Luck Variant: No Fumbles

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Rereading it, it doesn't seem out of place to treat it as such, but it also sounds worse than -10. Probably why I never take it.

You're right, rereading it, it does say, "you miss a vital die roll" as one of the examples of something that can go wrong once per session.

I've noticed, when I GM, that there are times in a game when the players come up with something I didn't expect that relies on chance. Things like, "are any of the cars in this parking garage unlocked?" Or, "hey do they have an axe in their shed I can grab?"

If there's nobody with Serendipity or Unluckiness, I might just make a die roll to represent random chance. But if there is a player with Serendipity or Unluckiness, this is the situation where I want to have some fun with it.

So in the first example, someone with Serendipity will not only find an unlocked car, but it will have the keys under the visor, or a loaded revolver in the glove box. But someone with Unluckiness will definitely set off a car alarm or open the car with a territorial rotweiler napping in the back seat.

These sorts of things come up often enough in my games to account for most uses of Unluckiness. Add to that the cononical "enemy shows up at the worst time" and stuff I might plan in advance like getting pulled over by the police for unpaid parking tickets while trying to trail the bad guys, etc... and it tends to be the sort of thing that my players enjoy enough that it's a fairly common disadvantage choice.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by aesir23

You're right, rereading it, it does say, "you miss a vital die roll" as one of the examples of something that can go wrong once per session.

And that is turning a Success into a Normal Failure, not a Critical Failure. Depending on the actual situation that can of course still be very dangerous.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by aesir23

You're right, rereading it, it does say, "you miss a vital die roll" as one of the examples of something that can go wrong once per session.

I've noticed, when I GM, that there are times in a game when the players come up with something I didn't expect that relies on chance. Things like, "are any of the cars in this parking garage unlocked?" Or, "hey do they have an axe in their shed I can grab?"

If there's nobody with Serendipity or Unluckiness, I might just make a die roll to represent random chance. But if there is a player with Serendipity or Unluckiness, this is the situation where I want to have some fun with it.

So in the first example, someone with Serendipity will not only find an unlocked car, but it will have the keys under the visor, or a loaded revolver in the glove box. But someone with Unluckiness will definitely set off a car alarm or open the car with a territorial rotweiler napping in the back seat.

These sorts of things come up often enough in my games to account for most uses of Unluckiness. Add to that the cononical "enemy shows up at the worst time" and stuff I might plan in advance like getting pulled over by the police for unpaid parking tickets while trying to trail the bad guys, etc... and it tends to be the sort of thing that my players enjoy enough that it's a fairly common disadvantage choice.

That actually sounds pretty fun.

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

And that is turning a Success into a Normal Failure, not a Critical Failure. Depending on the actual situation that can of course still be very dangerous.

True. I'd wonder how much the upgraded version would be, but then I'd never take it ever unless it gave more points than it was worth.