If real-life had D&D stats, what would yours look like? Would you focus new points on any in particular?
Let's assume 10 is an average person and 30 is world class
10 is an average human, so all of us would be 10 or lower for all stats unless we are appreciably above the mean.
Body builders probably would have str around 15 or something.
A PhD scholar would probably have int and wis around there too.
its very safe to say most PhD scholars are well below the mean on Wisdom.
If 10 is average then anyone above the mean is above 10? Strongmen, Olympic lifters etc. are close to 30 str, since that is "world class".
I would guess that a lot of "ordinary" people have at least one stat where they are above average, just based on how low "average" is for a lot of stats, and how most people are decently good at something.
Edit: This depends on the distribution of course, but stuff like strength, IQ, etc. are typically close to normally distributed, in which case about half the population is above average in any given stat.
I'm being needlessly pedantic.
In dnd heroes get strong enough to wrestle with a dragon through magic and what not. I don't think any human devoid of stuff like that would even get to 20 str.
Maybe int and wis are different, I don't know what 20 int would really be like.
I was just basing myself off OP's scale, where 10 was "average" and 30 was "world class", which I interpret as shifting the scale compared to how it would be in a dnd-game, such that the whole scale applies to actual humans.
In that spirit, I think it's fair to put a talented engineer at 20 int, and an absurdly talented polymath at 30 int. My personal experience is that engineers with some years of field experience are often more "intelligent" (i.e. better at general problem solving) than most PhD's.
You know, I am about 15 years into my Comp Sci career. I was just thinking about how some solutions to problems just "appear" these days. I was thinking it was wisdom, i have seen the same types of problems for years and know how to fix them better
I remember as a student when I couldn't understand how professors could "just see" the solutions to problems. I've been reflecting after teaching a bit that I'm becoming that person, and how it just feels natural now, and that it's really just because once you've seen enough problems in your field everything kind of just fits together, so new problems don't really look that new anymore. It feels good to be honest, but I have a hard time thinking of it as wisdom, more just accumulated experience (then again, what is really "wisdom"?)
Haha, even when playing DND I don't really understand wisdom :)
What do you teach?
"Wisdom": You're a sorcerer with a long beard. "Intelligence": You're the annoying engineering type that breaks the DM's beta in creative ways.
I'm a chemist, and I lecture in some engineering-related courses (mostly thermodynamics and mathematics)
Ooh very cool. I was never any good at Chemistry, but it looks fascinating
I suppose? I quite like the way World of Darkness did it. There wasn't as much gradation, but the average human was 2/5, and if you were kind of good at something, or you took a community college course, or something, you could justify a 3. The qualifications in the book were a scale the average person in real life was familiar with and probably even had few of (so my EMT license was a 2 in medicine, my Eagle scout was a 1 in survival, and so forth).
It really made you feel unique, rather than promote this "NPC" shit.