I think my point is that its like empty space in art . Sometimes the point of it is that its pointless . The conclusion you ' ve drawn that ' wow . no intrinsic value ' is entirely accurate . the point of them is to provide no intrinsic value . Used to present a stark contrast to characters who have rolled impressively high on an attribute . If everyone ' s attributes were all notable , then nobody ' s attributes are notable . The largess . The bulk . the 2 standard deviations . 95 . 4 percent of the population . are neither smart enough or stupid enough to merit bonuses or penalties . Sometimes a lack of mechanical effect is the mechanical effect . Speaking of standard deviations , that is in fact why we started rolling attributes with 3 d 6 instead of just say . a d 20 . it provides a bell curve under which 95 % of your rolls will be ' middling to average ' With respect to the definition of bonuses that are applied to stats above 16 as ' granular '. These ' grains ' provided by the difference in having a 7 and a 15 are in fact , too small to be numerically relevant '