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(Discussion) Character Points Change Issue
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<blockquote data-quote="orsal" data-source="post: 1596693" data-attributes="member: 16016"><p>I set up a spreadsheet a little while ago to compute it, and I found that the average ability score with 4d6 minus lowest is 12.24. I didn't do it randomly; I had the spreadsheet do all 1296 possible rolls of 1296. So I should have gotten the exact answer. The person you're quoting was either misremembering, or had a fluke. (If you roll enough dice, and "a ridiculous number of times" should be enough, it is almost certain that you will get a good approximation to the correct average.)</p><p></p><p>But the average *points* per character isn't 4.24*6=25.4, it's somewhat higher. If I recall, I used the same spreadsheet to calculate it as 29 point something or other. I don't recall how I treated scores below 8 for that conversion; I think I just called them all zero points. You'd get a slightly lower average if you counted them negative.</p><p></p><p>The reason you can't just plug the average ability score into the point buy formula to get the average number of points is that the conversion is non-linear. Think of it this way: the average of 16 and 8 is 12, but the average of 10 points and 0 points is 5 points, corresponding to a score of 13. If you average a bunch of ability scores you get a lower average than if you average a the corresponding point counts.</p><p></p><p>That said, I completely agree with your last paragraph. The difference isn't big enough to get excited about, and therefore I think it best not to fiddle with it. (However, it looks like we're losing that one.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="orsal, post: 1596693, member: 16016"] I set up a spreadsheet a little while ago to compute it, and I found that the average ability score with 4d6 minus lowest is 12.24. I didn't do it randomly; I had the spreadsheet do all 1296 possible rolls of 1296. So I should have gotten the exact answer. The person you're quoting was either misremembering, or had a fluke. (If you roll enough dice, and "a ridiculous number of times" should be enough, it is almost certain that you will get a good approximation to the correct average.) But the average *points* per character isn't 4.24*6=25.4, it's somewhat higher. If I recall, I used the same spreadsheet to calculate it as 29 point something or other. I don't recall how I treated scores below 8 for that conversion; I think I just called them all zero points. You'd get a slightly lower average if you counted them negative. The reason you can't just plug the average ability score into the point buy formula to get the average number of points is that the conversion is non-linear. Think of it this way: the average of 16 and 8 is 12, but the average of 10 points and 0 points is 5 points, corresponding to a score of 13. If you average a bunch of ability scores you get a lower average than if you average a the corresponding point counts. That said, I completely agree with your last paragraph. The difference isn't big enough to get excited about, and therefore I think it best not to fiddle with it. (However, it looks like we're losing that one.) [/QUOTE]
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