HOW RARE AN 18 OR HIGHER STAT IS......

[strategos14]

it is difficult to relate stats to real world numbers in order to gauge just how rare those numbers are for everyday people. the only stat that really gives any sort of measurements to go by is strength. each number has a max load. the rules state that man can lift his max load over his head. assuming this is from the ground then in the weight room this would be a clean and jerk. the book then states that a man can lift twice this number off the ground and stagger around a bit. this would be a deadlift in the weight room. i looked up arnold swartzeneggers max lifts in these areas. granted he was a body builder and not a power lifter (though he started as a power lifter) but he played conan and was still a 6'2, 240lb man in his prime who could bench press over 400lbs. i found a few different numbers from ages 21 to 30. his best i found were a 300lb clean and jerk and a 682lb deadlift that would put his strength between 18 and 19. the current record for a "raw" deadlift (raw means no special suit or grips used that help you lift more) is 974lbs which would indicate a strength score between 21 and 22. this done by a 27 year old viking (lol) named benedikt magnusson. as far as clean and jerks go, the raw record a couple men have come close to seems to be about 600lbs which would indicate a strength score of 23. i know that at least one russian guy and an iranian guy got into the 580's.
i'm well aware that the book rules are not supposed to really represent actual life but they have the numbers for strength and this is just food for thought. i'm in the weight room quite a bit and i first decided to test my (D&D) strength as a joke. when i actually looked at the numbers from the conan rulebook, i realized just how rare these strength scores (and therefore all stat scores) in the mid to high teens really are. needless to say, my (D&D) strength score is not as glorious as i would've liked or even initially thought lol. like i said before, just food for thought.

 

[Spectator]

I just benched 350 the other week (seriously!), what kind of the stat is that?

 

[strategos14]

look on page 213 of the conan book. though bench press isn't on there. each strength score has a max load which is what you can lift off the floor and over your head which is a clean and jerk or possibly a clean and press which tends to be a bit more difficult. and doubling that number is what that strength score can lift off the ground which would be a deadlift. my max bench press is 365 as of 2 weeks ago. however a deadlift of just under 400 and a clean and press of just over 200, puts my (D&D) strength score a 15 lol. i'm admittedly more comfortable with benching and not terribly familiar with those other power lifts, meaning i don't do them as much as i should and so they could be better. i don't know what sort of shape you are but i wouldn't be surprised if you're numbers are similar. a 350 bench is dang good and a guys gotta be strong all over to put up weight like that. i think the max load for a 16 strength is 230. not too bad a number to get over you're head but that also means a deadlift of 460! and that just sounds dang hard to me. i almost have a stroke deadlifting anything over 360. shorter guys have less trouble with these lifts however.

 

[Ichabod]

Intelligence = IQ is actually the easiest if you really wanted to try to translate, but I don't see why in fantasy role-playing real world anything is important.

 

[Spectator]

Yeah I love threads like these!
A few months ago a fellow (SUPP4) put up one saying Einstein was at max a 5th level commoner!
Neat thread: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=44342&highlight=

Yeah, Ichabod you are right, 18 =180 IQ.
Strength based ones are a little tougher.

(d6 to the 3rd power) can result in a roll from 3 to 18.
You have 1/ ( 6*6*6) chance to get to 18, right? so 1 in 216 chance of getting 18 stregth. (Are my statistics correct).

It would be interesting to see out of 216 people (man/ woman/ child/ of all ages how many could bench [in my case 350 lbs] and figure the range of each sigma corresponding to such. I'd hasten to add that if we include a proportionate respresentative of the worlds major populations (i.e. 2/6 people in the class of 216 were from india and china [ only 1/6 of european extraction] and the class of 216 were not solely white Northern European stock which are traditionally taller, bigger boned, and muscular on average than most 3rd worlders) my personal belief is that VERY few (maybe less than 1/2 a dozen people would be able to bench over 300lbs!)

I'm speculating that amongst the world-wide population (ages/ sexes needed to be represented as well) that if you could bench over 300 you'd definitely be in the 17 STR range!

Kinda neat to think about.

