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<blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 7796255" data-attributes="member: 6787503">The issue this thread is asking to address, if I understand correctly, is the “swinginess” of 3d6 that some of the posters brought up in the other thread, the problem being that the distribution curve of 3d6 is somewhat “flatter” than that of 4d6 drop lowest, thus producing proportionately more high and low results relative to 4d6 drop lowest and proportionately fewer middling results, again relative to 4d6 drop lowest. This is what I understand those posters to have been saying, and I agree that this is a property of using 3d6, and since I don’t have any experience using 3d6 score generation in an actual game that I can remember, I have no reason to doubt that the swinginess was a noticeable issue at their tables. You can remove the relative swinginess but get the same average by using “averaging dice” which are marked 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, or use the “averaging method” that Gygax gives for “general characters” in the 1E DMG, which is to roll 3d6 and count 1’s as 3’s, and 6’s as 4’s. This will produce an average result of 10.5 and a range of 6 to 15. This may make extreme results a bit too rare for adventurers, however. If you like the high proportion of middling results but want the full 3 to 18 range, you can use 15d2 - 12. It produces a result very close to a normal distribution.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hriston, post: 7796255, member: 6787503"] The issue this thread is asking to address, if I understand correctly, is the “swinginess” of 3d6 that some of the posters brought up in the other thread, the problem being that the distribution curve of 3d6 is somewhat “flatter” than that of 4d6 drop lowest, thus producing proportionately more high and low results relative to 4d6 drop lowest and proportionately fewer middling results, again relative to 4d6 drop lowest. This is what I understand those posters to have been saying, and I agree that this is a property of using 3d6, and since I don’t have any experience using 3d6 score generation in an actual game that I can remember, I have no reason to doubt that the swinginess was a noticeable issue at their tables. You can remove the relative swinginess but get the same average by using “averaging dice” which are marked 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, or use the “averaging method” that Gygax gives for “general characters” in the 1E DMG, which is to roll 3d6 and count 1’s as 3’s, and 6’s as 4’s. This will produce an average result of 10.5 and a range of 6 to 15. This may make extreme results a bit too rare for adventurers, however. If you like the high proportion of middling results but want the full 3 to 18 range, you can use 15d2 - 12. It produces a result very close to a normal distribution. [/QUOTE]

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