D&D General How Do You Feel About Randomness?

[Oofta]

I've never really liked randomness for character gen. Even back before there was anything like point buy, we just rolled up multiple PCs until we got something we liked.

Far too often there are significant power differences between PCs if you do 4d6kl rolls. I'd rather have the character I want, not a character I'm forced to play. A one time roll for a PC I hope to play for hundreds of hours just doesn't make sense to me.

If I wanted random (I don't) there's a lot of ways to do it. I also don't see how help with the cookie cutter issue some people complain about, people will still arrange ability scores as optimal or pick the best class that fits. I just don't see how it matters.

There's plenty of opportunities for randomness during play, from D20 attacks and saves to damage rolls. I do use average HP and damage for monster but that's just for speeding up combat.

 

[Quickleaf]

So, how do you feel about the various kinds of randomness in D&D? What do you use, and what do you reject? Do you think differently about it based on which version of the game you are playing, or what kind of campaign you are playing within a specific edition? If you are a GM, do you use random encounters, random hex or dungeon generation, or things like reactions and morale?

I think it's one of the strengths of D&D and D&D-adjacent games (d20 leans into wildly divergent results after all), so I wholeheartedly embrace randomness.

That said, I think it needs to be applied with a human touch.

For example, I have a house rule "Let the Roll Stand" where if you have a gnome wizard fail to break down a door, then it's fine for the hulking barbarian to try. But if the barbarian fails, there's no way for the gnome wizard to break down the door – it's not consistent with the shared fiction – unless the situation changes meaningfully (e.g. the gnome taps out the hinges on the door and then tries). This is what I mean by a human touch.

Similarly, I've used the DMG random dungeon generators, which will get you so far. But they're just a starting point. They're not actually inspired creative things, they're just a vehicle for you to build on with your own creativity. When I did Labyrinth Tomb of the Minotaur Prince it was about 65% rolled content, 35% GM instincts/massaging/art.

Same thing applies to random encounters & monster/NPC reaction rolls. That randomness is only as good as the underlying creativity that went into the random tables. Crappy tables yield crappy results, requiring that much more GM work to make it into something interesting. So, the randomness isn't really good or bad – it's a tool to access new thought connections and ways of mixing/matching game content with unexpected timing. The good/bad distinction comes in the quality of the generator I'm making or borrowing.

 

[Reynard]

For example, I have a house rule "Let the Roll Stand" where if you have a gnome wizard fail to break down a door, then it's fine for the hulking barbarian to try. But if the barbarian fails, there's no way for the gnome wizard to break down the door – it's not consistent with the shared fiction – unless the situation changes meaningfully (e.g. the gnome taps out the hinges on the door and then tries). This is what I mean by a human touch.

As an aside, my solution for this is that thr group gets one check per approach. If the approach is shouldering the door down, the group is probably going to want the raging barbarian to do it (perhaps with Help from the gnome as a battering ram, correctly considered the only good use of a gnome.)

 

[Quickleaf]

As an aside, my solution for this is that thr group gets one check per approach. If the approach is shouldering the door down, the group is probably going to want the raging barbarian to do it (perhaps with Help from the gnome as a battering ram, correctly considered the only good use of a gnome.)

Everyone knows a GNOME setup offers maximum RAM.

 

[cbwjm]

I quite like randomness, random hp (at least, after 1st level), random stat's, random attack rolls. Random encounters can be fun as long as it isn't taken to only being random combat encounters. Maybe meet a merchant caravan on the road instead of another bandit gang.

 

[Oofta]

Everyone knows a GNOME setup offers maximum RAM.

Huh. Here I thought that the best use of a GNOME was as a battering ram. That does explain a lot.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a gambling game.

If it wasn't, there'd be no dice involved.

Char-gen: random stat rolls (with rarely-used guardrails). Hit points: random at every level. Backgrounds, languages, and other things: you can choose from some very basic options but if you want a shot at anything extreme you gotta roll, and whatever the roll gives you is binding even if it's not what you wanted. And so on.

Wild magic, Decks of Many Things, and similar: bring it on.

Random encounters: sure. We just gotta know when to walk away, and know when to run.

Ideally I'd randomize all the treasure they find but two things prevent this: one, oftentimes the treasure needs to make sense for or with the surroundings; and two, I can't be arsed to do all the rolling.

 

[Stalker0]

like many have noted before, I am not a fan of randomness at char gen. When your ability roll or hp roll could impact your character for the entire campaign....its jsut too much. Now for a short campaign or a one shot, hell yeah, but for a full measured campaign no thank you.

 

[jmartkdr2]

As a player: I'm okay with randomized chargen now because I've already played pretty much everything at least once and have enough system mastery to make everything work. But in a new game or edition I'd hate it.

I'm okay with randomness during play until it impinges on agency; my spells can have random power/effectiveness, but what kind of thing they do shouldn't be randomized. And/or I should be able to control it for an opportunity cost.

In both cases the problem isn't randomness per se, it's making me randomize things I usually get to choose.

As a dm, I like to use randomizer to help me draft stuff like dungeons and encounters - it keeps me from doing the same things over and over and can get past the blank page quickly. But I almost never roll on a random table and put that into the game without some sort of middle step, even if it's just deciding that it's fine as is.

At a design level, I don't want random elements that take the narrative somewhere it shouldn't go, whether for internal-logic reasons (ie it makes no sense that there'd be a magic weapon in the loot pile of the orc captain we just killed - he'd've been using it) or for genre reasons (ie I don't wanna run GoT here so random nonsense doesn't kill pcs)

 

[Charlaquin]

Randomness is great. On the player side, it resolves the tension between the desire to strive for success in your character’s goals, and the desire for a dynamic story in which the characters sometimes fail despite their best efforts. From the DM side, it prevents the game from becoming rote, providing an element of unexpectedness in scenarios you are very familiar with and may have even devised yourself. Random encounter rolls also create a very important source of time pressure. Additionally, randomness can be used to abstractly represent complex dynamic systems. For example, there’s really no way to adequately simulate an actual economy in D&D, but partially randomizing buy and sell prices can create the feeling of complex market forces affecting trade value where none really exist.