He usually lands back there. Also as usual most of discussing things on here is for the audience at home :)
Some of the conversation in favor of Con 12 or 14 has been making the argument that someone with less than 12 con is taking on an unusually high (or even irresponsible!) amount of risk regardless of party role or tactics. That's not exactly the point you were making, but it's still relevant to the larger discussion.
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A bard. You can contribute by sitting in the back and playing a mandolin. What about a melee combatant?
If you were a 10 con bard playing up and in melee, what exactly did you do that let you live?
Part the First: Mandolin? Seriously? No. Just no. Take the strings off and use them as a garrote or something.
*gets this idea for a bagpipe bard now, because good bagpipes are awesome...*
No, my bard's a side-drummer and singer. Almost like Phil Collins, only not nearly as old. =P
Part the Second: The 'in melee' was situational based on opponent tactics and playing dead really convincingly worked well until the rest of the party could wreck the attackers.
Fortunately, the buffs were already out there.
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Rephrase that as "expectedly higher amount of risk regardless of role" and I'll agree with you Terminalmancer. When I chose to take a skill point instead of hit point for my favored class bonus, I'm doing so with full knowledge it'll be easier to be killed. If I make a character with 8 constitution (which I'd never do) then I'm doing so with full knowledge that it's easier for me to get killed. The threshold before I die is that much lower.
Let's say your character is level 5 and has been getting skill points or some other benefit instead of hit points for favored class. If your hit die is 1d8 per level, by level five you could have 28 hit points at base. 33 if you took toughness. Which I believe most people do. With 10 constitution, that means you die if you take 38 or more damage without toughness, and 43 damage with toughness.
If your constitution score is 12, you'd have 33 hit points base at level 5, 38 with toughness. Meaning you could survive 44 or 49 points of damage, depending on if you have toughness.
If you're constitution is 8 however you're level five hit points are 23 without toughness, and 28 with toughness. This may not seem like much of a difference. It's only five hit points lower then someone with con of 10, right? Except you are also 10 hit points lower then someone with 12 con, and 15 points lower then someone who has 14 con. You also die at -8 hit points. if you get hit by 31 (36 with toughness) damage, you are dead.
When something is hitting you for 1d8+10 damage, it can make a huge difference. And when something crits you, it may mean the difference between barely surviving, and meeting your deity personally.
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Some of the conversation in favor of Con 12 or 14 has been making the argument that someone with less than 12 con is taking on an unusually high (or even irresponsible!) amount of risk regardless of party role or tactics. That's not exactly the point you were making, but it's still relevant to the larger discussion.
What I'm saying is that the 10 con bard was in a position where being killed wasn't as likely so surviving it isn't that extraordinary.
Would be easier with a bar graph or something but...
The PFS puckermeter is a fluctuating 3 dimenstional interacting combination of
Party makeup
The dice trying to kill you
Party number
Dming style
The dice trying to kill you
Scenario difficulty
The other characters in the party
Your other players around the table
Your role in the party
Your play style/skill
Build
Some of those are going to go belly up some of the time. The chances of one of them going wrong is almost 100. The chances of ALL of them going wrong is almost zero.
The more HP and burst damage you can take the more of them you can survive going wrong at once. A little more survivability lets you take 1 or 2 more things going wrong. Since the puckermeter is usually on a bell-curve gaining a little bit of survivability goes a long way.
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Clearly this is not my kind of discussion, and I should just bow out at this point. I am sorry you got the impression that I felt my play-style is "Better" than any other. I did not. Just different. I do not play the same way as everyone else - and it appears that I do not create PCs with the same requirements that the majority of posters here do.
But its not clear that your playstyle is any different just because you're getting different results. There are a lot of other factors involved. Saying "the way" you do things is differently is a non answer.
Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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My wizard plays with front liners that could not survive his fireball...I've had a rule for Wizards that stretches all the back to 1st Edition:
"If you can't survive your own Fireball. You have a problem."
Well, to be sure, this rule came from a time when Fireballs filled a volume, not just a radius. So if you made a math mistake, or under-estimated the size of the room or length of the hallway you were casting it into, you could easily catch yourself in the blow back. But is still isn't a bad idea.
