In detail, rolls are done as 3d6 in order, apply race/class adjustments, then silently discard anything that doesn't meet race/class minima and a total of 75. It's that "siliently discard" step that accounts for the differences; a human paladin will discard about a thousand rolls on average before giving one that you see, while a human fighter will discard about 20 for each visible roll. I've posted a chart of how likely high totals are with the possible race/class combinations somewhere.
I would love to see that Chart. Just because I'm curious just how long I'd need to spend rerolling on the fighter/cleric I'm working on >.>
The "75" column is how many rolls it takes, on average, to get a visible roll for that race/class combination. Each other column is how many visible rolls it takes, on average, to get one with that total or higher. All entries are rounded to three significant figures.
Kits which have stat adjustments or different requirements than the base class are included here, under the line for the base class. Name abbreviations used:
- B-guard = Blackguard
- Conj. = Conjurer
- Ench. = Enchanter
- Illus. = Illusionist
- Necro. = Necromancer
- Trans. = Transmuter
- Shadow = Shadowdancer
- Sorc. = Sorcerer
- Drag. D = Dragon Disciple
- DM Monk = Dark Moon Monk
- SS Monk = Sun Soul Monk
- Dwarf D = Dwarven Defender
- F/M = Fighter/Mage
- F/C = Fighter/Cleric
- F/T = Fighter/Thief
- F/M/T = Fighter/Mage/Thief
- M/T = Mage/Thief
- C/M = Cleric/Mage
- C/T = Cleric/Thief
- F/D = Fighter/Druid
- F/M/C = Fighter/Mage/Cleric
- C/R = Cleric/Ranger
- F/I = Fighter/Illusionist
- I/T = Illusionist/Thief
- C/I = Cleric/Illusionist
- H-Elf = Half-Elf
- H-ling = Halfling
- H-Orc = Half-Orc
My highest roll is 101, I've only done it once and it was for a half-elf ranger/cleric. I've rolled a hundred about 3 times, for paladins. I consider those to be crazy rolls but I did put many hours in, so I deserved them.
Here's something interesting. I wrote a computer program in BBC basic to work out the probabilities of rolling each of the numbers between 108 and 75. It counted through every possible combination for all 18 d.6s disgarding rolls under 75, and taking into account minimum stats for class and race.
I started the program running but after leaving it running on my computer for a complete week I stopped it.
From that I worked out I'd need to keep the program running for three whole months to give me the data I was after. To be honest, as much as I wanted that data I wasn't going to leave my computer on for three months to get it. And that was only for one character type of a specific race and class.
Maybe if I'd used a more modern language it would have run much more quickly. IDK.
That sounds like a very inefficient way of getting at things - enumerating all of the 10^14 possible rolls? No wonder it was slow. The system I've got is implemented in a spreadsheet, and generates a row of that table virtually instantly once I feed it the appropriate input - because that only takes a few thousand operations (mostly addition and conditionals).
I had an elven ranger with... let me calculate... (totals were not shown, and I wonder anyway why I still remember her stats) 100. I rerolled until she had similar stats to a character I played in an even older game. Her INT was higher than her CON, lol, because I didn't redistribute.
I also had a human mage with everything close to max somewhere (104), but I am not sure if this was BG2 or another game or if I used cheats somehow.
I only remember that (wild) mage with STR 17, DEX 15, everything else 18.
I tried auto-rolling for almost 11 hours once. It was for a Human fighter. I still have the data of the rolls saved in a 6.68 Mb text file. There was only ONE 98 in all of them 7 million bytes. Fortunately Strength was in the 18/76-90 range.
103 as a cleric/ranger years ago. My current character is a elf berserker who I named Hellian. She will dual to a druid (yeah I cheated a bit with mods because of racism) got 96 attributes with a good 75+ STR modifier. Crazy stat requirements include minimum of 15 STR and 17 WIS and CHA. For all my powergaming tendancies, even I have a spot of RP in my blood, and I don't want the PC to be a drooling idiot so I chose to sacrifice some constitution (15 on creation) for intelligence (11). Will be a master of daggers by seige of dragonspier, and of quarterstaves by BG2.
Had an Icewind Dale human vanilla bard with a 97. Went for the ol' 18, 18, 18, 18, 7, 18 trick. Wisdom dump stat, hooray!
Also got a 92 with an 18/00 Strength once, that was pretty sweet. Cleric/Ranger. He was a bit *too* good.
That's funny. I see the 97 bard as a recurring final/best bard roll and I myself couldn't get a bard higher than 97. I'm pretty sure someone got higher rolls but man, does it seem hard!
Comments
I would love to see that Chart. Just because I'm curious just how long I'd need to spend rerolling on the fighter/cleric I'm working on >.>
Kits which have stat adjustments or different requirements than the base class are included here, under the line for the base class. Name abbreviations used:
- B-guard = Blackguard
- Conj. = Conjurer
- Ench. = Enchanter
- Illus. = Illusionist
- Necro. = Necromancer
- Trans. = Transmuter
- Shadow = Shadowdancer
- Sorc. = Sorcerer
- Drag. D = Dragon Disciple
- DM Monk = Dark Moon Monk
- SS Monk = Sun Soul Monk
- Dwarf D = Dwarven Defender
- F/M = Fighter/Mage
- F/C = Fighter/Cleric
- F/T = Fighter/Thief
- F/M/T = Fighter/Mage/Thief
- M/T = Mage/Thief
- C/M = Cleric/Mage
- C/T = Cleric/Thief
- F/D = Fighter/Druid
- F/M/C = Fighter/Mage/Cleric
- C/R = Cleric/Ranger
- F/I = Fighter/Illusionist
- I/T = Illusionist/Thief
- C/I = Cleric/Illusionist
- H-Elf = Half-Elf
- H-ling = Halfling
- H-Orc = Half-Orc
Here's something interesting. I wrote a computer program in BBC basic to work out the probabilities of rolling each of the numbers between 108 and 75. It counted through every possible combination for all 18 d.6s disgarding rolls under 75, and taking into account minimum stats for class and race.
I started the program running but after leaving it running on my computer for a complete week I stopped it.
From that I worked out I'd need to keep the program running for three whole months to give me the data I was after. To be honest, as much as I wanted that data I wasn't going to leave my computer on for three months to get it. And that was only for one character type of a specific race and class.
Maybe if I'd used a more modern language it would have run much more quickly. IDK.
Half-Elf Ranger/Cleric: 101 (18/61). Ended up with putting an 18 in everything except for 11 Int.
I also had a human mage with everything close to max somewhere (104), but I am not sure if this was BG2 or another game or if I used cheats somehow.
I only remember that (wild) mage with STR 17, DEX 15, everything else 18.
It is pretty easy to roll a paladin with stats in the low 90s but this one came as a nice surprise.
That's funny. I see the 97 bard as a recurring final/best bard roll and I myself couldn't get a bard higher than 97. I'm pretty sure someone got higher rolls but man, does it seem hard!