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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8118126" data-attributes="member: 29398">Agreed.And to me, that says all those who fall between those outer 16-ish % extremes should have a bonus of +0 - they're close enough to average to be, well, average.  This is why I don't like the 3e-4e-5e linear bonus system where only 10 and 11 give +0 - the +0 range should be more like 8-13.If you fail 25% of the time and I fail 45% of the time, at a wide variety of things, depending on which of us was closer to the typical average I'd be saying either you were born lucky or I was born unlucky.Thing is, I'm more willing to accept this disparity as part of the game than many are, I think.Hell, I'll attack point-buy all day long for a ton of reasons but 'too overpowered' won't be one of 'em. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />You've obviously never seen me try to cook. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I can destroy a meal just by passing through the kitchen while it's being made.Where this is something I don't mind, as in my view everyone has the same opportunity to contribute; with said contribution coming through their role-play, what they say in-character at the table, and their interactions with other players/characters and with the game world.  Even a character with Int 6 and well-played to it by its player can contribute greatly*. If, however, you're talking about straight-up DPR, combat effectiveness, and that stuff as being the only ways to meaningfully contribute then we're not on the same page at all.  Sure, you don't want your character to be completely useless in combat, but if due to its base stats its average DPR is 6.8 instead of 8.8, in the end who flippin' cares?  I don't.* - the most wonderfully entertaining character I've seen in many a year had Charisma 6, and the player ran it brilliantly: the character simply could not utter two sentences without offending someone - or a lot of someones.  Caused no end of headaches for the party having to clean up the diplomatic messes he made (and yes, he saw himself as a diplomat!), but for sheer entertainment and amusement value he couldn't be beat. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />In the 3e game I played, as none of us knew the system yet and we had no idea how lethal it might be, we started out with 2 PCs each: roll-and-rearrange.  One of my two had a starting stat average around 15, with nothing lower than 12 and a high of 18.  The other averaged just over 11, with a range of 6 to 15.  I was easily able to come up with backstories and distinctive personalities etc. for both, very different from each other.One of these two turned out rather ordinary, and while it had a reasonable enough career in the end it didn't amount to all that much.  The other turned out to be perhaps the best character I've ever had in any game.  Care to guess which was which?With these numbers, are you referring to real life or to the game stats?If it's the game stats, I agree the 3-18 bell curve is considerably flatter than what we see in real life: there's fewer geniuses than 3-18 would indicate, and also fewer idiots.  But it's what we have to work with.  To get a steeper (and thus more realistic) bell curve would involve rolling 6d6 and using half the total, rounded up if less than 10 or down if higher than 11 and flipping a coin if the result was 10.5.I get that.I guess I just see adventuring as being at the extreme end of high-risk high-reward, and that the high-risk part is going to lead to something of a funnel effect no matter what even if the adventurers are a cut above the norm.  In fact, the lethality is almost a different issue: you could quite easily run a low-lethality campaign in which characters are made using 3d6 in order; by the same token you could have a highly lethal campaign where every character starts with 16s-plus across the board.The 'special-ness' issue for me is more of how seamlessly the adventuring population can fit in and be - and be believable as - a part of the overall population in the setting.I tend to prefer the latter, for two reasons.  First, it reflects the sense of adventuring being a very high-risk occupation where only the lucky survive; and second, it's often far more entertaining for all when they do screw up than when they don't. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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