[DF] Shelly Cuthbert, Professional Adventurer

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by johndallman

and those come along when they feel like it.

RNG is a balancing factor here, or so I'd like to think. The dice fall as they may, and the point is that it's a resource to be managed. If you blow all your Luck Points at once, you might not have any at a later time to prevent undesirable outcomes. I don't think this is any less presumptuous than assuming you can blow all your LP at once and somehow expect there to not be possible dangers in the future.

So, LP spent all at once BUT risking future problems OR LP spent all at once and NO risking future problems comes out to a net +0% here.

I think it could be argued that circumstances could potentially be manipulated by the player to favor the latter over the former which I see is where you're coming from (like the later mentioned of possible manipulative behavior, a perceptive GM would nip this issue sooner than later). This reminds me of some Kromm logic about Features potentially being valued as Perks. At best I think this might warrant a 1 point increase in cost, but I'm personally in favor of keeping it at 15 as there's a little too much subjectivity with the probability and it could be argued to be a non-issue with a savvy GM.

Originally Posted by johndallman

as a renewable resource

The bolded isn't a true statement as I'm certain I provided adequate clarification in my notes on this, although I will elaborate/restate this more clearly if I can. You never have any more uses of Luck with your Luck Points anymore than the amount of uses you would naturally have with unmodified Luck. It's only a "renewable resource" if you're purposely dragging the session on longer than it is scheduled for. I doubt this is a meaningful isssue, as I would hope the GM to be perceptive enough to sus out this kind of manipulative behavior.

Originally Posted by johndallman

With GURPS Luck, I mostly play without considering the time, and have been caught out several time with ten minutes to go before my Luck refreshed.

For the sake of objectivity I think we should value Luck for it's full point cost with the assumption that you're maximizing your time management in regards to Luck usage rather than under utilizing your usage of time, as it just makes sense to value it for its max potential. Anything less than that and I think we might be flirting with the idea that Luck should be priced lower, which common sense would dictate to be a silly idea I'd think.

I think a common issue that unmodified Luck has with the contentious Game Time modifier is time. For reasons it could be argued as a positive aspect of Luck's game mechanics, and for reasons it could be argued as a negative aspect of the game mechanics of the trait, as evident by my stances and past history of it being brought up by others in past threads.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Yes . . . is she always able to pull her weight in a party? She's reasonable with a sword, but without her armour specified, we don't know how durable she is in a fight. She's decent with crossbow, and very useful at Survival and Cartography.

Oh, I'll get to the equipment loadout eventually. It's the part I dread the most about char gen as it's the most time consuming aspect of it for me. That and I'd be more comfortable finalizing it knowing what game she's going in, and who the rest of the party is, their loadouts, etc. I might post a tentative loadout later. With said loadout we can probably be a bit more confident in her capabilities certainly, as a lot of skills are only as useful as the tools you have at your disposal.

One of my complaints about the standard DF templates is they have an almost one-track mind towards combat effectiveness without nearly as much focus on broader utility for adventuring. Sure, at least someone needs to be the combat monster but not everyone needs to be.

Originally Posted by johndallman

OK, she'd be quite handy in the adventure we're on, mapping Wolfstack Wood in the Cold Shard Mountains.

Thanks! It always has irked me in the past with my old parties I've played in that mapping is always neglected. I have the suspicion that today's smartphones with their convenient mapping apps has made people take physical maps for granted. If I'm ever at a American shopping mall and everyone else I'm accompanying is bewildered about where to go, I'm the first to go straight to the nearest directory map (how does anyone just miss these?). You could wander around aimlessly (as some adventuring parties seem to do, poor GMs might as well be trying to herd house cats), or you could inform yourself of your environment and keep track of things. With maps, good ones!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

Thanks! It always has irked me in the past with my old parties I've played in that mapping is always neglected.

We were hired to map the wood, so we're doing that. The players suspect it is a euphemism for something else, since the chap who hired us looked surprised when two of the characters were enthusiastic about cartography, but we have not had any clarification. Since mapping the wood involves going through the whole place, acre by acre, we are finding all the inhabitants that don't hide from us.