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When I play a character who mixes it up in melee, they naturally take more damage then a support character. When I play a kineticist I (usually) am going "Thank the gods I have a high constitution". that's because soon as I hit something for lots of damage from 30 feet away, the other bad guys start considering me a serious threat. And my high dex ain't gonna keep all of them from hitting. Especially if the GM's dice are rolling hot. Having an AC in the low to mid 20's at level 3 does no good when the GM rolls multiple confirmed crits.
I have far too many GM awarded d6 because Kahel or Xao got smacked with a crit. One session, I believe I got 3 of those dice. The RC who often gms for my lodge likes to give out a nifty D6 when he confirms a crit. The dice are awesome. I have too dang many of them.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I have far too many GM awarded d6 because Kahel or Xao got smacked with a crit. One session, I believe I got 3 of those dice. The RC who often gms for my lodge likes to give out a nifty D6 when he confirms a crit. The dice are awesome. I have too dang many of them.
That's a nifty custom though.
I bet at least one of my friends would sometimes like to impound my dice, when they won't stop rolling natural twenties against his tank wizard.
Yes, tank wizard. That thing has an AC over 25 at level 4. Thank god I get lasers and area attacks, too.
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Oh, I don't figure I am "typical" - LOL! I'm far from it. It appears that my play style is very different from other people's.
Let me try to explain how that sort of statement is coming across
It sounds like you're saying -I can get away with having less than a 12 con because I'm a better player than people telling you you need a 14-
To which i call bull. The vast majority of time your character is taking damage they're just standing there, out of turn, unable to do anything. Due to the stop motion nature of the game its not like you can dart in and out of combat. Unless you can explain what the allegedly better play-style is I'm going to insist its some combination of luck, different dming styles (you avoid killer DMs), bowing out of the all wizard party, and most importantly always having a character in subtier as well as tier.
I don't see it that way. I see it more as "Everyone says this is the case--and more to the point, vehemently insists that new players build characters by these rules--but it doesn't match my experience. That's so weird."
More than once, I've had people drop their jaw at my 12 Con frontline melee characters, completely disbelieving that I could be so stupid as to build them that way. And these exact same people talk about the various deaths their frontline characters have faced, but none of mine have actually died...If I'm doing it "all wrong" like they say, how come my characters don't die as often as the "correctly built" characters do?
Maybe, just maybe, their bad experiences are based on luck, dming style, playing out of tier, party composition, etc., as much as my good experiences are?
Maybe the conventional wisdom that "Anything below 14 Con is unplayable" is based on anecdata exactly as much as my "Eh, 12 Con is fine for melee characters" approach?
Y.
M.
M.
V.
Which is why I try very hard to never say, "Oh, god! How can you possibly play a character like??!!!??!" I try to say, "I probably wouldn't play it that way, and here's why, but it's completely your choice."
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More than once, I've had people drop their jaw at my 12 Con frontline melee characters, completely disbelieving that I could be so stupid as to build them that way.
a 12 is hardly jaw dropping even on a front liner. Level +2 more HP till death isn't THAT big of a deal...
And these exact same people talk about the various deaths their frontline characters have faced, but none of mine have actually died...
If I'm doing it "all wrong" like they say, how come my characters don't die as often as the "correctly built" characters do?
Because that's the wrong comparison. There is only one of you. There are many of them. Of course more of them die.
Maybe, just maybe, their bad experiences are based on luck, dming style, playing out of tier, party composition, etc., as much as my good experiences are?
Yes. They are. But planning on/for an unlikely confluence of bad factors is the POINT of having a good con.
Maybe the conventional wisdom that "Anything below 14 Con is unplayable" is based on anecdata exactly as much as my "Eh, 12 Con is fine for melee characters" approach?
I don't know if anyone is taking the position that its unplayable but having a 10 con is flirting with pharasma hard enough that I'm not breaking the bank to stop it if she decides its time to dance.
Which is why I try very hard to never say, "Oh, god! How can you possibly play a character like??!!!??!" I try to say, "I probably wouldn't play it that way, and here's why, but it's completely your choice."
Thats more of a charisma thing...
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Maybe, just maybe, their bad experiences are based on luck, dming style, playing out of tier, party composition, etc., as much as my good experiences are?Yes. They are. But planning on/for an unlikely confluence of bad factors is the POINT of having a good con.
