You are absolutely wrong. In UW1, you can easily get 30/18/12 or 30/12/18 depending on which class you choose (Paladin or Druid). I have done it before many times. In UW2, it is much harder. I think the highest I have seen is 29 in a stat, although personally, I have only gone to 28.
I think you're misremembering. First read the relevant info on the wiki:
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Character_creation_in_the_Underworld_games
Stats in UW1 aren't random. They follow a "track" so to speak (maybe it's an algorithm?). If you create 20 fighters and quit the game, then restart and create 20 fighters again you'll see that the 1st fighter after restart has identical stats to the 1st fighter before quitting, and it goes on and on...
There are three tracks:
1. Paladin, Druid, Bard, Ranger and Tinker. In other words, if the 1st character you create is a druid it will always have S23 D13 I24, then if you quit and restart and make a Paladin as the 1st character it will have S17 D19 I24.
2. Fighter and Mage.
3. Shepherd.
The only way to "break" these "tracks" is if you create characters who use different tracks, this changes the algorithm I guess.
That said, different versions of UW1 might work differently.