One way to get a “sort of random number” is to start a timer, and then let the watchdog timer do a reset which will not ruin the timer values.
Then you can read them and you get different values each time in some limited range that you could multiply or divide.
The next time the program starts after the reset, the timer values will be non zero before you started the timer. Then service the watchdog timer from then on.

I left an example here at some stage that allowed a pic to determine from a list of specific values, what speed crystal is running the pic.

Another way might be to let the POT command do what it does, and time the discharge of a capacitor through a resistor.
You should be able to fiddle with resistor and capacitor values to make the POT command return inconsistent readings.