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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8415747" data-attributes="member: 71699">It's probably just that the term is a bit misleading. In terms of probabilities, I think you mean that each score is independent. It's like flipping two coins. The result of the first coin doesn't tell us anything about the result of the second. With a deck, the same outcome can occur like this:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Say we use an 18-card deck with values 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">We are going to determine each score by drawing three cards at random, no replacement, so that scores will range from 6-15 and average 10.5.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">We will draw cards without looking at them to make six face-down piles of three cards</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If we want to allocate as drawn, we'll make the leftmost pile strength and the rightmost pile charisma; or we will assign later</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">We turn up all piles simultaneously</li> </ol>In this case, we have no information on any score in advance: they are all equally a surprise. Do you see what I am saying. I believe what you are chasing is at heart something more specific. It's not to do with the randomness, or per score surprise. Most likely you want the sum of scores to vary. How much by?Is it okay to have one player have scores summing to 18 while another's sum to 108? Or is that too much variance? I suspect you'd be tempted here to say - that won't happen - but then, like [USER=6802765]@Xetheral[/USER]'s DM, what happens if it does happen? I had one campaign where our bear-barian just had far better stats than everyone else. They overshadowed everyone: adding nothing to the campaign.  In my experience, players enjoy variance, but much less variance than the dice allow.There are always niches of players a design cannot serve. The goal is to satisfy as well as possible your chosen main audience. Points-buy won't serve those players (it has zero surprise). I believe deck-generations offer the most scope for future-design. For example, we could use fewer than all the cards. Taking the deck above, we could add one 6 and one 1. Players still draw only 18 cards, no replacement. There will be surprise, because until the last card drawn they do not know what cards will be left in the deck.6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ,1 draw 18 cards without replacement, allocating three to each score. Either allocating as drawn, or as desired. Two cards will be left in the deck.</blockquote>

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