Gambling in DnD 3.5

I had a query that I wanted to see how possible this is. I'm playing a bard with +7 bluff, +5 sense motive and +11 sleight of hand. I was wondering if skills like that would allow me to cheat while gambling? I had a notion to raise a little cash by hustling people at cards. So do I stand a chance or are my skills too low?

Was thinking of using it on drunks and people who are not professionals. Not sure at what skill level you start to become a shark yourself. Thank you for your response Kristin, good to get anothers point of view on it.

Good idea, will do that.

Bluff and Sense Motive are both used for the actual gambling part. Sleight of Hand is for the cheating part. If I were DM'ing this, your DCs against common farmer/drunkards would be fairly low and I wouldn't bother creating stats for a roll-off style competition (his Sense Motive vs. your Bluff, etc...). But gamblers would be much more difficult. Seasoned gamblers are going to have higher than average Bluff/Sense Motive/Perception. This I would handle with roll-off style competition. Now - if you were gambling honestly - and it was easy to simulate in game (i.e. playing craps) I'd actually play that out with betting and everything. Its sad how few folks actually do this IMO. Wonderful RP and way to make extra cash. In any given tavern you can usually find a game of dice.

Seems like a great way to pay for your bed, food and bar bill.

My question is why on earth you would want to spend valuable session time on trying to cheat some townsfolk out of a few silver when you could be out adventuring?

crimsyn said: My question is why on earth you would want to spend valuable session time on trying to cheat some townsfolk out of a few silver when you could be out adventuring? For the fun of it? My favorite moments in any game is making an outrageous distraction in order to leave everyone practicly naked. And then sell them their stuff just for the extra coin. ...What?

Steven B. said: Seems like a great way to pay for your bed, food and bar bill. One of my players made a big thing about cheating at cards, combining Gambling, Games (Poker), Detect Lies, and psionics. She made a pretty good living at it while travelling from crappy town to crappy town. One of my other players thought it looked fun and lost all his (admittedly meager) spending money and had to take out an egregious loan from the first player to buy something later on. Little touches like that can make for all sorts of interesting plotlets.

Steven B. said: I had a query that I wanted to see how possible this is. I'm playing a bard with +7 bluff, +5 sense motive and +11 sleight of hand. I was wondering if skills like that would allow me to cheat while gambling? I had a notion to raise a little cash by hustling people at cards. So do I stand a chance or are my skills too low? As there's no mechanical or character balance issue to something like this, and it seems fun, I would hope your DM would say "Yes, and..." I personally wouldn't even see a need for a roll. A character with skills like that just cheats and wins as matter of course, like Batman showing up inside a high-security building. It's so easy it's not even worth screentime, except for the amazing results. As others have said, talk to the DM to get their buy-in.

Paul S. said: Now - if you were gambling honestly - and it was easy to simulate in game (i.e. playing craps) I'd actually play that out with betting and everything. Its sad how few folks actually do this IMO. Wonderful RP and way to make extra cash. In any given tavern you can usually find a game of dice. Character skill should come into play, though, even in an honest game. Three Dragon Ante provided rules for how one's character could mechanically improve one's chances if the game were played within the game, though there were only bonuses, not penalties and so a good player could easily beat a good character. That's not how everyone sees it. I still don't get how this makes appreciable money. If that's the goal, there are faster (in terms of player time), easier (in terms of risk vs. reward) ways to do it in the course of normal adventuring.

Paul S. said: Now - if you were gambling honestly - and it was easy to simulate in game (i.e. playing craps) I'd actually play that out with betting and everything. Its sad how few folks actually do this IMO. Wonderful RP and way to make extra cash. In any given tavern you can usually find a game of dice. One of the taverns in my on-going Roll20 campaign has a gambling den in the cellar. Included in my Handouts is a list of dice games which can be played against local NPCs (and the House, if applicable) in the gambling den, along with the rules for how to play. Dice gambling games are of course easy to play out in Roll20. A few of the players have gone there a couple of times to try their luck and it's always been good for a few minutes of fun and laughs. They don't go there very often because they're usually busy doing other things (like off adventuring) but for the times when they're back in town, it's an interesting diversion. One of the PCs (the thief, of course) has a "Gambling" proficiency. It hasn't really come up yet but I've thought about how to simulate that in the tavern's dice games, should he ever ask about it. Some ideas I've had are to either allow him one free re-roll per dice game if he doesn't like a particular result, or perhaps he could do a one-time-per-dice-game adjustment of any die roll result by a certain amount (maybe a 1d4 adjustment up or down, depending on the game). I don't think a Gambling proficiency would have too much an effect on dice games, because they rely so much on pure luck. A card game would be a different story, but I haven't even tried to think about that yet. I've also got rules for using dice to simulate an arm-wrestling contest and a drinking contest. The players have done those a couple of times, and of course there's always plenty of side bets going on when contests like that come up. And finally, I've also got tavern game rules for using dice to simulate playing darts and even playing roulette. However, I've not actually tried using those yet. Of course, all of the above activities can lead to all sorts of interesting side-adventures. NPCs who are sore losers and/or think the PC is cheating, Thieves Guilds running a crooked game, a PC who loses a drinking contest and gets rolled after passes out... These are just some of the more obvious hooks that can result from such activities. In short, taverns can be used for much more than just a meeting place at the start of a game. As I've said before, towns and cities (and therefore, taverns) are every bit as much a legitimate adventuring setting as is a dungeon or the wilderness.