But the whole argument centers around the definition of a "good" Con.
Your argument earlier was that playstyle can't account for survival--that it's luck and assorted other factors. I'm agreeing with you--but I'm also saying that the same thing is probably true of character deaths.In my experience, 12 Con is high enough for anyone who doesn't have class features based on it. Character death is much less common now that constantly playing up is no longer a thing. There are probably regional variations in GMing style (e.g., I don't know personally know any GMs who gleefully anticipate killing characters) and party composition (maybe we have more healers in our area--I don't know) and party size (the vast majority of our tables have 6 players).
In your experience, 12 Con isn't high enough. And that's totally fine: I understand that completely. Your experiences are subject to the exact same external factors and regional variances that mine are, so our experiences are going to be different.
But nobody ridicules your choices. I actually stopped discussing specific build numbers because I got tired of people telling me I'm doing it wrong or asking what the hell I was thinking.
Maybe the conventional wisdom that "Anything below 14 Con is unplayable" is based on anecdata exactly as much as my "Eh, 12 Con is fine for melee characters" approach?I don't know if anyone is taking the position that its unplayable but having a 10 con is flirting with pharasma hard enough that I'm not breaking the bank to stop it if she decides its time to dance.
Have you read the whole thread? Or any of the others on this topic? You might not be taking that position personally, but it is a fairly common one. And a very loud and adamant one.
Even the feeling in the original post was "If you have (what I consider to be) a low Con, your character deserves to die and stay dead."
Now, I strongly disagree with the idea that anyone at the table should feel pressured into contributing towards a raise dead. But I'm also really bothered by the idea that my character only "deserves" to be raised if I built my character to your specifications or to match some pretty arbitrary rules of what makes a character worth saving.
Especially since my experience is different from yours, and so my ideas of what makes a "worthwhile" character will be different.
My mileage varies.
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Since we're counting character deaths ...
One paladin taking a 200 foot fall. At L7 20d6 could easily leave you SOL unless you have a very high Con.
CON?
One dwarf magus taken to the bottom of Absalom harbor and drowned because he didn't have the CMD to escape a devilfish. He had a 16 Con, which isn't bad. He also had the devilfish down to single digits before dying.
I don't think this one counts for the totals - Not KIA by HP damage.
Same magus caught in black tentacles, cloudkill, and (Most importantly) silence. The last effect negated the boots of escape I specifically bought to get out of that type of situation. When he finally got out with very few HP remaining, the surviving bad guy lightning bolted him.
One elf rogue failing both phantasmal killer saves. In my defense, this was at about 3 AM and I was no longer thinking straight on tactics or I might have approached the final encounter differently.
Note that only one of these (the rogue) had a 10 Con.
As said above, YMMV.
And I don't think the Rogue counted as it really wasn't HP damage...
So totals are:
CON 16 - 5 KIA
CON 14 - 4 KIA
CON 12 - 2 KIA
Con on his Paladin wasn't the deciding factor. It was the 200 foot fall into sewage. He decided "I can make this jump.", after watching the rest of the party do so, and failed by just a couple if I recall correctly, subsequently failing the reflex save to grab the ledge. This earned him the title of "Sh*tty Paladin" among a few of us, not because of any fault of the player or PC, but because he died in sewage.
His Magus' death by Devilfish was a kill by HP damage, as the Devilfish tore into him. He subsequently drowned while unconscious and being chowed on would have killed him in the next round anyway.
Out of my own PC's only two have died. One was due to a Serpent's Rise TPK, where the GM ignored the tactics of the final boss and just went nova from the moment the party entered the room. This one was raised from the dead.
The other was a first time played at level 4 Dragoon Fighter whose pony the goblins ignored. Their Bugbear boss decided to x3 crit me after two normal hits. 17 HP to -20 will do just about anyone in. This was a 14 CON character. With not enough prestige to raise, this one was perma-dead.
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But nobody ridicules your choices. I actually stopped discussing specific build numbers because I got tired of people telling me I'm doing it wrong or asking what the hell I was thinking.
Its a blurry linebetween geek ridicule and geek conversation starter.
