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Old 01-19-2023, 12:27 PM   #11
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
In that case, put a minimum price on it based on the attributes it affects plus a level of Ridiculous Luck or Super Luck, since those traits come closest to the "probability alteration" effects of your power. That means ~120-150 points at minimum, assuming that the results of "roll 3d x3 times" work out to be about the same as "4d & drop lowest."
I decided to see if anydice could manage "roll 3d three times and take the best - lowest - result," and indeed it can. As you can see from there, the mean is comparable to a +2.5 to all rolls; as I determined +1 to all rolls would be worth roughly [60], that would put that part at around [150]. It also reduces the Standard Deviation even further, making Critical Success markedly more common and Critical Failure markedly less common, which is the part of Fortune/Misfortune that is tripping me up a bit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
It might be a more attractive trait if you applied it as a Cosmic modifier to existing levels of Luck. For example, regular Fortune allows you to roll 4d & drop the lowest once per 60 minutes of play, while Ridiculous Fortune allows you to do so every 10 minutes.
As you can see from the anydice result, rolling 4d and dropping the highest (remember, GURPS is a "roll under" system, at least for success rolls) isn't as beneficial as taking the lowest of three 3d rolls. Rather than being a Cosmic Enhancement on Luck, it would be a Limitation. Based on the above, something like -30% would be appropriate... but considering Luck can be used on any roll - including damage rolls, the rolls of enemies, etc - it might be more appropriate to call for -40% (or maybe even -50%, if using my "cannot crit on a 6" suggestion). If there exists a variant of Luck that means the player rolls three times for every roll, that -30%/-40% Limitation would be applied to that to determine the value of my suggested Fortune (and then that value would be reversed for Misfortune). But using this as an alternative to lower levels of Luck would indeed be an interesting idea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
John S. Ross, author of lots of GURPS 3e material, had a variation of Luck called Luck Type III
An interesting take on things. Being able to dictate one die would be more powerful than my suggested Fortune trait, being fairly comparable to "All Luck, All The Time" - see this anydice result. That implies "All Luck, All The Time" should simply cost [150], and Fortune should probably be [100] or less... but then those are 3e traits, so the pricing may not be right for 4e.

Things seem to be looking toward the "correct" value being somewhere between [100] and [150]; I'm starting to think [125] may be the right price here.
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Old 01-19-2023, 12:32 PM   #12
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

An inherent +1.75 on every roll is at least like having +1.75 on every Attribute, so cost at least [105]. And that doesn't account for skewing crits or for non-attribute-based rolls. You could mitigate skewed crits by saying you can't swap out 1s or 6s.
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Old 01-19-2023, 01:16 PM   #13
JulianLW
 
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
An inherent +1.75 on every roll is at least like having +1.75 on every Attribute, so cost at least [105]. And that doesn't account for skewing crits or for non-attribute-based rolls. You could mitigate skewed crits by saying you can't swap out 1s or 6s.
But it wouldn't increase ST, Basic Speed, FP, or damage, so a flat +1 to all Attributes wouldn't be an accurate reflection of the bonus.

Christopher Rice has calculated that a +1 to all rolls is worth about 50 points. (See https://www.ravensnpennies.com/boil-...sorcery-spell/)

Because Fortune doesn't apply to damage or to any rolls the GM makes on your behalf, I would call the extra Fortune die a 100 point advantage.
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Old 01-19-2023, 01:24 PM   #14
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
An inherent +1.75 on every roll is at least like having +1.75 on every Attribute, so cost at least [105].
I outlined how I got the base value in the first post. It actually did work out to right around [105], but I'll note ST wasn't included (ST rolls are so rare they can be safely ignored; maybe you could justify [1] or [2] per +1 ST for purposes of ST rolls, but even that is probably overcharging), and neither were the [3] for FP (as part of HT) or the [1.25] of Move (as part of DX; HT should have also got this reduction, but it really didn't make a big difference). But, as it turned out, the points saved by these wound up being spent on a half level of Enhanced Defenses - +1 DX gives +0.5 to all Block/Parry, and combined with +1 HT gives +0.5 to Dodge, so another +0.5 was needed so that defense would also get a +1. That's for the price for "+1 to all success rolls;" multiply that by 1.75 and you wind up with somewhere in the neighborhood of [105].

