Luck Variant: No Fumbles

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Slightly off topic, is there a link to a good 'RPM for Dummies' article or topic? I still haven't wrapped my mind around it.

I'm not sure that RPM can be explained simply enough for that, while still being RPM.

[CeeDub]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Also, am I reading it right where it takes a ton of back-to-back rolls to use? The Sample Casting on p22 makes it look like 4 rolls took place to not get enough energy and require tapping into reserves.

Yes, without a large energy reservoir (usually FP), RPM requires lots of rolls for all but the simplest rituals and is almost guaranteed to give several "quirks" to the casting - along with a significantly increased chance of critical failures.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Yeah. Not just Total Klutz, but any trait that makes critical failures more common (Nuisance Effects, Unluckiness, etc).

For the record, Unluckiness has no effect on your likelihood of rolling critical failures. It's really the opposite of Serendipity, not of Luck.

Originally Posted by The Benj

Considering that -30% is the value for "only in emergencies" and -60% is the value for "NOT in emergencies" (and a critical failure is quite likely to be an emergency), -75% is not even remotely fair.

Let's take a look at Accessibility:
The chart tops out at -40% for something that only comes up 1-6% of the time, which is most cases of critical failure (and that's even lower if you consider that you're usually not going to activate it except if your first roll was already a failure).

I'm not sure Accessibility is a good fit for luck. We have Aspected -20%, Active -40%, and Defensive -20% any of which could have been described as a type of Accessibility but were not.

You're probably right that -75% is too generous, though. I was just spit-balling, for the sake of argument, around the idea of a 15 point advantage.

What we need is the point value of the opposite of Active, which I thought might be in some supplement but I can't find it.

Now, Passive Luck (can only be used to reroll dice rolls, can never be declared before hand to take the best of three rolls) is probably less of a limitation than Active. We could put it at -30% but let's for the sake of argument put it at -20%, the same as Aspected or Defensive.

That would still give us Luck (Passive -20%, Accessibility (Critical Failures (~2.4% of rolls)) -40%) for -60%, which would make Luck 6, 12, and 24 points for Regular, Extraordinary, and Ridiculous.

[Edges]

At our tables, Luck is almost exclusively used to reroll critical failures. I don't see it making sense to give more than a 20% discount. YMMV

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Edges

At our tables, Luck is almost exclusively used to reroll critical failures. I don't see it making sense to give more than a 20% discount. YMMV

Is it really never used to re-roll opponent's critical successes?

In my experience, that is by far the most valuable thing Luck does. No matter how much Per, Danger Sense and awesome Active Defenses an Action!, Covert Ops, Monster Hunters or Special Ops PC might have, if a random enemy combatant with an assault rifle rolls a critical hit, that PC is dead or at least so severely wounded that his career might well be over. PCs without explicit inhuman superpowers survive by not being shot and critical hits remove all the game-mechanical protections that allow that.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

True. It is hard to show off being able to avoid critical failures, but on the other hand Deadpool 2 taught us that taking Visible can let it look cinematic.

.

<snort> No that swirling whirlpool of chaos wasn't just avoiding critical failures. It was kind of an extreme application of Serendipity.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Is it really never used to re-roll opponent's critical successes? In my experience, that is by far the most valuable thing Luck does.

It's used less often for that, IME, but my games aren't usually full of combat.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by aesir23

For the record, Unluckiness has no effect on your likelihood of rolling critical failures. It's really the opposite of Serendipity, not of Luck.

In theory that's correct, but in practice most GMs I've played with basically used it as "I'm going to make a key roll of yours into a critical failure" so that's why I used it as an example.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Is it really never used to re-roll opponent's critical successes?

In my experience, that is by far the most valuable thing Luck does. No matter how much Per, Danger Sense and awesome Active Defenses an Action!, Covert Ops, Monster Hunters or Special Ops PC might have, if a random enemy combatant with an assault rifle rolls a critical hit, that PC is dead or at least so severely wounded that his career might well be over. PCs without explicit inhuman superpowers survive by not being shot and critical hits remove all the game-mechanical protections that allow that.

Wow, that's a great point. I just lumped that into 'sniping crits' and just now realized No Fumbles would have no effect on that. Maybe this is worse than Luck.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<snort> No that swirling whirlpool of chaos wasn't just avoiding critical failures. It was kind of an extreme application of Serendipity.

Exactly, Serendipity with Visible to make it obvious ;)

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

In theory that's correct, but in practice most GMs I've played with basically used it as "I'm going to make a key roll of yours into a critical failure" so that's why I used it as an example.

Those GMs aren't playing fair at all. That's a completely different disadvantage that would be worth more than -10.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Those GMs aren't playing fair at all. That's a completely different disadvantage that would be worth more than -10.

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.