Alternate Ratio for Game Time Modifier

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Well, that might produce something like "Luck recharges after 20 rounds of combat" or "Luck recharges every time the relevant PC rolls a critical success".

However, you have to consider your attitude to the recharge system being gamed by your players. One of the advantages of player-time luck is that timewasting is generally not entertaining for the player doing it, still less the other players. Those two examples above, which I just invented (or conceivably re-invented), have their own gameability.

If Luck recharges in terms of rounds of combat, you can expect more all-out defences and Evaluates, and less pressure to win fights ASAP.

If it recharges off critical successes, players will avoid reduce their use of penalties for things like Deceptive Attacks, so that they get more rolls at 15 or 16, and more critical successes.

A recharge every 20 seconds seems too fast even for me and I'd rather not have alternate combat/noncombat recharge rates even though it has clear advantages. Recharging every critical success is tempting since it makes recharge rates scale with attention paid to a period of in game time but it would significantly reduce the reliability of Luck's safety insurance. I'll have to think about it.

One of the disadvantages of real time Luck is that it incentivizes stalling for time which is unfun. Replacing that gameability with something like drawing out in game combats seems to be a generally good trade. One thing I've contemplated to reduce this sort of gameability is to make Luck only have a chance of recharging when it would be triggered instead of being automatic.

I tend to think it's very rarely worth voluntarily going below skill 16 anyway, so that wouldn't bother me. It's less than ideal for Luck to be stronger with greater skill levels but that's not a terrible flaw.