Stats for Heros

[Altamont Ravenard]

If I may offer a different perspective...

The chance of getting 12 or better while rolling 3d6 is 81/216, or 37.5%
The chance of getting 12 or better while rolling 4d6 drop lowest is 799/1296, or 61,7%

The chance of getting a character who's stats are all 12 or better while rolling 3d6 is (81/216)^6, or 0.28%
The chance of getting a character who's stats are all 12 or better while rolling 4d6 drop lowest is (799/1296)^6, or 5,5%

The chance of getting a "heroic" character (all stats 12 or better) in a random population of 1000 while rolling 3d6 is 1-(1-0.28%)^1000, or 93.3%
The chance of getting a "heroic" character (all stats 12 or better) in a random population of 1000 while rolling 4d6 drop lowest is 1-(1-5.5%)^1000, or 100%

AR

 

[CCamfield]

a hero is a pc willing to take the risks necessary to be seen, heard, and recognized. whatever their stats/abilities.

3d6 six times in order.

"Pardon me, mathter, but here are the boneth from the tombth thhhat you wanted. I'm going to the thurgery to try to improve my thtrength again..." *lurches off, dragging a foot behind him*

(That's the sort of character I end up with when rolling 3d6 straight )


In the current campaign I'm in, the DM outlined three different options and I jokingly said "why not let us pick the best results" and I was shocked when he did. 4d6 drop lowest, an "organic" system which was 4d6 drop lowest in order, with one swap, and 32 point buy. I ended up using the standard 4d6, but I could have gotten pretty good results with 32 points.

40 or more seems kind of excessive to me. I think it's okay for characters to have average values in SOME stats. (My inclination with that many points would be to buy at least a 12-14 in everything)

 

[John Crichton]

(That's the sort of character I end up with when rolling 3d6 straight )

LOL!!

Sounds like a personal problem.

 

[Valiantheart]

The current PBs suck. You can go with a 32 point buy just dont increase the cost of purchasing a stat and you can make everybody happy. Heroes are supposed to be heroes not cookie cutter character.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

The current PBs suck. You can go with a 32 point buy just dont increase the cost of purchasing a stat and you can make everybody happy. Heroes are supposed to be heroes not cookie cutter character.

32 point buy gives quite a bit of leeway and allows for above-average stats in all areas (if that's your thing). I used it for my Planescape/Star*Drive campaign, and between five players with ten characters, no two are even remotely close-- and this is with weighted values in place.

Several of those characters have at least one 18, including one 18 STR/20 DEX, an 18 CHA with 17 INT/17 WIS, and one 18 DEX/18 INT.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

In a very low magic 36-point buy campaign, most of the characters went the way of "a few high stats and a few dump stats" (Paladin, Fighter, Barbarian and Cleric) whereas I seem to be the only one who spread my stats more evenly (Rogue/Barbarian).

AR

 

[Elf Witch]

No need to explain or get offended. I'm simply looking in my game book at the average scores for a human. They are 10-11. I don't need a basic statistical analysis to see that.

Talking about the upper crust of the population of course means their attributes will be higher. I get that and I get the numbers.

My point before when mentioning the character classes was that it is not all about the numbers. There may be a million people with the potential to be heroes but the number of actual heroes (PC's in this case) is considerably smaller. Besides, the game is taylored for all types of stat ranges and should be. One should not have to have the equivalent of a high point buy to be a hero, IMO. And if we are talking about the core D&D game, when you strip a 20th level hero of all his magic items he's about as useful as a normal 1st level character so the game is less about individual stats at that point anyway.

To get away from the numbers just for a second - I guess all I am saying is that just because there are many other individuals that populate a game world with similar or better statistics doesn't diminish the PC's role as heroes.


To the original poster - alot depends on the DM and the group. There is a give and take to be considered when PC stats are concerned. A DM can scale a game to make a it fit any combination of characters and attributes using the rules system. So, the 25 pt party should, in theory, have just as much fun as the 35 pt one because the DM should be scaling the challenges to what the group wants and enjoys. It can be a ton of fun to play a character with all high (15+) stats and I've done it. However, over time that character became terribly stale and didn't jive well with the party because the stats were just too high and unbalancing (giving the DM problems when running encounters).

So I bring it back to the group aspect. Whatever works best for the group (DM + players = group).

In our Kalamar game the stats run betwen 28 points to 58 points they were rolled. The person playing the 28 point character is having a great time with his character he plays a cleric home made character. I play the next lowest at 32 I hated it I played a rogue/fighter archer my highest stat at first was a 14 which I put in dex but it bites after a while when the party wizard has a better dex, con and is good at hitting with his crossbow as I was with the bow. Now later on at higher levels it got better as I got more feats and magic items.

I think ot depends on the spread of the rolls and the DM ours was a novice so for a long time he didn't really do anything about tailoring things. What he did was allow the lower stated characters to get a couple of bonus feats to even things up that helped quite a bit.

