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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9325009" data-attributes="member: 6790260">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 &quot;win&quot; (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 &quot;Crusader&quot; 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.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9325009, member: 6790260"] Randomness has a very important place. I find that it gets [I]wildly[/I] over-used outside of its domain of core usefulness. The core use of chance is action resolution. Chance, used well, means we [I]must[/I] 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, [I]lose[/I]) 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 [I]get[/I] spells, etc.) is counterproductive. Randomness in [I]resolution[/I] or [I]temporary access[/I] 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 [I]which[/I] 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.) [/QUOTE]

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