Hah my stats:
STR:17 (see above)
DEX: 11 (ok, but nothing special; my greatest act of balancing was walking 40 ft above water on a 12 inch beam, yeah I completed the US ARMY ranger school, class 7/98, baby!)
CON: 10 (bad now, I'm 30lbs overweight and I struggled on a 3mile jog the other day, used to run 8 miles a pop in my 20s) Pretty good argument to Make CON and STR much more variable than the books suggest (especially ADnD where it was near impossible to change a st without magic).
INT: 13 ( I got 130 on the ARMY ASVAB, the closest thing to an IQ test, I got into lawschool and passed the bar exam on my first shot)
WIS: 15 (I have to say passing the bar exam was less about smarts and more about having the Willpower to study for the damn thing day-in and day-out.)
CHA: 14 (I have to say I never have a problem introducing myself, making friends, convincing people, and picking up girls (it helps being 6'2" and have broad shoulders despite my little flab around the middle) or at least getting numbers at a bar. I'm a trial lawyer, by profession, so I have to convince people or I will starve!).

Hah too much fun.
I think I'll be a fighter (I spent 4 years in the army, I guess I might be level 2 already!!!!!).

Hmm

 

[Spectator]

........... my max bench press is 365 as of 2 weeks ago. ... i almost have a stroke deadlifting anything over 360. shorter guys have less trouble with these lifts however.

You beast!!!
I'm 6'2" and I feel your pain!
The dwarves do have some serious advantages when it comes to leverage issues.

 

[strategos14]

i hear ya spectator lol. i'm also 6'2. my cousin is 5'8 and easily out-squats me. frustrating to say the least lol. as far as role-playing having real world context, i think they absolutely have to has some at least. even hyboria is more based in reality than other worlds. like forgotten realms and what not. hyborias people have a real world context. it's nations have real world context. the game has rules for this very reason. character creation. attributes and skills. combat. these are all supposed to loosely represent realistic plausibility. even more fantastical worlds still have rules that are meant to give some structure to to the game. and all these rules are at leased somewhat based in reality. to a point. if they weren't then lets have every person in the world with uber-stats and have them just be able to accomplish anything they want whenever they want.

 

[Ichabod]

I maintain that PCs, much like characters in books, are special. I hate systems where a PC isn't significantly better than a normal person because, to me, that's unrealistic ... for fantasy.

I don't play RPGs to be a good accountant. I play RPGs to be something I can't be in real life. Otherwise, I might as well "play" real life.

What matters to me is that whatever is considered baseline is below the curve of the PC. For different genres, that means different things. I was just watching the first episode of Sherlock. Is Holmes strictly better than normal people in every way? Well, actually, pretty much, yes. But, he's not obviously better in every way. What he is is better in every way that matters in comparison to his "peers" - police, normal criminals. That's what happens when you are a star.

Look, there's plausibility and there's this, to me, obsession with it that some of you all have. Of course, I want a world that hangs together. But, threads like these are only minutiae to me. How do you all deal with superhero RPGs or do you all just not play them because they are so unrealistic?

S4 doesn't like heroic chargen. Okay. Oddly enough, the idea of playing a heroic figure* is somehow part of the appeal of RPGs with most of the folks I know.

* And, of course, real heroism has no requirements for special attributes, skills, or whatever else. In fact, an argument can be said that the most likely heroes in superhero worlds are the ones who have no special powers. But, that's still not nearly as appealing as playing someone special.

So, getting back to this thread. Given an average, a human limit, and an idea of what the spectrum should be like, the numbers just fall into place. Note that I vastly prefer systems where attributes are on a 1-5+ scale because it's so easy to grok. Human average is 2, good is 3, elite is 4, max is 5, 6+ is superhuman. Lacks granularity, but then, I'm not concerned about the minutiae of whether someone is 5% more charming, or whatever.

Certainly, there's no concern for play balance. The stronger the PCs, the stronger their enemies. Everything is relative.

