Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Candin 05-11-07, 07:00 PM	Can a wild mage pulling cards from a deck of many things apply their student of chaos ability and pull two cards, then choosing the preferred? Or does this come down to the definition of randomness? Granted, the cards are pulled at random, but it doesn't involve the rolling of the dice, but rather the shuffling of a deck. Or would this be something left up to the DM? The clause about when student of chaos cannot be used (with the example of a robe of useful items) seems far to ambiguous to be applied either way to the deck.
Tuhljin 05-11-07, 10:35 PM	That's a tough call. I have two answers, one for "written as intended" and the other for "written as worded." Well, the first one isn't so much an answer as something to think about. I see it like this: The robe of useful items's "randomness" is more like randomly generated treasure than a random magical happening. That is, the treasure is "randomly generated" by the DM but in the game world it was there all along. The patches were always there and what they did was pre-defined in the game world, even if the player and DM didn't know the result until the random roll was made. The random effects from the rod of wonder and bag of tricks, on the other hand, are truly random, not pre-defined. The question is, into which category does the deck of many things (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/artifacts.htm#deckofManyThings) best fit? On the one hand, the deck does say that each card has a specific (pre-defined) purpose, and two of the cards can even be discarded (not replaced) from the deck once drawn. On the other hand, nothing is truly 100% random. Rolling dice comes down to how it's rolled, the surface it lands on, etc. Who's to say thoroughly shuffling a deck with no trickery at work isn't essentially just as random, so Student of Chaos should apply? As far as written as worded goes, there are again two answers. Purely as worded, it's "No." You're drawing cards, not rolling the dice. However, if the DM is going to be a little bit more lenient while still trying to work off of written as worded (other than overlooking that first fact), the answer seems to be "Yes, it applies." Student of Chaos says "If a random roll [or card-drawing, the DM adds] is made only once to determine the nature or contents of a device... a wild mage gains no special advantage." You don't roll/draw cards once to determine the nature/contents - you are drawing cards to see WHICH of the contents you are randomly getting.