So I've been thinking about how DDO could simply and easily introduce some random elements into a quest. Lets take a very simple quest you can get out of the Leaky Dinghy called, 'A Matter of Protection'.
Here's three 'versions' of the same dungeon.
In All Versions:
When you enter the quest you will end up in ONE of the versions above. Which one is random. (Lets say a 33% chance for the top two and 34% chance for the last one)
Now as we know now there is a chance in all versions that Boss will spawn. This boss is accompanied by some DM flavor text and if killed spawns a chest.
To alter this slightly... There is still a chance that a boss will spawn but 3 different bosses are now possible. The named one will still spawn as normal but the next two random ones are 'Bandit Guard' and 'Bandit Captain.' Because they have generic names that still fit the quest we can do some cool things. We'll set their stats and skills and feats but lets randomize the race. For now we'll say the Guard is specialized in Piercing and the Cap't is specialized in Crushing. All three will produce a chest if slain.
The chest that appears will now be randomly trapped. 10% of the time it will have a trap. If it does have a trap there is 20% chance of a fire trap, 20% ice, 20% acid, 20% electric and 20% sonic. The DC of disabling the trap has a base of 10/15/20 (For Normal/Hard/Elite) and will have 1D6/1D8/2D4 added to it. (Random DC) The damage the trap will do would be 3D4/4D4/5D6.
In the Top Version:
This version is very close to the original. There is now a 10% chance the collectable is trapped. Trap generation is the same as above but the base is 2 lower for each difficulty setting.
There is also a 25% chance that a floor spike trap will appear. (Denoted in the graphic) DC and Damage generated as above.
In the middle Version:
There are Two waves of 8 bandits and two crates to protect. There is an optional objective to also find a hidden lever and use it which will Stoneskin one of the crates. So players would see:
Optional: Find the Arcane level to Magically protect One of the Crates.
There is also a 25% chance per trap that those traps will be there. These would be floor spike traps (Denoted in the graphic) DC and Damage generated as above. So there is a chance there would be 1,2 or no traps when a player entered that instance.
In the last Version:
There is an extra chest. It has a 50% chance of being locked and a 50% of being trapped. There are still the two possible floor spike traps as well. This one also has a pool with a statue. 2% of time instead of being water in that pool, there is acid.
So pretty quickly we have made 1 always the same quest that has a chance of spawning a boss into close to 20 different possibilities. 3 possible level designs with many seemingly random features. This would GREATLY increase the replayability of the quest and please veterans and new players alike.