I wanted to build a character who had a life between adventures. So I picked a few skills to raise small amounts of cash and pass the time nicely. I didn't take a profession so figured bards spent a lot of time in taverns why not get your drinks for free and some pocket money. I love the response this has had. You are a great community and really adding extra layers to the character and also different ways to approach downtime.

Well, if you really want to do this, the only thing you can do is to talk to the DM. I'm not as familiar with 3.5 as I am with 4e, but I don't think there's any rules for it, so you would be at the mercy of the DM. Personally, I'd probably just abandon mechanics and either quickly address it and move on ("you make enough to cover the party's bar tab, plus a few gold") or throw it back at you ("what's the result? Do you get a few gold? Is anyone suspicious? Do you have an encounter with Robert De Niro and a circular saw?") and move on to something bigger, more interesting, and which allows everyone to participate. I guess the one thing with me is that now that I'm over 18, I don't really care to create imaginary characters and spend "screen time" doing things I can do in real life without so much as a fake ID (gamble, go to a tavern, etc). My point is, winning a few silver in a card game is inconsequential (it's chump change to any party which has looted even one treasure chest) and kind of a mundane thing to focus on. It's good that you want a character who has a life between adventures, but I think it's best to bring that in as little vignettes during adventures ("A clockwork trap? Clockmaker was my day job before I took up adventuring, this should be easy..." - or I remember one character I played with was a card cheat, and we had a cool scene where we tried to trick a Beholder using the Deck of Many Things) rather than to use "screen time" to deal with it. For example, have you seen the movie Total Recall? How much of it is focused on Arnold Schwarzenegger working construction, and how much of it is him shooting people? And what is more memorable from that movie, the scene where he is using a jackhammer, or the scenes where he's out adventuring on Mars, shooting people and meeting that woman with the three... you get my drift? I know if I were DMing "Total Recall: the RPG" I'd much rather focus on the latter. As a DM, if my players were wanting to do this, I'd have to ask myself why. Is the pacing too slow and they want some action? Do I need to send in some goblins to try to burn down the tavern? Does the rogue feel he's not getting his share of the spotlight? Can I bring in some challenges that tilt the spotlight in his direction in the next adventure?

crimsyn said: As a DM, if my players were wanting to do this, I'd have to ask myself why. Maybe because they simply want to try their hand at gambling, just to do something different? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

The way I see it this isn't about making money. It seems more to me to be about creating a facet of a character that helps define them. not every session is about grand adventure - a case in point, one of my most memorable scenes is of my mage sitting atop the thatched roof of a peasant couple trying to explain to them that he really doesn't want to hurt them, and could they please put down the pitchforks before they hurt themselves, he just wanted to purchase some feed for his horse. that session took an entire game session, between the two other players trying to first catch up and then defuse the situation without hurting anyone. none of it was high adventure, but it is still my favourite moment from that particular questline. (before anyone says anything, I would like to say it was a hugely fun quest line - involving a king jealous of his daughters purity, trying to get us killed off before we could 'corrupt' his offspring, a dragon hunting us down(possibly in cahoots with the king), and having to come out on top regardless of the fact that we were set up on numerous occasions by our prospective father-in-law.) In this case, a player has made a character that wants to make a quick buck - he has skills on his sheet, and its not hard to set a premise of trying to find a game in every tavern or inn he frequents. One or two hands/casts of the die later, and its exstablished, so now it takes a back seat to the game going on around him. if the rest of the party is in the inn and playing out an important scene (for them, if not for the story) then he is in the back, rolling a few die in chat between others lines of dialog. If there is no call for a scene in a tavern, then a simple roll against a gambler profession skill (worked out as a normal profession skill check as per the players handbook) can suffice to see if you made or lost money that day. even making such a roll with 0 ranks, you still add wisdom to the roll, and of course synergies count. if you use luck as a hard stat, it can modify the roll of a dice game as can a +2 synergy bonus for 5 ranks in sleight of hand, and if the player is playing cards, a nice easy synergy bonus of +2 for 5 ranks in bluff, +2 for 5 ranks in sense motive, and a +2 for 5 ranks in sleight of hand is reasonable. of course, 'cheating' (using the +2 bonus from sleight of hand) has the risk of getting caught, meaning you have to figure that out with your DM if it happens, and what kind of roll constitutes getting caught.