 

[strategos14]

i simply started this thread to show how "special" characters are who have these good stats. i'm a player too and if i rolled up a character with all average stats i would declare to the GM that he is a commoner and will start out as a 1st level farmer and that is that. so either you can GM me planting wheat or i can roll up another dude! i also started this thread because many GM's (including myself) might sometimes have random NPC's with disproportionately high stats all the time because there used to every Hero or Bad Guys stats being high and that accidentally becomes the norm. one of my players is a thief who of course has a stat in dex that really would make him the quickest man around. yet in my many attempts to thwart him, i have to stop myself from unrealistically making every random bandit that he runs into nearly as quick and awesome. (obviously i'm not that bad but you get my point) i totally agree with playing heroes with heroic abilities and that includes stats. i am very lenient actually with my players when they roll up stats. but i think that if my barbarians 19 strength is realistically represented in comparison with everybody else, then it is that much more special and the player knows it. one of my other players is a scholar and i try to make a point to portray just how much smarter he is that even other smart people. that's all i really meant by this thread. as far as worlds go, i used to play in more fantastic type worlds. the Realms and the like. flying around, firing lightning bolts at will with dragons and monsters as common as cattle. i liked it. and will play it again one day. now though i like Hyboria because although it is "fantasy" it is meant to be historical. and since i've been an avid history buff for a while now, my "fantasy's" are more like being a Spartan, or an Italian merc in the middle ages, or an English longbowman, or a Norse viking, a Roman General, or a Mongol warrior. stuff like that. Hyboria offers the closest thing to that as far as i've seen.

 

[Clovenhoof]

I'm not sure that bench pressing gives a proper gauge here. But it's not even that important. Looking at the load figures, you will find:
Str 15 has 2x the weight allowance of Str 10,
Str 18 has 3x the weight allowance of Str 10.

So in short, Str 18 is three times as strong as the average person.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that while in D20 terms, scores 10-11 are "average" for a human, in real life the average man is stronger than the average woman. So taking this into account, I'd say that for women, the average Str is 8-9, and for men it's 12-13.

(Reality check: when I let a girl try out my bows, so far none of them was able to pull the 55# ones, and not a few have trouble with the 30# one, which I refer to as "girl bow".)


Anyway, if we say that the average man has Str 12-13, then Str 18 is just about twice as much.
And of course, "average" does not mean "everyone", but "the sum of all scores divided by the size of the sample".

All in all, I don't think Str 18 would be all that rare. While I'm probably a 13 myself, I'd estimate two of my friends at least at 18.

 

[strategos14]

according to the game, one would need to lift 300lbs (i don't have the book in front of me but i think i'm right) over his head to have a strength of 18. and that is absolutely rare. he would have to also be able to lift 600lbs off the ground which is more rare. benching has nothing to do with anything. a person can normally bench quite a bit more than they can lift up over their head but that's beside the point. an 18 in intelligence is genius. their are few of those around just as there are few 18 strengths around. many people we know that are considered "strong dudes" have strengths of maybe 14. i've been in the gym and around ball players for years and can maybe count on one hand how many dudes i've seen that come near an 18 strength. can't argue the numbers. unless we're making strength more abstract all of a sudden which i understand is ok to do. saying strength in combat is different than just how much you can lift. but according to the lift numbers given in the rule book, it is rare. just like all 18's are rare. they should be. not for heroes maybe, but the less rare they become, the less special they become as well.

 

[Spectator]

Hmmm what about the statistical regression?
if only one out of 216 die rolls = 18
I think it would be a lot more common than you think.

 

[JohnLokiBeard]

Just to further muddy the waters, remember that in a pre-industrial world people actually have to use their muscles a lot more - just doing the laundry is serious exercise!

 

[strategos14]

i agree with the last 3 replies actually. by rolling, an 18 is more common except that you could argue that commoners don't roll the same as heroes or PC's. 18's are more ordinary amongst the extraordinary in other words lol. and yes, back then walking or riding everywhere puts a man in great shape. eating only what you need (unless you're a noble) and it actually being real food is also benefitial. though the average size of men tended to be smaller and there weren't supplements and steroids around either. and lastly, 200 (or any weight really) pounds lifted from the floor to a locked out position over your head is unfortunetly much harder than it seems. just because a person may be able to bench press that 25 times doesn't mean he can clean n press it as easily.