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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="frisbeet" data-source="post: 682390" data-attributes="member: 10287">Here's something I've recommended in the House Rules forum.  Rather than link, I'll repeat myself:-----------------------------------Assume that everyone in your 3e D&D world have abilities which follow the 3d6 generation method distribution. If this is the case, then doing a little math, you'll find that on average, in 36 encounters with NPCs, one of them will have at least one 18 for an attribute, randomly assigned. That's different from saying that one in 36 will have an 18 Str. If you do a little more math, you find:at least ?? 18(s), randomly assigned___probability___1 in1___2.75E-02___362___3.18E-04___31493___1.96E-06___5091694___6.84E-09___1461996945___1.27E-11___786676658936___9.85E-15___101559956668416So if you bumped into 101.6 trillion NPCs, one of them is probably going to have an 18 for every attribute. Somehow I doubt your world is that big.Now, what about those NPCs with an 18 Str??? 18(s), exactly assigned___probability___1 in1___2.75E-02___2162___3.18E-04___466563___1.96E-06___100776964___6.84E-09___21767823365___1.27E-11___4701849845766___9.85E-15___101559956668416So one in 216 will have an 18 Str.Here's my idea, given that characters are supposed to be chosen from a cream-of-the-crop distribution (ie 4d6, point buy, etc.):Want an 18 Str?Great! Now role 3d6 for your other attributes.Your character has been selected from a special pool of people, better on average than 215 comrades in one attribute. That's not such a stretch, is it? I mean, if you're reading this forum, and especially if you play D&D, you're already in an elite subset of people, right?------------------------------------Anyway.  Point buy is a good solution for truly fair play.  One caveat:I've done a bit of analysis on the Neverwinter Nights point buy scenario: 30 pts, no score < 8.  While two in 3149 will have two 18s in the 3d6 world, NONE will have two 18s with the NWN 30 pt buy method.  More generally:  point buy prohibits some combinations of scores (lots of high scores especially).  Maybe for some it's something to consider.If you're interested in the probability distribution for the NWN point buy method (it's pretty dry stuff), see the NWN Bioware forum thread:<a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=181037&forum=42" target="_blank">NWN point buy vs. other methods</a></blockquote>

Verification