Kayana

We actually have something like that in Germany:

In the region of Westphalia, there’s a part officially called East Westphalia (or Ostwestfalen in German). So you’re always wondering, is it in the east or in the west?

Depending on the stuffing, I might actually rather take the seat, just because it’s got armrests.

I don’t think I understand what you mean, might be because we’re both ESL.

Are you saying you want a histogram or something about how points can be spent, instead of how players do spend them?

That could work too, but for many people, being able to dodge/avoid hits is exclusively the DEX bonus to AC, and they believe it doesn’t have to do anything with hit points.

I’m on two minds about that: On the one hand, it’s true that you’re far better at dodging in lighter (or no) armor. OTOH, I agree with you that experience teaches you to decide where you’re going to get hit if at all. So it might be something like “raise your arm so the strike doesn’t hit your belly”.

I rationalize it as “You took some blows so now you have a better pain tolerance”.

Hmm, you’d probably have to have access to something like DndBeyond’s data to compile such a chart (or use one they compiled). Problem is, there doesn’t seem to be anything like that. The only published data visualisations are about races, classes and names.

So I don’t think you can just search for it, the only other option I see is gathering that data (if from a smaller sample) yourself, by creating a poll asking for their ability spreads if they used point buy. You could try and advertise it in appropriate communities, and once you feel like your sample size is big enough, you can calculate the percentages.

I wish there was an easier way (and maybe there is and I just didn’t look far enough), but from my chair, that’s the only option.

Point buy is completely deterministic, so I’m not sure what you mean by probabilities… Are you referring to statistics, like which stat is a certain value most of the time?

Well, one way to easily replicate point buy’s range per stat (if not its distribution limit over all stats) would be 7 + 1d8. You could also do: Start every stat from 12, and if you want to increase one, you can do so by rolling a d4 as a bonus (rerolling on a 4). However, to do that you’ll have to decrease a different one by another / the same d4. So you’ll still have the same range, but like with point buy there’s an element of control and choice to it.

Regarding bigger ranges, one way could be using that same method, only with bigger dice (and possibly other starting points). E.g. you could start from 11 and roll a d8, rerolling an 8 if you’re adding it as a bonus. That example would give you values anywhere from 3 to 18, and it’s much more swingy than 4d6dl. Of course, if the high variance is an issue, you can experiment with dropping highest or lowest on 2d8.

For example, if you’re dropping lowest on bonus rolls and penalty rolls, you’ll get characters with high highs and low lows, or if you’re doing it the other way around, you’ll get characters where each stat is fairly equal, without much variance to speak of.

There isn’t much more I can say without knowing how much variance and player choice you want to include.

Possible formula: Tax for n-th house = n-th Fibonacci number + 5 * max(0, n - 2). So low numbers like three get penalized by that linear part, and high numbers grow exponentially due to the Fibonacci number.

Can you even kill something that’s already dead?