[arnej]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

I’m proposing an interesting +0% modifier on Luck. Rather than limit usage to once per hour of real time play, the character has Luck Points that can be spent to use their Luck with. Each use of Luck requires spending a single Luck Point. A character with the 15 point level of Luck has a number of Luck Points equal to the number of real time hours the session is scheduled for; e.g. if the session is scheduled for 5 hours, the character has 5 Luck Points to spend during that session.

I don't think that this enhancement to Luck is worth 0%, for the simple reason that you could still use it like normal Luck (once per hour) but ALSO use it all bunched up (5 times in five minutes). Since it emulates the basic Luck advantage, already worth 15 points, anything over that would be worth more.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by arnej

I don't think that this enhancement to Luck is worth 0%, for the simple reason that you could still use it like normal Luck (once per hour) but ALSO use it all bunched up (5 times in five minutes). Since it emulates the basic Luck advantage, already worth 15 points, anything over that would be worth more.

This has been on my mind for a bit, and I happened to recall some details from the Impulse Buys supplement where it mentions you can purchase "Impulse Points", or IP, that you can use to do things that normally would cost a Character Point to do (such as "Influencing Success Rolls" as johndallman mentioned).

From what I've gleaned from the passage on that, IP that replenishes to its max amount each session should cost at least [10] per IP. I can't imagine the typical session being any less shorter than 3 hours, so let's say we need just 3 IP. This is clearly Aspected as well, so about -20% to have this IP specifically for point-based Luck usage. That brings us to [8] per point, or [24] for a 3 "Luck Point (LP)" point pool.

With some Googlefu because my math skills stink, we can figure a percentage increase from 15 to 24 to figure the appropriate amount that a Luck Point modifier would be for the Luck trait. The percentage increase from 15 to 24 is 60%, so the modifier should be +60% probably.

To account for stingy GMs and pentaphilia, we can tack on another +5% for a +65% modifier instead to bring that to a handsome [25] for the LP-based basic Luck trait. A [10] increase in point cost sounds about right to me. I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to value at-will Luck higher than that as any higher and I might consider spending my points elsewhere besides on Luck. To be fair, Luck could be argued as meta-level probability manipulation (as some people are inclined to see it as, although I know it to be more nuanced than that) so 15 sort of already is a bit of a crock.

So how's all that crunchery look?

[arnej]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

To account for stingy GMs and pentaphilia, we can tack on another +5% for a +65% modifier instead to bring that to a handsome [25] for the LP-based basic Luck trait. A [10] increase in point cost sounds about right to me. I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to value at-will Luck higher than that as any higher and I might consider spending my points elsewhere besides on Luck. To be fair, Luck could be argued as meta-level probability manipulation (as some people are inclined to see it as, although I know it to be more nuanced than that) so 15 sort of already is a bit of a crock.

So how's all that crunchery look?

I think that this sort of an approach is likely to be more persuasive to a GM.

Would it be 3 LP per session, no matter how long the session, or 1 LP/expected hour as you had it before?

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by arnej

I think that this sort of an approach is likely to be more persuasive to a GM.

Would it be 3 LP per session, no matter how long the session, or 1 LP/expected hour as you had it before?

Hmmm.

The +65% is what it is assuming your average game session is no less than 3 hours in length. Anecdotally, I can't recall any session ever being less than that, but I also can't recall it being much longer either... if it had to go on a bit longer, 4 hours. 5 is pushing it. In the past with my groups, all young adults or older with responsibilities or other relationships to attend to besides our gaming buddies, we'd gather roughly around noon to begin playing and end or session in time for people to head home and have dinner with their SOs/families or for the late night job shift. So a min of 3 hrs and infrequent max of 4 hrs sounds right. The game session that goes on from the early hours of the day to the late hours of the night or longer is a extreme rarity, at least from my experience.

I think it's fine if it's 1 LP/hour for +65% assuming a consistently sane (ymmv of course?) length of sessions, and you're getting roughly ~3 LP a session with that assumption of "sane" session length. I think the minimum +5% added on to the base +60% for +65% is the minimum you'd want to charge for the potential for a extra ~1 LP once and a while.