In 3.0 Forgotten Realms campaign settings, 95% of NPC are "GMO ubermensch" when it comes to their starting ability scores
Oh no just 3.0 buddy, back in 2E, they put out a couple of books of like "heroes of the realms", and it was an absolute horror show of characters with outrageous stats (that didn't match up with their background or how they were described at all), characters who just outright rules-illegal in various wild ways (again, not matching up with their backgrounds in may cases or having any kind of explanation), and characters who had really grotesquely overpowered abilities or magic items (some of which matched up with their backstories, but most of which were just ridiculous), and the odd randomly wimpy guy thrown in there "for balance" or something I guess.
Some characters it was fine - Alias and the other clones having straight-17s always worked, because they're created beings and were designed to be good at everything (they are literally GMO!). Or the spellfire lady having spellfire (which PCs could get via some book or another, possibly one of these). But a lot of them? It was just like "Why?".
At least it always made you feel good about the PCs in your campaign. We had this terrifying Fighter/Speciality Priest of Clangeddin, which was both RAW legal and clearly intended to be legal RAI, but was built on a giant pile of exceptions* (sadly all definitely intentional exceptions...), and I always thought he was an outrage, but compared to even the moderate offenders in these books, he was a pussycat.
* = Speciality Priests can't multi-class. Except Clangeddin ones can, with Fighter. Speciality Priests can't take kits (and MC characters sorta can't either), except Clangeddin ones specifically can, and they can specifically take Fighter/Cleric ones even though they're Fighter/SP. MC characters can't have weapon specialization, except there's a Fighter/Cleric kit in the Complete Book of Dwarves which allows them to. SP of Clangeddin can also specifically take NWP and fighting-style specialization proficiencies from Combat & Tactics. It's really clearly laid out in the SP of Clangeddin section in Demihuman Deities 2E, but good god...