Have you read the whole thread? Or any of the others on this...
Most of it.
The op felt bad about not breaking the bank to get a character raised. He's more than justified in that position because the other player didn't take reasonable precautions to prevent their death. "I'm standing in the back i can;t get hit" isn't a real survival strategy in a world of fireballs. Thats a far cry from its unplayable. If it was a few hundred GP I'd tell him to crack the piggybank and not be so judgemental.
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An all wizard party is powerful but its VERY swingy.In the early levels, maybe, from midway onwards not at all. While I haven't played in an all Wizard party I have played in several all caster party's and they were largely unstoppable. From the entire team flying/air walking, to someone having a spell solution to any conceivable problem, to having characters who can actually invest in skills they pretty much demonstrate the C/MD issue perfectly.
Wizards are nearly unstopable when they have an available standard action. most of the deaths I've seen have been from when that wasn't the case. Surprise round GANK or surprise round GANK loose init GANK.
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@nosig: Most of my PCs, unless they are Barbarians, have a 12 Con.
And, for at least one PC death, the PC, who Con was 12 and Dex was 16, was killed because of bad luck. A higher Dex might have saved him, but so, too, would a higher Wis or Perception score. Surprise round, demon moved adjacent. First round, lost initiative battle, demon got a full attack with sneak on my flatfooted Kensai Magus. Third attack was a confirmed crit when my Magus was already down to only 3 hit points or so, so dead.
My Rogue, also 12 COn, 14 Dex, was taken from full to dead in a non-surprise round because his AC is not so hot, so the third attack was a confirmed crit, again around 3 hit points left at the time.
My Con 12, Dex absurd (22 or 24, IIRC) fighter got killed from full health by an encounter, even while going fighting defensively and combat expertise, IIRC. He got better from a Breath of Life, though, and we tromped the <redacted> afterwards. Indeed, this is my PC who had a thread spawned about him making PFS unfun for a local GM, since he was a trip build... I have, since, got him Celestial Armor, and shored up his hit points with Toughness and Fast Learner. Then again, his last level (16th, actually) is Unchained Rogue, for the oddity that he was mainly doing traps in the last module I played with him.
My Con 12 fighter with a longbow died for the first time at 8th level, IIRC, because, at that time, the local scene was low on actual frontliners, so he tended to wind up there with his low AC, and his ability to use his bow without provoking (Point Blank Master).
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The classic MMORPG party is 1-3 DPS, a healer, and a tank. Those DPS characters are typically glass cannons. Glass cannons can be useful, but they need to understand their role behave responsibly.
Except in most MMOs the tank can force the bad guys to attack him and the badguys run on a computerized script. Where as in PFS, the badguys are controlled by an inteligent human being, and often have tactics like "attacks lightest armored target"
also, in pathfinder one often runs into situations where you don't get to pick whether you engage or when.
Completely true.
I do think the MMORPG approach can work in pathfinder, but you do have to be able to fill those roles.
So if your GM is an "intelligent human being," your tank may need to alter how they perform their "aggro" generation. Lots of in-combat ways to promote being attacked, though sometimes only on the role playing level. Meanwhile, the other PCs need to tone down their presence until the tank gets the enemy into position around them.
As for tactics like "attacks the lightest armored target" this is where skills like "Disguise" can come into play. You can make your party look as if they are all armored the same or as if your tank is less armored than they really are. Although your PCs don't know that the GM is specifically targeting based on armor, it is a reasonable consideration for adventurers. Just like having all the PCs bear holy symbols, if only to make it more difficult to determine who is the healer at the start of combat.
Obviously, this won't work in every combat, but you can increase the odds with cheap tricks - it does help. Illusionists can be a huge asset in manipulating the GM's minions (assuming they are role playing them).
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I've never started a character below a 12 Con in PFS. I had a 12 CON 7th level Cleric taken from full to dead in one round by an alchemist without a crit.
Usually I'll try to boost Con with a belt or ioun stone when I can. I've taken Toughness on a few characters. My Favored Class Bonus almost always goes to HPs.
I also had a 14 con 11th level Ninja go from about 3/4 HPs to dead thanks to a failed Fort save.
