What's the reason for keeping the 18/xx stat display?

[Cryomaniac]

I've felt displaying stats above 18 as 18/xx instead of a plain numeric value is less intuitive than it could be for little reason. The latest vanilla version still has the 18/xx display, even though it's more newcomer friendly in other respects. I think it originally was taken from D&D, but Angband at this point is its own game, and later D&D editions dropped that notation anyway. It's not just the vanilla - Frogcomposband also uses this, and I think Hengband 3 alpha still uses this notation. Is there any particular reason for keeping it as it is?

[ewert]

Tradition ... For those of us who have played Angband or Moria before it, it is just very ingrained. Yes a straight up integer format would be just fine as well ...

[Cryomaniac]

Figured it'd be mainly out of tradition. That being said, not all variants keep this - last ZAngband versions switched to simpler representation, and that Touhou Hengband also displays stats as 3 through 40 (and they can temporarily go up to 50 through several effects)

[EpicMan]

Tome 2 had linear stats as an option and Frogcomposband has a decimal stats option (18/155 becomes 33.5).

[Sideways]

Yeah, you can use the 3 through 40.0 notation in FrogComposband. 18/xx is the default mostly because of tradition; but also to make some game mechanics more intuitive to new players, in particular that stat-ups work very differently from 18 up.