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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8703093" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Because:1. That way, even people who roll the maximum 18 have somewhere to go, whether by spending an ASI or by having an ancestry bonus to that stat.2. 20 looks nicer to human eyes because of our decimal number system. If we used some other system, such as the much superior dozenal (aka duodecimal) system, it would probably still be &quot;20&quot;--which we call 24 in our system. And yes, even though this is purely aesthetic, it has an outsized impact on the things people choose to design and use.3. +5 is, very roughly, the standard deviation of the d20 (actually it's closer to 6, but 5 is good enough). This means that getting to the maximum personal bonus without special features (+5 from ability score, +6 from Proficiency) is essentially equivalent to making your new average be the same as an unmodified maximum (10.5+11 = 21.5.) So, mathematically, stopping at 20 is slightly better than stopping at 18 in terms of growth. (Stopping at 22 would probably be the &quot;ideal&quot; point, but that would run afoul of the previous point.)I'm sure there are other reasons as well.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8703093, member: 6790260"] Because: 1. That way, even people who roll the maximum 18 have somewhere to go, whether by spending an ASI or by having an ancestry bonus to that stat. 2. 20 looks nicer to human eyes because of our decimal number system. If we used some other system, such as the much superior dozenal (aka duodecimal) system, it would probably still be "20"--which we call 24 in our system. And yes, even though this is purely aesthetic, it has an outsized impact on the things people choose to design and use. 3. +5 is, very roughly, the standard deviation of the d20 (actually it's closer to 6, but 5 is good enough). This means that getting to the maximum personal bonus without special features (+5 from ability score, +6 from Proficiency) is essentially equivalent to making your new [I]average[/I] be the same as an unmodified [I]maximum[/I] (10.5+11 = 21.5.) So, mathematically, stopping at 20 is slightly better than stopping at 18 in terms of growth. (Stopping at 22 would probably be the "ideal" point, but that would run afoul of the previous point.) I'm sure there are other reasons as well. [/QUOTE]

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