Random appearance table

The LL supplement Theorems & Thaumaturgy (my review can be found here) contains a magic item called ring of appearance warping. When worn, the wearer’s appearance changes randomly every turn. A useful table is included to help determine the appearance shifts. Further, the table is of the “roll all the dice” form (well, 4 of the 6 dice, but close enough). This makes it very easy to use without needing to roll multiple times.

It seems to me like this table would be very convenient for use as a random appearance generator for both PCs and NPCs. As it is open game content, I can reproduce it here for general use (and this post should be considered open game content). Thanks to Gavin for giving this to the community.

Die Result d4
Sex
d6
Age
d8
Dress
d10
Features
1
Female Child Messy Missing limb
2
Female Youth Scant Obese
3
Male Adult Immaculate Scrawny
4
Male Mature Formal Muscular
5
Old Threadbare Bald
6
Decrepit Elaborate Hairy
7
Drab Tall
8
Uniform Short
9
Ugly
10
Beautiful

Here are a few other decent tables that I know about:

  • Gygax DMG NPC personae section (page 100 – 102)
  • Labyrinth Lord AEC tavern patron traits (page 150)
  • LotFP Grindhouse Referee Book NPC characteristics table (back cover)
  • Pathfinder GameMastery Guide NPC Creator’s Toolbox (page 94)

Am I missing any other good ones?

My NPCs tend towards blandness and similarity, so I think I should make more use of resources like these.

10 thoughts on “Random appearance table

    1. Brendan

      @LS

      Thanks for reminding me of that. I have it, but have not used it in a while. That is one downside with awesome free resources. Sometimes I forget about them. That rarely happens with more formally published materials, for whatever reason.

      Reply

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