Ever see a Strengh 18/00 rolled legitimately?

[Particle_Man]

Once, I rolled it (I have been playing since 1982). He was a paladin too! 2nd ed, with a kit, as I recall. Alas, the game didn't last that long.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I saw it once, back in 1978. Someone new to D&D rolled up his first character. Rolled 3d6 for Str and got an 18. I handed him the percentage dice and told him to roll them, and he rolled 00.

Never seen it legimitimately rolled apart from that circumstance.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

None for me, but I do recall my brother rolling up a cavalier under the 2e UA rules. You roll percentile for social class and ... yup, 00. His character's dad was a king. Never seen it before or since.

 

[Votan]

We had a time when we wanted to break from power gaming. I think we did 4d6 drop one. The player who got an 18 strength threw the percentile dice and it came up '00'. It was a very shocking turn as illegitimate exceptional strength had been a feature of previous game sessions.

The overall character, aside from the strength, was pretty unimpressive.

 

[Corathon]

I saw it once. Rolled in front of me.

 

[Abraxas]

I have rolled 18/00 once (using 4d6, drop lowest, allocate) and have seen it rolled once. I have also gotten 18/81, 18/27 and an 18/05. Between the years 1978 to 2000. Including a 2 year stretch where we would have a TPK every time we got to 5th level. So - a lot of characters created - not a lot of 18 STR scores.

On a much more humorous note I once saw a player get 00 for a system shock roll followed up by getting 00 on a resurrection roll after saying - both times - I only fail if I roll double zero. That was one dead character.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Twice. I rolled one for my 1E Cavalier (what a waste as the Cavalier we were using got to add +2d10% to his Strength every so many levels) and my brother in law rolled 18/00 for his dwarf barbarian. Those are the only 2 I ever witnessed but it was by far the most common stat of people I played with for fighter.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Okay, yes this DID happen....
Have I seen an 18/00 yes. We had three players who were playing fighters (me included). We rolled at the table. I rolled an 18/98, another rolled an 18/99 and the third an 18/00. While this may have been the "dream team" fighter line-up it was short lived... When we rolled for hit points, we all rolled 1s, even with a +1 or +2 to hp, we were more fragile than the mage. We never made it past first level.

I actually remember this game fondly, believe it or not.

 

[Heathen72]

Okay, this is bugging me. The odds are NOT 1 in 216,000 of you getting a fighter with 18/00 strength. Or rather, they're only 1 in 216,000 if you cannot allocate your stats to suit the relevant attributes, because 1 in 216K means that you are rolling 3d6 only once and taking the result.

The actual odds would be something like 216/6(100), or 3,600, which is a bit more reasonable and keeping in line with the experiences of the players on this thread. Actually, I think the odds would be even better for the player; this is using a straight 3d6 roll, and I'm sure a lot of people used 4d6 fairly often.

Wik, I am sad that you are distressed. And indeed, as you say, the odds are not 1 in 216,000.

However, if you read my post, the first which made mention of the statistic in question, you might find that the odds referred to are actually 1 in 21,600 - not 216,000. You also might find that I was clearly making reference to the days when you rolled your stats straight, without assigning them - which means, as you say, that you got one chance per character of rolling an 18 strength, and hence only one chance per character of rolling percentile dice.

My post was ultimately about what to consider legit. 18/00 isn't that special when you you roll 4d6 keep best 3, assign how you like, roll again when you roll a boring character because some feeble GM lets you. Hell, I know a fair few GM's who were happy to let you roll characters until you had one that had at least an 18. Roll percentile on that and you get a character with 18/00 1 in every 100 characters. But who cares? And if you are are then rolling a new character every week or if the only 18/00 you ever rolled was when you were playing nethack it becomes even less remarkable.

Legit means different things to different people. But rolling 18/00 - with one shot at the roll - mean that your character would truly be one out of the box - a potential Cuchulain or Ulysses

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

I actually rolled an 18/00 for a character called Thrin back in 1988 who began life a 3rd level Elf Cavalier and ended up as a 117th-level Human Lesser God.

Immortality