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I am posting here by suggestion of RPG.se

I want to make character stats that fit within certain bell curves depending on choices during character creation (for example race, gender, class, sprokets amount, whatever).

And I am wondering how I figure how I calculate what dice I need to attain the curve I want, I will use for each stat a different way of rolling it, whatever one I find most appropriate...

For example I might want a bell curve more accentuated (ie: everyone is almost certainly a the center), or one that is not only accentuated, but skewed to one side or another (for example, a random number between 1 and 100, but that most of the times rolls 70 instead of 50)

Or maybe bowl shaped curves, or slopes, or senoidal (dunno what would be the use of that though :P)

So, how I can learn more about this? (I suspect the subject is big enough that you cannot fit only in one answer here)

speeder
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1 Answers1

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Read up on:

-Discrete Distributions

-Random Variables

-Probability Distribution Functions

-The Normal Distribtuion (and how it approximates discrete distributions run repeatedly)

-Expected Value, Variance and Skew

Don't think of probability as dice rolls, or sums of dice rolls. Instead, think of probability as an assigned chance each number has of occuring. The higher the chance, the more likely it is of happening. Probability is a huge field, but those topics should let you know what you want to accomplish.

try looking at this graph
(source: mathwave.com)

Just imagine of the numbers from 1 to 100 were on the horizontal axis of each graph. The height then will then representing the chance of getting each number. Feel free to leave any comments of anything you don't understand, or when you are ready to proceed in creating a distribution.

Community
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David L
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