Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 6850288" data-attributes="member: 16814">Game statistics tied to the value.  You yourself mentioned how a given STR means you can lift a given amount, did you not?  This is new information added to the ability score that is not present in the 3d6 roll.  The 3d6 roll has not such information until and unless you transform it into an ability score.  At that point, it loses it's rational nature, becomes ordinal or interval data (depending on application) and gains new meanings.Yes, you've got it.  The result of rolling 3d6 generates a number.  That number is just a number, and has all of the meanings that just numbers have.  An 18 is just the number 18.  Six times greater than the number three, and one more than 17.  I am not asserting any such thing.  IAs you say, such comparisons are meaningless except to say that given number is more or less than another given number, and to compare the exact game mechanics assigned arbitrarily to the rankings.  The roll on 3d6 is used to randomly (random just means 'we don't know or can't predict the cause) assign a value, yes, but a single roll is not a statistical model like the normal distribution.  The distribution of many 3d6 rolls has information that isn't transferable when you transform those numbers into ability score.Frex.  I roll 3d6.  I get a 12.  I know that 12 is 4 times a 3, and one more than 11.  If I continue to roll 3d6, I get a set of numbers that I can run a statistical model on.  The parameters of this model happens to have a nice normal distribution.  I am happy.Now, I decide to play D&D.  I assign my roll of 12 to CON.  Now, I do not know that as 12 CON is four times a 3 CON.  I have lost information.  Depending on the edition, I do know that the difference between a 12 CON and an 11 CON is the same as between a 12 CON and a 13 CON, though (both are half steps towards a new bonus).  So I can do some stats with interval data (in fact, most of the same I can run with rational data).  But the results don't have the same information contained as that of the straight rolls, even though the distributions will look identical.  They are not the same thing.  I further pollute this by adding additional information to my CON ability, such as bonus hit points per level, the derived attribute modifier, and so on.  All of these bits of information inform my understanding of my 12 CON, but aren't present in my understanding of a 12 rolled on 3d6.Ding.  You should stop right here and consider your words.  3d6 doesn't measure anything.  IQ attempts to rank intelligences, and so is a kind of measure (one that only says this is more than that as you go higher).  So, how can you possibly compare the measurement of intelligence that is IQ to the total non-measurement of the 3d6 distribution?  You can't.  Any argument that tries to is automatically false.  This continues when you try to compare the non-measurement of 3d6 to the measurement of INT ability scores, another ordinal (if occasionally interval) data set?  You can't swap from one measurement scale to a non-measurement scale and then to a different measurement scale.  The information lost in every step is huge, in this case most of it between IQ and 3d6.This is the crux of my statement.</blockquote>

Verification