Why no low?

[Water Bob]

Here's a general question about stats...in several versions of D&D: Why does the game have a scale of 3-18, or so, but almost all characters use the higher half?

Think about it. Even the NPCs rarely have a stat lower than 8. Stats 1-10* (or 3-10) are hardly ever used. Why have them? For monsters?

*10 is used quite a bit, with the occasional 8 or 9 popping up. But, it's a rare bird that sports a 7, or lower, stat.



EDIT: Maybe I should say: Stats 12-18 are used all the time while it is very rare to see a character with a stat in the 1-7 range.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Because of ability damage/drain. There are vast number of ways to get abilities damaged and lowered, and I mean really lowered like to 0...
There are other issues too, but I think this should be enough to prove the point?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Here's a general question about stats...in several versions of D&D: Why does the game have a scale of 3-18, or so, but almost all characters use the higher half?

Think about it. Even the NPCs rarely have a stat lower than 8. Stats 1-10* (or 3-10) are hardly ever used. Why have them? For monsters?

*10 is used quite a bit, with the occasional 8 or 9 popping up. But, it's a rare bird that sports a 7, or lower, stat.



EDIT: Maybe I should say: Stats 12-18 are used all the time while it is very rare to see a character with a stat in the 1-7 range.

Because a stat distribution of 3-18 is too wide to actually use, and it's based on a now out-of-date (IMO) rolling scheme. I doubt you can find a functional adventurer with Int equivalent of 3. (Incidentally, I don't assume IQ = Int/10, using only half the spread. So a human with an Int of 8 would have an IQ of 95, 6 would have 90, 4 would have 80 and 3 would have 75.) Still, a 75 is entering retarded territory. 70 or below is regarded as retarded. Using the same scale, a character with Int 18+ would be considered gifted and have an IQ of 140+ (very smart, but not incomprehensible like a TV genius).

(I've once seen a human NPC with an Int of 5 (in a d20 Modern game), and he was described as being autistic. Since he was a villain, in the sense that he was working with his average Intelligence elder brother, I decided to skip that encounter.)

A character with a Strength of 3 probably couldn't handle a bag of groceries (or it'd be a heavy load for them), so they'd be functionally disabled. Check their carrying capacity every encounter. A character with a Dex of 3 would always look like they're drunk or need a cane to walk, a character with a Con of 3 would always be sick, suffering from chills, sneezing from allergies, have a dread fear of bleeding due to hemophilia, etc (inflict additional penalties!), and I don't really know what Wis or Cha 3 means, but I suspect in the latter the character would be so cripplingly shy they'd be essentially mute, preferring to draw pictures to express themselves. No wonder they're adventuring; there's no interviews to go through. (Or like a hysterical female half-orc who I read about, who hit on every remotely attractive male she encountered and accidentally intimidated the lot of them!)

The above would be non-metagame penalties (except for Con, I suspect) but that's on top of the penalties for having hideously low stats.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I disagree with you; I see low stats on character sheets all the time.

Players want their characters to be exceptional. One way to do this is to be without obvious flaws. Low stats are a flaw thus people try to avoid them.

But let us not forget Min-Maxing. This is when the lower range comes into it's own. The weak, sickly, obnoxious wizard and the brain-damaged, obnoxious barbarian are two good examples of low stats being used/exploited. Note use of obnoxious in both examples: charisma is oh so often the dump stat.

And I see lots of Min-Maxing. Do it myself some of the time.

cheers.

 

[Ariosto]

Although the original D&D Supplement I made ability scores more important than originally, the big impetus for skewing the distribution came in AD&D.

AD&D's revised set of character classes from D&D supplements and magazines included some with prerequisites that would be very, very, very rare by the original method. (That was 3d6 each in order, with exchange rates to trade in average or higher scores in certain abilities to boost prime requisites.)

To bring those back into a range attainable in a typical AD&D player's career called for both (A) free arrangement (so you can get that 17 where you need it) and (B) making high scores more common (which raises the average as a side effect).

In order not to make the highest scores too common, the usual method stuck with a curve -- best 3 of 4d6. That means very low scores are even less frequent (although still possible).

There are several other methods in the 1st ed. AD&D DMG, but they are more time consuming. Different ones produce different spreads. AD&D 2nd Ed. offered a different mix of options, and there was a statistical analysis of them in an issue of Dragon magazine. (Prerequisites are sometimes different than in 1st ed., IIRC.)

In 3E/4E WotC-D&D (or old Basic/Expert, for that matter), significant bonuses and penalties tend to kick in earlier than in Original or Advanced. For instance, a fighter in AD&D has the same chance to hit and does the same damage with a strength score of 8 as with a score of 15.

 

[Lanefan]

When rolling up a character, I often hope to get one low stat - somewhere in the 6-8 range - which promptly goes in Wisdom* so that when I play like an idiot (i.e. much of the time) I can blame it on my character.

* - unless I'm rolling up a Cleric, in which case I am - and the party is - doomed...

Lan-"wisdom is a burden best carried by those who are not me"-efan

 

[Votan]

Think about it. Even the NPCs rarely have a stat lower than 8. Stats 1-10* (or 3-10) are hardly ever used. Why have them? For monsters?

By 3rd edition, a stat in the 1 to 7 ranger was often a crippling penalty. For the most obvious case, consider a 3 Con (what class will you be playing).

I found it a lot less of a concern in the original (pre-AD&D) games as the bonues or penalties for an ability score were a lot less broad. Even then, a 3 for an ability score could be a very crippling penalty.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm definitely not averse to playing PCs with low stats, and have done so several times. Notables of this kind in my PC stable are:

1. Bear, 1Ed Ftr; St18/00 Dx18 Con 18 Int6 Wis6 Ch7
2. Johnny Bones, 3Ed Ftr/Th St15 Dx15 Con13 Int10 Wis8 Cha7

Bear was the result of a deal between me and the DM- I told him my concept (gentle giant of a bodyguard in thrall to party's unscrupulous thief), showed him how it would be mechanically modeled & RPed, and he let it fly.

Mr. Bones was straight up rolled that way.

 

[fba827]

Because the PCs are extraordinary types. And the NPCs that the PCs interact with are generally average or extraordinary types themselves.
Anyone with a low stat isn't important enough (i.e. not skilled enough to be a good tradesemen nor influential enough to be a contact, etc) for the PCs to interact with. They are there, hidden around towns. Generally only coming to the forground for NPCs that the DM has a specific purpose (/plot device) for.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The stats for a lot of human minions (like slaves in the Dark Sun Creature Catalog) are quite low (or, more to the point, the three that don't boost Defenses are quite low).

Of course, these NPCs aren't particularly challenging and are generally not influential.