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Someone decent at statistics needed -- help debunk Lhynn's claim

Khor1255

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Play PnP long enough and youll see plenty of good and bad rolls to make for countless anecdotes, but i have had my share of shitty characters, my first character ever made died in his 3rd story, my second character died within 5 minutes of creating it and starting to play. I had a mage warrior elf that died in his first story eaten by goblins.
Eventually you realize probability is meaningless, sometimes you just gotta ride the dice and let it fall where it may.

What you are claiming is not just an unlikely string of good luck. It is an incredibly unlikely chance for something that occurs not very often, character creation. Getting good runs of 20s isn't gonna be as big a deal because you are rolling 20s all the time. Rolling a character that has a 1 in 200 million chance of occurring is indeed the kind of thing that should rightfully be called into question. Even if you made 200 characters with that method you are still looking at a 1 in 2 million chance of any of those characters being that good. And then you go further and claim that you had another character that had a similarly unlikely chance of occurring. I'm gonna have to call BS.

Also, your character having really lucky things happen to them in game, being able to defeat opponents that seemingly overpower them, or other cool and amazing things happening to them, is usually not strictly a matter of luck. DMs have immense control over what happens and it is usually an exciting game if cool and amazing stuff is happening. I'm not even just talking about fudging dice either (some DMs will never do this). DMs control everything else in the game as well.
Well, in this case since you have a 4th die that is not being counted (only best three numbers count right?) That seriously modifies the probability. Too lazy to want to hammer out the exact numbers but having a best of four system changes the odds considerably.
 

Lhynn

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So in Shoutbox, Lhynn has been claiming for some time now that he once rolled a character in D&D who had the following stats:

STR 18/00 (see edit)
INT 18
WIS 18
DEX 15
CON 15
CHA 18

This was supposedly using the 'roll 4d6, drop lowest result then arrange your stats freely' method (an old one, outlined in the DMG I believe at least since 2.5E).
6 dices with 18 sides each means a single specific roll has a probability of 1/18^6 = ~3e-8 = 3e-6% or 3 in a million. Not outrageously impossible, considering there have been a lot more than 3 million D&D characters. Rolling two "impossible" characters in a row is 1/18^6^2 = 1/18^12 = 8,6e-16 = a bit less likely than ten in a trillion.
Yeah, plus i seem to remember that at the time we rerolled 1s one time.
 

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Andhaira

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Well no. If you have a decent 'physics' system your ability score directly correlate to your chances of a successful outcome in any endeavor the stat covers. This is a huge advantage in games where the character has - you know - challenges to overcome.


That very same fighter actually survived a nuclear blast at lvl 9. That very same fighter actually managed to fight and defeat a fallen Solar at lvl 7.


it was AD&D.

:hmmm:
 

Khor1255

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Seems awfully high considering you get to drop one of the rolls. But that's just intuition. The same folly that causes amateur DMs to give away the farm on the 3rd 20 roll.
 

Lhynn

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Nice catch above, Andhaira! There are no Solars in AD&D! And what's a 'nuclear blast'?

See, isn't this game fun?
Well, in few strokes one of the members of the party made a quasi dragon deity mad. The breath weapon that ensued after that wiped the party, i survived after passing the saving throw with 2 hp to spare.

Well that certainly changes things a little bit more in your favor. Do you happen to remember what the raw rolls were before the racial modifiers were applied? Without these facts we can't arrive at a true reckoning of the chances of this occurring.
Human.

So, he got mulligans when a 1 appeared? The ride continues...
Yeah, one retry per throw if a 1 appeared. Think those were the rules back then. its been over 8 years now.
 

Khor1255

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That seriously changes the probability. Sounds like the DM would have just been better off giving the first 12 points in each stat and having you roll the third die only...
 

Khor1255

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Be that as it may such a practice would completely undermine any 'bragging rights (I know, my God)' associated with having an exceptional character. This is the bit that really makes it sloppy DMing in my opinion. But to each his own.

The characters I remember most are ones that overcame their moderate stats and accomplished great things. I mean, I do remember some 'God like' characters as well but I am most excited when I get my above average Human to win in a fight against superior encounters. Most stats are changeable anyway (can increase/decrease depending on what happens in the game) so actually have a 'fixer upper' character adds a lot of excitement. Knowing it's suicide to attempt certain battles makes you have to really think strategically rather than just going down to the roulette wheel all the time.
 

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Lhynn said:
Yeah, one retry per throw if a 1 appeared. Think those were the rules back then.

Okay so now we know what really happened.

Lhynn's retarded DM allowed any one's rolled on d6 to be re-rolled, thus rendering a character with such high stats still relatively rare, but not astronomically so.

See, this is what liberal weirdos do, people: only after extensive, excruciating scrutiny do their "facts" and claims get excused with "oh, yeah, I forgot to mention this one thing"-type qualifiers. It's typical loose brainwork, lax standards, and, well, liberalism.

P. much anything Lhynn ever says again can now be cast onto this pile of worthless horse shit.

Consider this case closed.

Edit: Unless, of course, someone's still interested in doing the math on the original, uncorrupted scenario, which would still be interesting.
 
Last edited:

Lhynn

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Yeah, one retry per throw if a 1 appeared. Think those were the rules back then. its been over 8 years now.

So you were able to re-roll just one die that had a result of 1 per throw of four dice (and if your re-roll was also a 1 then that 1 stood)? You could not re-roll a second die that had a result of 1 in that same throw of four dice? Just trying to clarify before contemplating attempting to re-calculate the odds on this with this new information. It is getting increasingly tricky.
yup, basically if 1 or more 1s came up i just took 1 and rerolled it.
We also played with a rule that gave you a full reroll and a +1 to the result if you got 3 1s. but i never managed to get that. We really didnt give that much of a shit tho, i had lost several characters before lhynn so stats were kind of secondary, we had fun at character creation.

Be that as it may such a practice would completely undermine any 'bragging rights (I know, my God)' associated with having an exceptional character. This is the bit that really makes it sloppy DMing in my opinion. But to each his own.

The characters I remember most are ones that overcame their moderate stats and accomplished great things. I mean, I do remember some 'God like' characters as well but I am most excited when I get my above average Human to win in a fight against superior encounters. Most stats are changeable anyway (can increase/decrease depending on what happens in the game) so actually have a 'fixer upper' character adds a lot of excitement. Knowing it's suicide to attempt certain battles makes you have to really think strategically rather than just going down to the roulette wheel all the time.
This so much. The only reason i can brag about this character is because even with good stats, the challenges he overcame were simply insane, he shouldnt have been able to do it.

My mage beat the shit out of gods, but it was all much easier, it was just clever use of magic and resources, nothing anyone else couldnt have come up with given the cahracter stats and skills. But lhynn, dude defied odds constantly, so much so that it took a life on its own. Like he never actually managed to beat a woman, the first time he fought one he got beat due to bad luck, the second one he fought was largely superior in terms of battle prowess or gear, that went into his personality, every time i play him now he goes tru enormous efforts to avoid fighting females.

His pride for being so close to the limit achievable by a human also made him turn down stat enchancing gear, so at higher levels while other players had str scores higher than 18, he just kept it there. He was also extremely unlucky in any combat that wasnt life or death, after beating creatures of incredible power he would lose to another fighter on a spar.
 
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everybody posting in this thread should get a big NERD ALERT tag, I know that that means me too I'll take one for the team.

I mean, seriously, guys
 

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The only way a level 7 fighter could even survive one round against a Solar, much less defeat it, is through incredible incompetence and/or pity from the DM. It's not a real challenge if your DM isn't even trying.
 

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