The Mathematics Behind 4d6 Drop the Lowest

Unlike most other roleplaying games, Dungeons and Dragons and recently spun off Pathfinder RPG allow for multiple ways to generate your characters starting characteristics. A point-buy system has become the most popular way by most players because it will result in each player having a starting character that is roughly of the same power level. This is a concern for a lot of gaming groups because the games they play are dominated by combat (which chews up quite a bit of game session time per encounter) and players tend to feel resentful if one player is significantly outshining the other players in terms of body count. In more social games, I think disparity in character power levels doesn’t mean as much. If we are roleplaying out Bilbo Baggins’s birthday party does the difference in power level between Gandolph and Samwise Gamgee really matter all that much?

Personally I’ve discovered that I tend to enjoy game sessions where characters tend to be subpar and the power levels are asymmetrically dispersed. First off, it’s a bit more real because not everyone brings equivalent skills to the table in life and why should games that imitate life be all that different. Secondly, something about rolling three six-sided dice (which is abbreviated 3d6 in gamer notation) and having those dictate what your characters scores are in the exact order in which you role them disconnects you from your character. If you’re using a point buy system, or even a method of assigning the stats in the order you like, you become invested in your grand design for the character. Having luck determine what your character’s stats are reinforces that you are not designing this character but instead being asked to play a character who is very different from you and, for that matter, very different than you might have preferred.

Some of the most beloved characters have come from subpar stats. Continue reading The Mathematics Behind 4d6 Drop the Lowest