Luck advantage in practice

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Gnaskar

Usually luck is either compulsory or banned in my campaigns. It alters the feel of the game enough that it aught to be a setting feature.

You know, I push games in that direction, but I have never had that philosophy stated so clearly before. Thank you, its a good thought and a consideration I'll start trying to make.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Gnaskar

Usually luck is either compulsory or banned in my campaigns. It alters the feel of the game enough that it aught to be a setting feature.

I've been doing something similar (compulsory Luck) by using Impulse Buys. Didn't really think* of it as compulsory Luck though. Huh.



* I've been mentally framing it more as 'Fate points from FATE'.

[khorboth]

I really appreciate all the feedback. I'll probably present several options to the players next time I have the reins.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by martinl

At our table, we just write the time down on the same sheet we use to track HP, FP, mana, arrows, or whatever. It's a resource.

This. And, since every smart phone has a timer, I start a timer to remind me when my luck is back.

[Black Leviathan]

1) how do you use Luck in your games?

Pretty close to how it plays in the book when players want to use it but I will occasionally offer a lucky player a chance to use their advantage that fits the story like if they have a single copper coin and need 50 gold to buy a potion of healing they can get into a card game and just "get lucky", or if they have a huge keyring of keys and they're trapped in a hall with the monster they can just luckily pick the right key without getting into dice calculations. Also Luck is one of those advantages that makes you a lightning rod for things that would otherwise be rolled randomly, if you have the advantage random good things tend to happen to the lucky PC and random bad things tend to happen to the non-lucky PCs because you're lucky.

2) how useful is Luck in your games?

Luck is huge in the game, especially with players who keep a timer going. But you've definitely seen that it is more powerful with frequent skill rolls, especially if you use a single roll to resolve an effort. That said the mechanical effect really balances towards the middle. We very rarely see luck get a critical hit but it will almost always fix a critical failure. And it will often make a failure successful if you had a strong chance of success in the first place.

3) What are your opinions on how my group has been using luck?

If it works for your group it works. If I could use 4 instances of luck inside of 5 minutes I'd very much be a god in the stories we run but your game could work differently.

4) What are your opinions on how I'm thinking of using luck?

I think it's going to sound rude if I say it honestly. If luck doesn't work because you're not rolling enough you need to roll more, not change the rules. GURPS is strong in it's diversity of mechanics. If roleplaying for your table means putting away the dice then they aren't leveraging those mechanics. They're not Detecting Lies when they ought to, not trying to use Savior Faire to pretty up ugly news, not using Acting to convince others of their false earnestness or concern, they're not using Fast-Talk to demonstrate to other players that their line of BS is actually believable to the rest of the party.

[Anthony]

In third edition I never used luck, because it appeared you had to declare it before the roll, which made it pretty marginal. In fourth edition luck is quite good but tracking the hourly use is annoying.