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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7262696" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Expanding on your 'self-serving' point, I am reminded of the 1E section about NPC scores. As time went on, Gygax personally and DMs generally found tricks to make their DMing life easier.So the original idea was that PCs and monsters were the only thing that mattered, and dungeons were the only location that mattered, because it was 'just a game' and was intended to be about PCs fighting monsters in dungeons and stealing their stuff. So, how to generate PCs was the only thing that mattered.Later, Gygax realised the potential of the role-playing hobby, and by the time the 1e DMG came around he put a lot of effort into world building. The different, cheaty ways of getting PC stats were just ways of quickly generating stats that were 'better' than normal. It didn't alter the concept of 3d6 in order, it was just a cheaty, easy tool to get what you wanted.It has been mentioned that the 'd-average' (with six sides numbered 2,3,3,4,4,5) were the way that NPCs were generated, as if this somehow disproved the '3d6 in order' concept. But it doesn't.First, '3d-average' was not a refutation or replacement of '3d6 in order', it was just a cheaty way to get 'average' scores in exactly the same way that 4d6k3 was a cheaty way to get 'better' scores; each was 'average' or 'better' compared to the background assumption of the 3d6 bell curve.Second, the very same section that mentions '3d-average' for NPCs says that you roll '3d-average' for the scores that are not relevant to the NPC's role, but roll 3d6 for stats that matter, or even use a PC stat generation method (like 4d6k3) for stats that are crucial to the role of that NPC.So how that section was intended to function is that the DM decides what the role of this NPC is (such as 'guard' or 'sage'), decides which stats are crucial, which are important, and which don't really matter for that role. For a guard, you might say that Str and Con are crucial, Dex matters, the others don't. Therefore, this NPC's stats would use 4d6k3 to roll his Str/Con, 3d6 to roll Dex, and 3d-average to roll Int/Wis/Cha.Different NPcs will have different roles and therefore have different stats that matter to that role. A sage might roll Int on 4d6k3, Wis/Cha on 3d6, and Str/Dex/Con on 3d-average.ALL of these NPCs ARE part of the population! They have stats which range from 3 to 18, just like the 3d6 in order.Conceptually, the process of 'being born with a set of rolled stats' and 'finding a job/role' resembles how the process of evolution by natural selection works. In evolution, mutations are random. But the resulting creature is the tested against its environment, and the set of mutations which is that creature may or may not survive to breed and pass on those mutations. This means that although the mutations themselves were random, the resulting survivors are not random but are the ones best suited to survive.So in D&D the 3d6 in order for each and every person is not the end of the process. If you want to hire a set of guards, you care about how strong and tough they are, but how knowledgeable they may be isn't something you are testing. If you are looking for a sage then you are looking for knowledge, but you don't care if the sage is weak or strong. In fact, if the sage was both knowledgeable and strong he would probably not just be a mere sage!This brings us to the 'self-serving' roll six times and arrange, or arrange the standard array, or assign your points. None of those processes refutes the background assumption of 3d6 in order. They just simulate the process that the best suited of those randomly rolled arrays gets hired to be fighters or paladins or wizards and so on.On another note, if you see a PC with stats of 15/14/13/12/10/8, this is not unrealistic for a person generated on 3d6 in order, although it is 'better' than average and is what we are looking for in adventurers. But if the entire party just happens to have rolled exactly the same six scores then this is unrealistic. And if every PC ever always has the same six scores or the same point-buy total and never ever has a score below 8 or above 15, this is, for me, game-breakingly unrealistic.Game-mastering tools have moved on since 13. Now, instead of rolling the guard's Str/Con on 4d6k3, Dex on 3d6 and Int/Wis/Cha on 3d-average, DMs and game companies provide pre-generated guards and sages and commoners and so forth, and just set the stats to suit the NPC's role in the game.This doesn't refute the background assumption of 3d6 in order! It's just an easy, cheaty way to get what the DM needs. Indeed, the pre-gen NPC scores are assigned with that 3d6 bell-curve in mind. How strong should a typical guard be? Well, look at the bell curve and decide where an average guard's Str should be.</blockquote>

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