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JLV · 02-26-2018, 08:13 PM

I wonder if there's a simpler way to approach all of this. (With a Hat Tip to Charles G. over on the "Fourth Attribute" thread for sparking this idea...)

If Gods intervene in life via some form of indirect action, what if we DID introduce the concept of "luck points" (or "fate points," or whatever you want to call them) which players could expend to change a die roll, or survive an otherwise fatal incident or something like that?

Each player would have a limited pool of such points (very limited, ideally; maybe only two or three) which he or she could expend for special purposes. Once spent, they're gone forever. New luck points would be granted by the GM under some specific guidelines and as a result of divine favor of some kind or another.

You could think of them as a type of highly specific and highly indirect "magic of the Gods" that would allow you to briefly alter reality in very limited and specific ways (unlike a WISH, which has much wider utility -- and which could also be derived from divine influence; why should Demons have all the fun?).

Bad guys (only the real villains, of course) might have one or two to throw around too; depending on how this framed out once written up.

This would immediately remove the need to come up with all kinds of specific spells for clerics, and would simplify writing rules for divine influence and so on; instead of creating a complex system for deciding how clerical spells work and what not, you have one simple mechanism that can influence events without any overt "miracles" occurring. After all, that "miraculous" save could have simply been good luck, couldn't it? It would also have the advantage of "removing" the Gods a bit more from the immediate environment; you can appeal to them all day long, but they may or may not grant a luck point (and actually, such grants should be very rare), and either way they aren't standing around telling you which way to go -- which can spoil an RPG game faster than anything. Once you get Gods involved, what's left for the players to do?

Anybody have any thoughts on something like this?

02-26-2018, 08:13 PM	#7
JLV Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Arizona	Re: priest and theologian I wonder if there's a simpler way to approach all of this. (With a Hat Tip to Charles G. over on the "Fourth Attribute" thread for sparking this idea...) If Gods intervene in life via some form of indirect action, what if we DID introduce the concept of "luck points" (or "fate points," or whatever you want to call them) which players could expend to change a die roll, or survive an otherwise fatal incident or something like that? Each player would have a limited pool of such points (very limited, ideally; maybe only two or three) which he or she could expend for special purposes. Once spent, they're gone forever. New luck points would be granted by the GM under some specific guidelines and as a result of divine favor of some kind or another. You could think of them as a type of highly specific and highly indirect "magic of the Gods" that would allow you to briefly alter reality in very limited and specific ways (unlike a WISH, which has much wider utility -- and which could also be derived from divine influence; why should Demons have all the fun?). Bad guys (only the real villains, of course) might have one or two to throw around too; depending on how this framed out once written up. This would immediately remove the need to come up with all kinds of specific spells for clerics, and would simplify writing rules for divine influence and so on; instead of creating a complex system for deciding how clerical spells work and what not, you have one simple mechanism that can influence events without any overt "miracles" occurring. After all, that "miraculous" save could have simply been good luck, couldn't it? It would also have the advantage of "removing" the Gods a bit more from the immediate environment; you can appeal to them all day long, but they may or may not grant a luck point (and actually, such grants should be very rare), and either way they aren't standing around telling you which way to go -- which can spoil an RPG game faster than anything. Once you get Gods involved, what's left for the players to do? Anybody have any thoughts on something like this?