Casino Rules:


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I like the idea, especially as a caster.
Imagine: Walk into a casino wearing a breastplate, with a sword at your hip and a shield on your back. Looking perfectly the typical "guard captain" with decent armor and weapon.
But in reality, you're a wizard.
With plenty of charm spells Still/Silented.

And you proceed to dominate the place with well placed charms and divination magic.

That being said, there is no reason to use real-world casino rules, as we've had generations to perfect the nature of "the house always wins", whereas it seems this is a new venture in your world. The rules will still be clunky, and the people will still win more often than they do today.
Keep the games simple, it might be difficult for the commoners to play a complex game like poker or Magic: TG (though, they would attract players with ints of 14+ like bards, wizards, etc). It's tough to keep track of all the rules, all the cards, and how they interact.
However, games of chance and dice are beautiful for taking advantage of people with low or average intelligence (read: almost everyone).

Also, not many people will have the funds to come and throw their money away, so standard treasure rates would apply, for the most part. If you want to make it more random than that, give him money per-month instead of per-week, and use your idea of "three d20's with different modifiers", and at the end of the month, roll a d4 and multiply it (on a 1, multiply by .5, on a 2, multiply by 1, on a 3, multiply by 1.5, and on a 4, multiply by 2). This would keep a random "luck" factor in your venture without being too much.
 


Based on the laws of probability, you cannot win in a casino at most of the games. You can get away with card counting for a while, but eventually the casino will show you the door politely. Or not, depending on who runs it.

That's not exactly true. Based on the laws of probability, on average, the casino wins and the customers lose. Note the plural there - customers, plural. Any particular customer can win (and, by the laws of probability, some of them *will* win), while the rest lose to make up the difference.
 

But Dandu, poking fun at another member's threads is not polite! Thou shalt not do so!


More to the point, unless a moderator says otherwise, the topic of a closed thread is supposed to be left alone for a while. While to you it may be funny, for others this is poking a sore spot. Intentionally poking sore spots is not what I'd call a wise move.

Leave it be, please.
 

One of my buddies introduced a wandering gambler NPC. in game, my character played poker with this guy. my buddy owned these- Poker Dice!:
H9P_wooden_poker_dice.jpg


Although I think his were d8s.
 

Adding on to my previous suggestions, I'd like you to remember to think of historical uses of dice games and other such games of chance, they're typically popular among the uneducated (read: just about every person in the standard D&D universe) and games of skill are unpopular (because they're easily tilted toward the person running the game).
Games of skill thereby become more popular among the educated class (read: very few individuals, typically bards, clerics, wizards, and perhaps adepts and diplomats) because they rely on (usually) logical thinking based "luck".

In either situation, there will occasionally be such a high roller that would come through and want to try to gamble far beyond what the player is accustomed to. Not only would you have to have the material funds on hand to deal with such an occurrence, but this should be an encounter that draws attention: play it out with your player so that he understands that it could make or break his income for several months.
A random level 15 Bard with tens of thousands of gold to waste is only as uncommon as a level 15 Bard.

Living in a world where Rogues are commonplace and law enforcement beyond cities, towns, or districts is slim, you'll have a hard time with thievery too. Some month you're going to go to collect and there will simply be nothing there. Not even accrued wealth from previous months - completely cleaned out. Even with magical protection, a medium or high level Rogue can clean out most facilities without much chance of being caught.
Psions or Wizards can similarly walk in, take what they want, and leave without chance of being caught.


This is all assuming you have something worth stealing there (any amount of wealth over 10,000GP is worth most spell materials and the time it takes to do it, although I can't see a lv15 Wizard terribly interested in funds he can create himself for cheaper).
A bored Rogue in between adventures, though, and you've got trouble on your hands.
 

Depending on the money available, you'll probably want an anti-magic zone up and running where the gambling is done, and maybe a Candle of Truth where people cash out if you're using chips, when you ask them if they cheated, or know of anybody who cheated.
 

As a potential variant game, we used to have a standing casino game where the PC could pick any die and the house got one die type larger. Whoever rolled higher won; a push carried the bet. The best strategy is for the PC to pick a d10 so that the house has a d12, but for whatever reason people would always mix it up and go with lower dice. They felt like the "d6 was lucky" or whatever. Inevitably, the house won.
 

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