The 216 Club

I was just mulling over D&D character stats, with one of my gripes being that I wished that the game expected that characters only had a 15 in their best ability score, and that anything higher was really, really rare (whereas, with the point buy games I've seen since 3E, 18 seems to be the minimum).

Well, if you do the math, having an 18 in any one of your scores (rolling 3d6 for each) means that in the average population, one person out of 216 will have an 18. Going a little further, having an 18 in any one particular ability is a 1 in 1,296 chance. (Can someone do the math for a 15? I'd have to do it out longhand myself).

To kind of put that in perspective, with an average school classroom of 30 kids (and one grade per class), that means you could expect one child in a given elementary school (K-6) to have an 18 (and it's only a 1 in 6 chance it would be intelligence). In the latter case, you could have two classrooms of each grade Kindergarten to College's Masters (plus 6 months on-the-job) and should expect to only find one person with an 18 intelligence. This would be someone in the top .007% of society (if I'm doing my math right).

Sure, it's not too unfeasible that players are portraying crack heroes who fit this bill - but with the way D&D plays, it's kind of hard to imagine that this dream team of Olympic level roustabouts gathers together at a bar (or worse, throw together by chance under dubious circumstances) and decides to go crack some heads in the local dungeon.

What do you think of character's ability scores? Where should they fall? Are 18's in the prime ability dandy or do you think they should be much lower?

You'll get no disagreements from me. I'd like 3d6 to be a viable character generation option, with 4d6 drop the lowest or 6 + 2d6 to be high power options (with point buy and arrays to match). If nothing else, presenting 3d6 ties the game to its roots, and illustrates why ability scores exist and what they mean.

I'm with you. And I would go one step further. I'd cap the mortal maximum at 18 and go back to the bell-curve of stat-bonuses that Basic/X used: -3 for a 3, -2 for a 4-5, -1 for a 6-8, +1 for a 13-15, +2 for a 16-17, and +3 for a 18. (Yeah, I know, Charisma was on a different scale. I'd nix that aspect.)

As for racial differentiation, abilities work so much better than stat enhancements, anyway.

Your math is a bit off. 1 in 216 (6 * 6 * 6) is the chance for a specific attribute to be 18.

So it's substantially more common than you're saying. The chance for a character to have at least one 18 is just shy of 1 in 36 (because a tiny fraction of characters will end up with multiple 18s).

That still means, of the nearly 600-odd people in my HS class, we probably had three people with 18 Intelligence. But we'd have had roughly 20 people with an 18 in something, most of whom would want to do something related to their talent. That's at least enough to form an adventuring party of folks with 18s in their prime requisites.

Math aside, I agree it would be nice to go back to stats centered on the 10-11 range as a default. But I have my own rolling system I'm unlikely to change, so I'm not super worried about it.

Cheers!
Kinak

Stormonu said:

Well, if you do the math, having an 18 in any one of your scores (rolling 3d6 for each) means that in the average population, one person out of 216 will have an 18. Going a little further, having an 18 in any one particular ability is a 1 in 1,296 chance. (Can someone do the math for a 15? I'd have to do it out longhand myself).

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20/216 rolls on 3d6 are 15 or higher (10@15, 6@16,3@17,1@18 - 15@14, 21@13, 25@12, 27@11, 27@10 and then declining at the same rate). At least, that's what I make it.

With the current bloat of ability score increases, we could definitely afford to go back to 3d6 if we wanted to.

Rune said:

I'm with you. And I would go one step further. I'd cap the mortal maximum at 18 and go back to the bell-curve of stat-bonuses that Basic/X used: -3 for a 3, -2 for a 4-5, -1 for a 6-8, +1 for a 13-15, +2 for a 16-17, and +3 for a 18. (Yeah, I know, Charisma was on a different scale. I'd nix that aspect.)

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The nice of it, is that even if we can only get these in the form of house rules, there is practically nothing else required to change in the game because of these.

Stormonu said:

I was just mulling over D&D character stats, with one of my gripes being that I wished that the game expected that characters only had a 15 in their best ability score, and that anything higher was really, really rare (whereas, with the point buy games I've seen since 3E, 18 seems to be the minimum).

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You've probably been playing with too high point buy if your'e seeing lots of 18s, especially for humans.

The standard array, for 25 point buy, is 15 14 13 12 10 8. However, players sometimes drop other stats (so multiple 8s, or at least 10s) to get an 18 or DMs allow higher point buy. (I find wizards, who have one stat to rule them all, are far more powerful when they can get an 18 plus a few other high stats, and that's only possible with a high point buy, such as 32. Pathfinder allows you to buy stats down to as low as 7 before racial mods; I don't know if 3.x does that too.)

I don't think dice rolled stats can ever be balanced. Someone can roll very high, very low, or get multiple decent stats which don't support a character concept (see wizard example) or get a single very high stat and a bunch of middling stats which also don't support a character concept (eg a monk).

Adventurers are a "cut above" and I wouldn't expect their ability scores to reflect those of the population. They're not randomly picked out of villages and cities, nor are they drafted; they specifically choose to become adventurers. Adventurers with "random stats" make about as much sense as police officers with random stats.

As [MENTION=6694112]Kinak[/MENTION] pointed out, your math is off by quite a bit. I believe you exhibiting this fallacy:

Benny Hill said:

The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.

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In fact, the odds of the two events are independent, i.e one occurrence does not affect the other, just like D&D rolling for ability scores. Thus, the odds of any individual having an 18 in a particular score are 1 in 216, but the odds of having an 18 in any of the six abilities are much greater than that, and multiple 18's occasionally happen.

Math aside, 18's are still not supposed to be all that common in the world, I generally assume that the PCs are Really Important or Destined for Greatness or the like. In D&D, I usually expect my PCs to have an 18 in their prime requisite.

To me, a fighter with 15 Str is probably going to make a good living and advance a few levels over his lifetime, but is not going to have the kind of career I expect my PC fighter to have. The characters we read about in adventure stores do not have 15's int heir prime requisites. Maybe for a game that doesn't imply that its PC's are great heroes, I'd take a different approach.

I don't like rolling for stats, I end up wanting to fudge them, or let a player fudge them, so why bother? Having one character with all crappy ability scores and one character with all awesome ability scores just doesn't work for me.

The last time we rolled 4d6, drop the lowest, we had one player getting something like 4 18's while the rest of us where pretty normal.

The game is plenty random as it is, so I really do prefer point buy. I do see the point in having a smaller budget though, but then they need to have modifiers like they did in AD&D where having a 8 in a stat often didn't mean anything mechanically compared to the character with a 12. (Something I am all for)

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

I don't think dice rolled stats can ever be balanced. Someone can roll very high, very low, or get multiple decent stats which don't support a character concept (see wizard example) or get a single very high stat and a bunch of middling stats which also don't support a character concept (eg a monk).

Adventurers are a "cut above" and I wouldn't expect their ability scores to reflect those of the population. They're not randomly picked out of villages and cities, nor are they drafted; they specifically choose to become adventurers. Adventurers with "random stats" make about as much sense as police officers with random stats.

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It's true that random ability scores are inherently unbalanced, but they can still be fun. It's more like molding a character instead of building one from scratch.

Point buy and a standard array are more balanced are better when you intend to realize a specific character. But they also lack that element of having to deal with the unplanned.

As for being a cut above, that's also a playstyle thing. It's been the assumption for the past couple editions, and was a very common variant before that. I'm all for keeping it as the default. I just want the 3d6 option to still be viable for those who really do want to play the normal person who seeks a life of adventure.