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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 8119248" data-attributes="member: 6787503"><p>I think there's an interesting (to me) difference here in how we're each looking at ability score generation. It seems to me like your assumption is that there's a fixed set of scores that a player is somehow predetermined to roll, and that their choice of race is weighed in relation to this assumption, that there's just this one set of numbers. So the racial modifiers are always compared directly to one another because the assumption is that they'll be added to the same number. This seems entirely rational, and I tend to think of things this way myself, but I'm not sure if it's the only or even right way to look at it. The alternative view is that when you choose a race (and class) first, before rolling, you're choosing a character whose scores are each a field of possibilities. Your highest score can reasonably be expected to be anything from 10 to 18, so for an orc wizard that's an Intelligence of 8 to 16, while for a gnome wizard, an Intelligence of 12 to 20. The two characters overlap in the 12 to 16 range, which the orc has a roughly 93% chance of coming away with, while the gnome's chance of having a score that low is a still sizable 20%. So around 19% of the time, the two characters are roughly equal in the Intelligence department, assuming they both put their high score there. Now, obviously the gnome has better odds of having a high Intelligence, but I think it's a long way from being an "always better" choice. It's just better most of the time, and the thing is you never know when the dice are going to give your orc a high (enough) Intelligence or your gnome an Intelligence that's less so.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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