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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7262121" data-attributes="member: 996">Adventurers aren't the whole population, though.  People in the real world who have gone through similar selection processes, OTOH, likely do have more similar capabilities.  Professional athletes or elite soldiers or whatever, would be 'realistically' analogous to adventurers.  Regardless of the character generation method you choose, the DM has complete latitude with the rest of the population, and thus, variability is exactly what he decides to make it.And, besides point-buy doesn't give everyone the same stats or even the same array (there's a lot of possible different arrays under point buy, nor am I aware of a consensus 'optimal' point-buy array), there'll like as not be 6 different arrays in a party of 6 created via point-buy - for that matter, random generation, being random, could give two or more characters in the party the same array.  But, you are right about one thing:  /balance/ is not a feature built into reality the way it needs to be in games to make them playable.  Because nobody can just not show up to a session of reality without even phoning ahead.  ;PSeriously, though, (as seriously as possible, which is not very) balance (if you like that sorta thing, and if you do, why are you playing D&D) is a strength of point-buy or standard array and/or a weakness of random generation.  'Realism' isn't simply 'not balance' - something can be unrealistic /and/ imbalanced, for instance - but, balance is often going to get in the way of realism, especially for those instances in which reality kinda sucks. That's entirely up to the DM:  they're his cookies, he can cut them how he likes. (Or did you mean NPCs who cut cookies - like the 'Keebler' elven sub-race?)</blockquote>

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