 

[Endur]

Conan and Aragorn are interesting characters.

Both might not be standard humans. i.e. Numenoreans and Cimmerians might get racial bonuses to some statistics.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we aren't giving racial bonuses to Conan, several of his stats are going to be extremely high. Strength is probably 18. None of his stats are below average (i.e. below 10). Charisma is likely to be high. Intelligence and Wisdom are both reasonably high as well; Conan was the thinking man's barbarian and often defeated foes that were invulnerable to a sword. Constitution and Dexterity have to be high as well, because Conan many times relied upon his speed and toughness to survive attacks that would have killed a lesser man.

Aragorn doesn't need the 18 strength. However, he almost certainly has the 18 in constitution. And probably Charisma as well. His intelligence and wisdom are high, certainly higher than Conan's. His strength and dexterity need to be sufficient to fight Trolls and other such foes.

 

[John Crichton]

In our Kalamar game the stats run betwen 28 points to 58 points they were rolled. The person playing the 28 point character is having a great time with his character he plays a cleric home made character. I play the next lowest at 32 I hated it I played a rogue/fighter archer my highest stat at first was a 14 which I put in dex but it bites after a while when the party wizard has a better dex, con and is good at hitting with his crossbow as I was with the bow. Now later on at higher levels it got better as I got more feats and magic items.

Damn, that is quite a difference in character stats. The system tends to even itself out after a while (as you noticed with your character). Really high ability scores really stand out at lower levels as less gear is available. Some people like things that way, others don't but that is the way the system works.

I'm exactly sure how I would handle playing a PC that had, say, that 28 pt buy equivalent compared to someone with a 30 pt higher character. I usually roll pretty well (when I get a chance to actually play) and have a character with either the highest stats or close enough to the rest of the party to say that the character is useful. Some extra feats andwould certainly help but I would rather have everyone towards the lower end of the spectrum rather than the really high. At that point, the system starts to slog.

I think ot depends on the spread of the rolls and the DM ours was a novice so for a long time he didn't really do anything about tailoring things. What he did was allow the lower stated characters to get a couple of bonus feats to even things up that helped quite a bit.

This is true. Novice DMs will certainly have a much more difficult time with unbalanced characters. Heck, it's hard for normal DMs to do it. His solution of extra feats sounds like a decent fix.

 

[tmaaas]

Here are a couple posts I made a long time ago (on the original Eric Noah's Third Edition News boards). They seem applicable to this discussion.

These statistics do not include rerolling "hopeless" characters. Also, if you use a different method for extending the point-cost method downward it will change the results.

=======================================================

Buy your 1-in-a-1000 hero here for only . . .

49 points! (Using the point-buy method for character generation, of course.) Yes, that's right. A true bargain. And you'll have stats so good it'd take 1,000 tries using the 'natural' 3d6 method to meet or beat 'em. . . on average.

I was curious as to how point-buy generated characters would compare with the normal population, on a percentile basis. In other words, is a 25 point character better than 75% of the natural (3d6) populace? 85%? How about a 32 point character? Say I wanted a 'heroic' campaign where the pc's are 1-in-a-100 type of people? And so I sat down one evening with my trusty laptop and figured it all out . . .

Warning: all the following figures are based upon the assumption that the point-cost for a stat scales down from 10.5 (the statistical average) in the same manner they scale upwards. Thus, the difference between 3 and 4 is three points, same as the difference between 17 and 18. Note that because zero is placed at 8 instead of 10.5 (the mean), the scale is asymmetric.

The scale:

<table border="1"><tr><th>Stat</th><th>Points</th></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>-11</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>-8</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>-5</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>-3</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>-1</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>16</td></tr></table>

Here are the results which should be of use to most people. Note that I round to the nearest percent, except for the extremes (-10 pts. and 45 pts.).

<table border="1"><tr><th>Points</th><th>Percentile</th></tr><tr><td>-10</td><td>0.5</td></tr><tr><td>-1</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>70</td></tr><tr><td>21</td><td>75</td></tr><tr><td>23</td><td>80</td></tr><tr><td>27</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>28</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>32</td><td>97</td></tr><tr><td>37</td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>45</td><td>99.9</td></tr></table>

Here are the point-buy/4d6 drop 1 comparisons:

<table border="1"><tr><th>Points</th><th>4d6 drop 1 %</th></tr><tr><td>-10</td><td>0.004</td></tr><tr><td>-1</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>22</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>23</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><td>25</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>26</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>28</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>30</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><td>32</td><td>68</td></tr><tr><td>33</td><td>70</td></tr><tr><td>34</td><td>75</td></tr><tr><td>36</td><td>80</td></tr><tr><td>40</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>51</td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>60</td><td>99.9</td></tr></table>

Hmmm. I find it interesting that a 25 point character is 'below average' using the 4d6 drop 1 method. And one in ten characters will be at 40 points or more. A 28 point character is 'average' (as far as pc's go).