I had a 12 con melee oracle die, but that had more to do with him having negative energy affinity and bleeding out because the only other party member standing failed his UMD roll to activate my Inflict Light Wounds wand.
Sometime the dice are just unlucky.
Sometimes they're lucky. I have a monk that started with a 12 con and is now at 11th. He had some close calls, but hasn't died. He had one death reversed, because the GM misread something in the scenario, but that was a will save or die, not anything to do with Con. He did pick up Toughness and boost Con to 14 along the way.
My -1 Sorcerer started with a 12. He died once to a Coup de Grace from a harpy. He needed a Breath of Life against <redacted> in Waking Rune. By then he had a 14 Con, Toughness, and False Life. He had either the most or the second most hitpoints in the group, but he failed his Fort save against a large damage attack and went from full plus temp hitpoints to dead in one round. So did two other characters that failed their save. Thus began the chain of Breath of Lifes.
Sometimes it's just a brutal game, and there's nothing you can do about it.
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Xao Li Quin, my core monk, has a con of 12. Hasn't died yet, but it's been dicey a few times. Pretty sure that if i didn't have 12 con and Toughness Xao would have died a few times over too. Part of this is how often Xao is the party's tank... as well as highest initiative. Running into the room on the surprise round or round 1 means you probably distract the enemy from attacking everyone else. Unfortunately it also means you're eating attacks from everything.
Kahel has also had a few close shaves with 12 con. But not as many. In part this is due to playing fewer sessions. And in part due to not having to get right up in the face of everything.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Sounds like more people would have been saved by the Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier's ability to negate a crit than a difference in Con.
It also sounds like there are some extraordinarily deadly encounters in some of the scenarios.
So far I've only had one death in PFS. It was against an undead ogre who suddenly did about twice the damage it had been doing and took my cleric out. This was mostly about bad dice luck on my part though, never even hit it. The cleric had Con 14 and was brought to exactly -14 hp.
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Sounds like more people would have been saved by the Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier's ability to negate a crit than a difference in Con.
My experience has been that having the right item more often saves a life than HP. 1 AC is strictly ok, negating the Intensified Shocking Grasp crit priceless. (There are a number of other items like this, IMO - but most are for saves instead). A good rule of thumb is the suggestion that you spend as about 45% of your gold on defense, 45% on offense, and 10% on consumables.
Let's say your character is level 5 and has been getting skill points or some other benefit instead of hit points for favored class. If your hit die is 1d8 per level, by level five you could have 28 hit points at base. 33 if you took toughness. Which I believe most people do. With 10 constitution, that means you die if you take 38 or more damage without toughness, and 43 damage with toughness.
I don't know, I've never taken toughness on a character past the 1st level re-train period (if I need to build a character quickly for an evergreen Toughness might make it onto a sheet), never even really considered it. (Additionally I don't think I have any characters with more than 3 FCB to HP) I find toughness to be fairly rare locally. There are builds out there with them, but most of those have some ability to take HP damage for others.
Frankly, with the ease of access to out-of-combat healing (in the form of PP for fully charged wands) HP damage just isn't nearly as big a threat in PFS as it is in home games, in my experience. My two builds with more than 14 CON both are used as HP batteries for others, one's an Oradin who life links and shields other, the other is a Warpriest tank who bodyguards and shields other. The Oradin has taken well more than 200 hp in a single combat and not even gone below half health. (I think he broke 1000 hp of damage in a single scenario). The Warpriest I'm not sure has been hit in 2 or 3 scenarios. If I were building for truly high level play I might build towards more Con as not getting hit gets a lot harder as attack bonuses climb more quickly than AC can scale and true seeing becomes more common. That said my 13th level fighter just barely has more than 100 hp (he's died once and been downed once.)
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Perhaps the people posting don't have low CON PCs?
I tend to think it also has a lot to do with the character more "likely" to be killed - the frontliners. They are, more often than not, exposed to the most damage encounter-after-encounter and are regularly as risk of the next crit wiping them out. Low-Con characters tend to hide in the back and their tactics usually include a lot more consideration for not being in harms way as compared to the characters who seek it out. IMO, its no wonder that higher Con characters die more often. Of all my character deaths or just drops into negatives, the melee types have a much higher rate of occurrence than my "squishies."