Ars Magica & the RNG

[virgil]

This is string of consciousness, so forgive me.

Skills
The resolution system is d10, with exploding crits on a natural 1 and a risk for critical failure on a natural 0. Typical stats range from -2 to +2 and typical skills range from 0 to 5; while specialization can push stats to +5 and skills to 10. That means the RNG is surpassed nearly twice by the difference of an inept & a starting hyper-specialist. Functionally, opposed tests only really happen between people of equivalent categories; specialists vs specialists, muggles vs muggles, etc. It's like having a level system granulated to individual skills.

Unopposed tests are equally stark. You essentially can't use Sense Holiness & Unholiness unless you're a specialist at it, and you know exactly what you can and can't detect. Numerous subsystems in later books make the ranks in a skill give explicit results without even bothering to have a die roll, seemingly aware of the RNG being borked.

Magic
Once Arts enter the scene, the range is even more extreme and varied. The typical starting wizard has their best Casting Totals at +15-20, specialists in the +25 range, and hyper-specialists can push +35. If you know a spell and its level is <=(Casting Total), you can essentially cast it all day. If it's level <=(Casting Total+10), you can cast it at least once or twice per encounter, possibly more depending on your die roll. If you're making up a spell, you can only do it once or twice per encounter, and it's no higher than level (Casting Total+d10/2).

Functionally speaking, wizards have 49 schools of magic at wildly varied skill level, and their ability to cast a spell is essentially deterministic unless they focus on the narrow range of spells not quite easy enough to auto-cast. At low levels in a school, the RNG covers most of your spellcasting ability, and thus it's easy to see uncertainty. As you get better, the die rolls matters less & less and your capability essentially becomes binary.

[Schleiermacher]

I imagine a lot of people hate that, but honestly, that sounds pretty damn good to me, unless the system has lots of dumpster-diving so there's a secret caste system separating optimized specialists from non-optimized ones.