the calculation of ability scores

marcos

How are ability scores actually calculated during character creation.

I ask because it clearly isn't a simple 3d6 for each score. The floor for a point total seems to be 75, which averages to 12.5 per ability score. On the other hand, individual low scores are possible--I seem to remember rolling a 4 once for one ability, for instance.

Just to be clear, I'm not asking about how class or racial minimums affect character creation.

So how does it work behind the scenes? Put another way, how do they consistently get to at least 75 points?

Grond0

Ignoring racial and class adjustments, the calculation is indeed a simple 3d6 for each score. The process is as follows:
- Roll 3d6 in order for each stat.
- If a stat doesn't meet the minimum values required for that race/class combination, reroll until it does.
- If the total for all stats is 75 or more, display the result of that roll. Otherwise, discard everything and restart from the top

A total of 75 is pretty unusual, so you're only seeing a small minority of the scores the computer initially generates.

marcos

Thanks, @Grond0 ! That makes a lot of sense.

It's interesting that the game re-rolls until it meets a race/class minimum. I just assumed that it raised stats that fell below the minimum. Good to know that that's not the case.

Grond0

It's a relatively easy thing to check. The simplest example is charisma for paladins that has a minimum stat of 17, i.e. the stat has to be either 17 or 18. If rolled stats were all raised to the minimum you would almost never see 18s, as that is only 1 of the 216 combinations you could roll. In fact you see 18s about 25% of the time as there is a 3/216 chance for a 17 compared to the 1/216 chance of an 18.