D&D General How Do You Feel About Randomness?

[GrimCo]

Best character I ever had, in terms of fun-entertainment-durability, was in 3e; a Wizard (Illusionist) who started with* 15-12-12-11-10-7 - the 7 went straight into Wisdom and I played her as a happy-go-lucky airhead. Meanwhile others - some of whom had started with stat lines like your friend's - slowly fell by the wayside until, for a while, I was the longest-serving member of the party.

* - I think. I'm 100% confident on the 15, the 7, and that the aggregate bonus of the 6 stats was +2 or less.

Depends on campaign style. For story focused, character driven, role play heavy campaign, sure. Not big deal. Even fun. But for combat heavy diablo-like hack and slash (and thats what we played most of the time ), that power disparity is tangeable. It also limits what character concepts are viable. My experience is oposite of yours. Low stat characters would die rather quick unless you luck out and survive first couple of levels and get magic items to mitigate stat penalties. -2 on wisdom sawing throw hurts ( in reference to your 7 wis wizard). Cha was mostly dump stat for my group unless someone ( usually me) played Bard.

 

[Reynard]

It certainly can be! But in my experience it’s rarely a very interesting challenge.

In my view, it being extra steps is a big part of the point. Finding a valuable item, rolling to assess its value, bringing it back to town, looking for a potential buyer, haggling over the price... These things all increase the anticipation, which is a big part of what makes treasure feel worthwhile, instead of just a meaningless number on the sheet. Gold is mostly not very useful to adventurers in D&D, and the more you reduce the process of obtaining it to simple bookkeeping, the more transparent that becomes. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but making gold more of a process in-character to acquire helps make it feel intrinsically valuable.

These two quotes seem at odds.

 

[Vaalingrade]

In my view, it being extra steps is a big part of the point. Finding a valuable item, rolling to assess its value, bringing it back to town, looking for a potential buyer, haggling over the price... These things all increase the anticipation, which is a big part of what makes treasure feel worthwhile, instead of just a meaningless number on the sheet. Gold is mostly not very useful to adventurers in D&D, and the more you reduce the process of obtaining it to simple bookkeeping, the more transparent that becomes. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but making gold more of a process in-character to acquire helps make it feel intrinsically valuable.

On the other hand, at what point does one sit back and wonder why you're jumping through hoops and doing logistical errands as part of what was supposed to be part of your fun leisure time.

This feels like the 'do a long, distracting side quest so one person in the party can get a thing' issue without even the benefit of maybe the sidequest being interesting.

 

[Charlaquin]

These two quotes seem at odds.

Do they? I think that the anticipation factor of having to appraise and trade treasure to convert it into liquid funds makes it feel more intrinsically valuable than just receiving coins directly. I also think “how are you going to carry the giant gold statue out of the dungeon?” is usually not a very interesting challenge.

 

[Charlaquin]

On the other hand, at what point does one sit back and wonder why you're jumping through hoops and doing logistical errands as part of what was supposed to be part of your fun leisure time.

This feels like the 'do a long, distracting side quest so one person in the party can get a thing' issue without even the benefit of maybe the sidequest being interesting.

Hmm… if two people are misunderstanding what I’ve said, it’s probably on me for not expressing myself clearly.

I’m not talking about “how do you get the treasure out of the dungeon?” as a logistical puzzle; I don’t generally enjoy that type of play. I’m talking about finding valuables other than coinage, such as gems, jewelry, jars of spices, etc. that can’t directly be spent as money, but can be bartered or sold, and adding a semi-random element to the trade value of such treasure.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Hmm… if two people are misunderstanding what I’ve said, it’s probably on me for not expressing myself clearly.

I’m not talking about “how do you get the treasure out of the dungeon?” as a logistical puzzle; I don’t generally enjoy that type of play. I’m talking about finding valuables other than coinage, such as gems, jewelry, jars of spices, etc. that can’t directly be spent as money, but can be bartered or sold, and adding a semi-random element to the trade value of such treasure.

So you're just making them haggle to get the money out of light weight treasure?

 

[Cadence]

On the other hand, at what point does one sit back and wonder why you're jumping through hoops and doing logistical errands as part of what was supposed to be part of your fun leisure time.

Some people enjoy fishing by sitting on a pier and drowning worms while drinking beer and talking and don't care if they catch anything, others like being in a boat with massive radar set-ups where they will assuredly catch tons in the least amount of time. Some like going out and trying to guess where the fish might be and the frustration of coming back empty three times and the triumph of the huge trophy fish after a few times. Others enjoy the challenge of only having packed half the dinners they need for the canoe trip and needing to catch something if they want to eat. And some are happiest when the others go fishing and leave them alone for some peace and quiet.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Randomness has a very important place. I find that it gets wildly over-used outside of its domain of core usefulness.

The core use of chance is action resolution. Chance, used well, means we must think, and that's good.

Throwing randomness into character creation just takes away all of my interest in play. It's no longer equality of opportunity, some folks can "win" (or, more often, lose) at character creation.

Under-used, everything becomes a formula, and tactical thought dies. Over-used, everything becomes a crapshoot, and tactical thought dies. Like water. Too little is death, but so is too much.

I find that, unless the player actively seeks out such things, randomness in the existence or quantity fundamental character resources (e.g. ability scores, whether or not you even get spells, etc.) is counterproductive. Randomness in resolution or temporary access are usually both fine. The former is used all over. The latter is rarely, but occasionally, used for specific class mechanics, e.g. the BO9S "Crusader" class would randomly roll to determine which maneuver(s) they had access to at any given moment, but it was like drawing from a deck, you'd eventually cycle through all of them. Enough randomness to prevent spam (where mere calculation has replaced tactical thought), but not so much as to make it a crapshoot (where it barely/never matters whether you apply tactical thought, the results won't meaningfully change.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Some people enjoy fishing by sitting on a pier and drowning worms while drinking beer and talking and don't care if they catch anything, others like being in a boat with massive radar set-ups where they will assuredly catch tons in the least amount of time. Some like going out and trying to guess where the fish might be and the frustration of coming back empty three times and the triumph of the huge trophy fish after a few times. Others enjoy the challenge of only having packed half the dinners they need for the canoe trip and needing to catch something if they want to eat. And some are happiest when the others go fishing and leave them alone for some peace and quiet.

And key to each distinction:

The added hurdles are consciously, actively sought out, not enforced.

That is, was, and always will be the key factor here. The "higher difficulty" is not required, it is selected.

 

[Charlaquin]

So you're just making them haggle to get the money out of light weight treasure?

They can haggle if they want, or they can just accept the initial offer; that’s up to them.

It’s like this: say you find a Jasper as part of a treasure horde. Instead of just saying “that’s a Jasper, it’s worth 50 gold,” I describe the gem, e.g. “it’s an opaque gemstone mottled with dark orange, red, and brown.” A player can attempt to appraise it if they want; in this case, I’d probably call for a DC 15 Intelligence check; proficiency with Jewler’s Tools would be applicable, as would a dwarf’s Stonecunning. On a success, I’d tell them it’s a Jasper, and give them an expected price range (I’d get this range by rolling twice for its value; if I got the same result twice, I’d just say they can expect it to sell for “about [the rolled value]”). Then, when they later go to barter or sell it, I’d roll (using the same dice code as I use for appraisal) for the initial offer. 50 would be the average result, since a Jasper is a 50gp gem, but I might roll higher or lower. Specifically, my dice code for a 50 gp gem is 2d4x10, so they’d get a an offer of between 20 and 80 gp, with values of 40 and 60 being more common. It’s up to them if they want to take the offer or try to haggle for more (with Charisma checks and such).