Rolling all 18s

[Aust Diamondew]

"I've never done it nor seen anyone else do it."

not even close! why the poll Aust?

I made this poll mostly out of curiosity. It's always been my dream to roll 6 18s. I'd proably play a Paladin or come up with other really cool character cocept.
The most I've ever done was 2 18s and few other good stats. The most I've ever seen was 3 18s.

 

[Lars Frehse]

One guy I used to play with had magic dice. With them, it was possible to have all 18s. After he and I had all 18s, our DM said something about "loaded dice", and other mean things, and forced us to reroll with his dice.

Oh, he of little faith...

 

[aliensex]

Some freinds way back in high school had an "18" rolling method. It involved holding the d6 in the palm of your hand, with one corner resting in between the two middle fingers where they meet the palm. You had to have the right corner resting there, then pull your hand back, letting the die roll out at the right speed. It would come up as either a 6 (most if the time if you did it right), or a 1. It took for bloody ever to roll the character (3d6, 1 die at a time ), but they came up with all 18s.

Since 1's were somewhat common too, the also had a few characters with 3's mixed with 18's

 

[Sniktch]

Never did it nor seen it done in 20+ years of D&D. I think if it ever happened I would ask the player to re-roll or assign him an ECL

 

[njorgard]

Staggering Odds...

According to my calculations, the earth would be hit by extinction level event objects a couple of million times before this would happen. So if you have ever legitimately done this (riiiight.....) you should consider yourself the luckiest being in the universe.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I don't care how improbable it is, I'd consider myself far luckier to do something more mundane, like win the Powerball drawing. Or stumble across an affection-starved set of Swedish triplets.

 

[HeavyG]

One of my players once claimed to have rolled 5 18s and 1 16. Before I arrived, of course. He wanted to play a 1E barbarian so it was convenient (they had a max of 16 in wisdom, IIRC).

 

[The Sigil]

The odds of getting 6 18's on 4d6 drop lowest is 2.479 * 10 ^ 10, or around 25 billion to one. Barring just sitting down and rolling dice over and over, or random character generators, chances are slim there is more than one person who has ever done this legitimately.

This assumes a fair die and no skill on the part of the die roller to affect the outcome of the roll.

I personally have rolled all 18's multiple times... all were when I was around 12 or 13 years old when I learned how to exert considerable control over the result of a die roll based on the way I throw the die (haven't used loaded dice, but have "rigged" my rolls based on the way I throw them). Just did it to show "it can be done" but never used a character generated off such throws.

I am also familiar with other techniques for affecting the outcome of a die roll (weighted dice, shaved/rounded corners, etc.) and once caught a player trying to use a weighted die. I called him on it and the die went away, never to be seen again.

Of course, it doesn't much matter for me these days (as a DM) - but IMC I give players 74 total attribute points (no point buy, just that the sum of Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha must be 74). Since the average of 4d6 drop lowest is slightly higher than 74, I figure this is fair... and my players love it. It's high enough that you can max one attribute without killing yourself elsewhere, but low enough that some tough choices still have to be made. My players who DM have taken to doing the same (though most of them allow a sum of 76 or 77). I've found that doing it that way takes a LOT of fighting out of character creation.

And I have never thrown nor seen thrown all 18's on fair dice, using fair die rolls.

--The Sigil

 

[Cedric]

Best I've seen was a roll of mine, my first D&D character...

18, 17, 16, 17, 18, 18.

3d6 in order.

I became a monk...also rolled 99 for psionics. It was disgusting..this was 1ed.

Cedric

 

[The Fifth Elephant]

The exact probability of rolling an 18 on 4d6 drop the lowest is 1.62037%, or 1 out of every 61.7 rolls. 61.7^6 power is about 55,247,704,840, so that's how many characters on average would have to be rolled to get one with 6 18s.