Randomization character?!

[heregoeshell]

Finally! A post involving randomization and DND that doesn't include dice, tables, generators, or fractals! I have a player looking to play, as she describes, "superman's random friend steve." Effectively, the character who has no real discernible reason to be in the party, but for some reason manages to be able to be somewhat useful without any real training, skills, or reason.

I imagine this character as a randomized character who has access to a series of abilities at random times, which she may or may not have knowledge of having (probably will develop it), or even has control of trying to access. I assumed this would be through random generation tables (oh no!) but I prefer to see if there's any insight of published information or classes that will work for this. Any input would be appreciated, thanks!

[Venger]

roll a factotum/chameleon. you can change up virtually every aspect of your character on the fly. enjoy. factotum is in dungeonscape, and chameleon is in races of destiny. both of their schticks are mimicking the class features of other classes.

[Bakkan]

A few options spring to mind.

First, a caster who knows their whole list, like a Cleric or Druid. You could get or make spell cards, and at the beginning of each day, the character shuffles each spell level's deck and deals out an appropriate number of spells representing his daily allotment.

Second, a meldshaper (Magic of Incarnum). An Incarnate in particular can change up his play style significantly each day by shaping different soulmelds. Again, you could write them on cards and shuffle them at first, and as the character progresses he gains more control over the process. If you really wanted to up the randomness, you could work out some way of shifting his essentia around randomly each 1 or 2 rounds.

A Binder (Tome of Magic), like an Incarnate, can play very differently from day to day depending on which vestige (and later, vestiges) he binds.

This last one would require either houseruling away some XP costs or some high-level optimization to mitigate them, but a psionic character with the psychic reformation power can change many of the choices he made in previous levels, allowing him to almost completely rebuild himself at 10 minutes' notice.

[Zaq]

It's more round-by-round random than day-by-day (for day-by-day, the other posts ahead of this one have some good ideas), but a Crusader is literally granted random maneuvers every round. (They have a small enough number readied at any one given time that it's not that unexpected what pops up, but it is indeed random each round.) You don't even need any DM fudging or player choices to make it random—it's baked into the actual class mechanics.

[BowStreetRunner]

roll a factotum/chameleon. you can change up virtually every aspect of your character on the fly. enjoy. factotum is in dungeonscape, and chameleon is in races of destiny. both of their schticks are mimicking the class features of other classes.

I have to second this one. Factotum/Chameleon can fill practically any role in the party.

The Factotum's 'Cunning' abilities (Insight, Knoweldge, Defense, Strike, Surge, etc.) as well as Opportunistic Piety all work off of Inspiration points. You could have the player draw from a bag of white and black stones each time he was eligible to use one of these abilities - white he uses Inspiration points on the ability, black he doesn't.

The Factotum's Arcane Dilettante ability gives spells each day from the sorcerer/wizard list. Just make a list of spells and have the player randomly select from that list each day.

The Chameleon's Aptitude Focus allows the character to select one (or at higher levels two) areas to focus each day. Have the player randomly select which focus to use each day. They also get a bonus feat that can be randomly changed each day, and an ability score bonus that resets when they change their aptitude focus.

The Mimic Class Feature ability need not be set at the beginning of the day, so you could go back to drawing white or black stones when the opportunity to use one of the listed abilities comes up.