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<blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 6134145" data-attributes="member: 52734"><p>I was just mulling over D&D character stats, with one of my gripes being that I wished that the game expected that characters only had a 15 in their best ability score, and that anything higher was really, really rare (whereas, with the point buy games I've seen since 3E, 18 seems to be the minimum).</p><p></p><p>Well, if you do the math, having an 18 in any one of your scores (rolling 3d6 for each) means that in the average population, one person out of 216 will have an 18. Going a little further, having an 18 in any one particular ability is a 1 in 1,296 chance. (Can someone do the math for a 15? I'd have to do it out longhand myself).</p><p></p><p>To kind of put that in perspective, with an average school classroom of 30 kids (and one grade per class), that means you could expect one child in a given elementary school (K-6) to have an 18 (and it's only a 1 in 6 chance it would be intelligence). In the latter case, you could have two classrooms of each grade Kindergarten to College's Masters (plus 6 months on-the-job) and should expect to only find one person with an 18 intelligence. This would be someone in the top .007% of society (if I'm doing my math right).</p><p></p><p>Sure, it's not too unfeasible that players are portraying crack heroes who fit this bill - but with the way D&D plays, it's kind of hard to imagine that this dream team of Olympic level roustabouts gathers together at a bar (or worse, throw together by chance under dubious circumstances) and decides to go crack some heads in the local dungeon.</p><p></p><p>What do you think of character's ability scores? Where should they fall? Are 18's in the prime ability dandy or do you think they should be much lower?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Stormonu, post: 6134145, member: 52734"] I was just mulling over D&D character stats, with one of my gripes being that I wished that the game expected that characters only had a 15 in their best ability score, and that anything higher was really, really rare (whereas, with the point buy games I've seen since 3E, 18 seems to be the minimum). Well, if you do the math, having an 18 in any one of your scores (rolling 3d6 for each) means that in the average population, one person out of 216 will have an 18. Going a little further, having an 18 in any one particular ability is a 1 in 1,296 chance. (Can someone do the math for a 15? I'd have to do it out longhand myself). To kind of put that in perspective, with an average school classroom of 30 kids (and one grade per class), that means you could expect one child in a given elementary school (K-6) to have an 18 (and it's only a 1 in 6 chance it would be intelligence). In the latter case, you could have two classrooms of each grade Kindergarten to College's Masters (plus 6 months on-the-job) and should expect to only find one person with an 18 intelligence. This would be someone in the top .007% of society (if I'm doing my math right). Sure, it's not too unfeasible that players are portraying crack heroes who fit this bill - but with the way D&D plays, it's kind of hard to imagine that this dream team of Olympic level roustabouts gathers together at a bar (or worse, throw together by chance under dubious circumstances) and decides to go crack some heads in the local dungeon. What do you think of character's ability scores? Where should they fall? Are 18's in the prime ability dandy or do you think they should be much lower? [/QUOTE]
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