Michael H. said: The way I see it this isn't about making money. It seems more to me to be about creating a facet of a character that helps define them. not every session is about grand adventure - Yes, precisely. I've said this before elsewhere, but I've played in games where the party never left the tavern the entire game session and everyone still had a great time. Sure, eventually you've got to get back out there and go about the business of being an adventurer. But not every game session has to be non-stop combat and heroic feats.

Brett E. said: Michael H. said: The way I see it this isn't about making money. It seems more to me to be about creating a facet of a character that helps define them. not every session is about grand adventure - Yes, precisely. I've said this before elsewhere, but I've played in games where the party never left the tavern the entire game session and everyone still had a great time. Sure, eventually you've got to get back out there and go about the business of being an adventurer. But not every game session has to be non-stop combat and heroic feats. There's a range between "never left the tavern" and "non-stop combat and heroic feats" and character definition can be created anywhere in that range.

Paul U. said: There's a range between "never left the tavern" and "non-stop combat and heroic feats" and character definition can be created anywhere in that range. Um... sure, that's exactly the point some of us here are trying to make. Making lots of money doesn't have to be the primary objective in order for in-game time to be considered well-spent.

Brett E. said: Paul U. said: There's a range between "never left the tavern" and "non-stop combat and heroic feats" and character definition can be created anywhere in that range. Um... sure, that's exactly the point some of us here are trying to make. Making lots of money doesn't have to be the primary objective in order for in-game time to be considered well-spent. Then I'm not sure why the contrast is between "never left the tavern" and "non-stop combat and heroic feats." The point some people are making about money is that it seem irrelevant, compared to the normal (even non-monetary) rewards of adventuring. If someone is gambling (or crafting or performing) in order to earn money to buy something, in-game spotlight time could be used efficiently by just giving that thing to the player and letting them describe how they obtained it. Chances are the issue is not whether or not they have the chops at that particular task to accomplish what they want - a +5 in Sense Motive alone is probably more than enough to lord over standard NPCs in all spheres of activity - but that they want to be cool at that activity. The winnings aren't going to unbalance anything, so they win. Describe how. The loss wouldn't unbalance anything either. I doubt most players would find a loss to be an interesting direction for their character, but the GM can always let the player decide what happens, and some players like seeing their characters get taken down a peg.

Well, I didn't come here to debate play-style. The OP asked about how to incorporate gambling in his game and I explained how I do so in my campaign. I then went on to offer some thoughts on how doing so can be about more than just the money involved. That said, I will now bow out of this thread.

There are several ways to do this. The first question is, how in-depth do you want to go? The simplest solution would be to make a profession (gambling) check. Or you could average all of the relative skills (to the type of gambling game) and make a check and then determine the results based on some agreed upon rule (you could even weight to average, but that might be getting a little too complicated). Perhaps make 5% of the money risked amount for each point you were above the opponent or house (for a single or two person game) or add up to total rolls from the group and take the fraction of that amount that you rolled (for a group game). If you want to RP it a little more, poker is a great game for using the standard 3.5 skills. If you succeed at a bluff check, the NPC will fall for your plan, e.g. fold when you have a bad hand. If you succeed at a sense motive check the GM can give you information about how good the NPC's hand is; failing can give you false information. A successful slight-of-hand check can allow you to swap out a card (cheating). If you happen to switch to a card that one of the NPCs has in their hand, you can then RP that encounter. Either they might attack you, or you might be able to convince everyone that the NPC is cheating (obviously you can only do this if that NPC also has a good hand because of the offending card). If you go for the more in-depth option, make sure the other players have something interesting to do while you are gambling. Could you give us a little more information about what your group is looking for? Namely, how in-depth do you want to go with the gambling? If you give us a little more information, we might be able to put together more targeted suggestions.

I suggest doing it like a Dice game makes it so much easier to play a Game of C-low and it's fair other Dice Games include of course Craps as for the Profession Gambling check I think it's not enough for players in RP and its the Fastest Way to Role-play it then if you want to cheat you'd just roll a slight of hand check on these games to replace the dice with loaded ones and as such give the other people the non loaded ones on their turn C-low is a 3d6 game and can be learned / taught in about 1 min theres even a youtube video on it I bet <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_4505587_play-street-craps.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ehow.com/how_4505587_play-street-craps.html</a>

Also, a side note, gambling games in taverns can be a good way to hear any rumors... A NPC who is "winning" might be a bit more talkative about what's going on. That could be used to start new adventures, or even gain details on a current one. For example, if you're about to loot a bandit den, it's safe to say that a rogue or two from said group may be in town, possibly up for a game or two. Or... if you're looking for some ruins with lost treasures, you might be able to hit up a potential raider under the guise of a gambler who wants to know how this guy intends to back up any potential losses...