CON vs STR for Kensai

[Lost in the dark]

Is it worth investing heavily into CON to get Epic Damage reduction or does it generally makes more sense to put all available points into STR for the attack and damage?

The character uses full plate and tower shield and maybe looking to remain pure fighter for all 30 levels,

Thoughts welcome.

[flower]

High fighter level allows you allocate STR into CON and still keeping AB 46+. You may need to do some toying in builder.

[Opustus]

Good question! It depends. E.g. a Barbie might benefit more from CON than a basic Fighter/WM/Rogue. In general, the CON route for fighters and mages is the less trodden path, as offence is often the best defence.

I'd ask myself, what do I want the character to do and how does Kensai complement its strengths? My main appeal in Kensai is the extra attack per round which allows for more damage burst. Hence it would make sense for me to play a WM or Barbarian as a STR build to capitalise on that damage boost. Likewise, Rogues' one main feature is to burst damage out of stealth.

EDIT: It's almost always (can't think of a single exception) relatively silly to take CON beyond 21 or 22, which are the EDR benchmarks. Thence max STR for some semblance of hit chance.

[Griefmaker]

For me personally, I think all of my standard "fighters" (meaning fighter/wm/rogue, fighter/rogue, barb, dwarven defender or characters like that who did not need charisma or wisdom or anything like that to cast with did the best when they were a balanced str/con build. This way they could get the Epic Damage Reduction, a bit more hp, and still hit pretty dang hard.

You may have a reduction of AB and damage of about 2, due to not dumping all level up attributes into strength, which hurts a little bit...but in the end it always seemed like balanced always worked better for me, especially when you can negate a good portion of any normal spawn or non-strength build's normal hits (not crits/sneaks/etc.) and take a few more hits as well.

I think it just goes down to personal preference. Max damage...or a little more toughness and ability to take a few more hits.

EDIT: Opustus mentioned never going beyond 21 con...and this is what I always did too, even with my balanced builds. 21 CON, then all strength. And then just get str/con gear after that. All con can be pretty badass...like on a dwarven defender focused on defense since mages used to be able to expend their entire repertoire of spells whilst your character survived, brushed themselves off, and smacked them with a hammer. Assuming after that you could even hit the mage since your AB was low. But only 21 CON is all you really ever need.

[Lost in the dark]

Thanks all for the responses.

[flower]

DMG reduction can help. If you focus on AC, making it hard to be hit. They will roll few crits if even any, and when land common hit the reduction will give you edge in this attrittion...imho