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
And that doesn't account for skewing crits or for non-attribute-based rolls. You could mitigate skewed crits by saying you can't swap out 1s or 6s.
That's an interesting idea. That would also decrease the degree of effect of the shift in mean, as a lot of those results essentially involved rerolling a 6 (or 1, for Misfortune). Anybody have an idea on if (and how) anydice could handle something like that? Or have an idea of the probabilities - years ago I manually worked out the probabilities of each result for "4d6, discard lowest," and in a form that made it easy to modify it to account for rules like "reroll 1's" (for use in That Other Game), and that's not an exercise I have any interest in repeating...
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Old 01-19-2023, 02:14 PM   #15
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

Effectively, you are buying a bonus to all four stats, usable all the time. (Bonuses to secondary stats and to skills follow from bonuses to primary stats.) +1 to all four stats costs 60 points; multiplying by 1.75 gives 105 points. So I'd call that a fair price. Or -105 points for the unfavorable variant.

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Old 01-19-2023, 02:16 PM   #16
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

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Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
Christopher Rice has calculated that a +1 to all rolls is worth about 50 points. (See https://www.ravensnpennies.com/boil-...sorcery-spell/)

Because Fortune doesn't apply to damage or to any rolls the GM makes on your behalf, I would call the extra Fortune die a 100 point advantage.
As with some of those responding to that blog post, I disagree with Christopher's use of Alternate Abilities here. But that's certainly another option; applying his methodology, I'm only using cases 1 (+1 defenses) and case 3 (+1 attributes; he also listed a case 7, +1 skills, but as he notes that falls under attributes). [30] for +1 Defenses and [10] for +1 Attributes as a set of Alternate Abilities to the above gives us a cost of [40] for +1 to all success rolls, and [70] for +1.75. Boosting that to [100] to account for the skewing of critical results is arguably fair enough (it's comparable to my boost of [105] to [150]).
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Old 01-20-2023, 07:44 AM   #17
JulianLW
 
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

Having thought about it some more:

Here's how I would handle this trait.

Luck Variant

Fortune, 8/level


Fortune is an alternate version of Luck (Active -40%, Success Rolls only -10%). Once per hour, the PC may modify any single success roll (only when announced in advance, as per the Active limitation) by rolling 4 dice and picking the most beneficial 3 dice as the result. Treat this is a new trait for the purposes of adding enhancements and limitations.

Fortune may be modified by Cosmic: Unlimited Use +1200% to be used for all success rolls: Fortune (Cosmic: Unlimited Use +1200%) [104]


Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Follow the lead of Super Luck:

From p. 80 of Powers: ". . . the GM might permit higher levels: Super Luck 2 [200] works every 30 minutes, Super Luck 3 [300] works every 15 minutes, and so on, with each level halving the time between uses."

From p. 119 of Powers: "In most games, 12 or 13 levels [...] suffice to affect every die roll."

That is, since Super Luck works every hour -- or 3,600 seconds -- of real-world time, taking 11 extra levels (a total of 12, for 1,200 points) lets it work every 3,600/2^11 = 1.8 seconds, while taking 12 extra levels (a total of 13, for 1,300 points) lets it work every 3,600/2^12 = 0.9 seconds. Unless you roll more than once per second or two, this will do.

The same logic could be applied anywhere else real time is used to judge how often an ability works, really. Or you could just say "Super Luck is the ultimate example, so 'Cosmic, Unlimited Uses' is +1,200% everywhere."

I wouldn't allow this on any advantage where each level buys one use instead of reducing the time between a potentially unlimited number of uses, though. That's Gizmos, Serendipity, and Wild Talent. There, I'd honestly say that if you want to be able to invoke the ability each time the GM gives you an opening to do something, you should take as many levels as you think you'll need. With my own five-hour game sessions with each player getting to do something roughly every five minutes, that's about 60 levels -- Gizmos 60 [300], Serendipity 60 [900], Wild Talent 60 [1,200], etc.
Since Luck (-50%) is actually 7.5, and 7.5 times 13 is 97.5, you could also just handwave this and call it a flat [100].
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Old 01-20-2023, 08:30 AM   #18
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Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

And thinking about it just a bit further....

I'm thinking it's fairest to treat Fortune as a standard superpower for 100 points, like Super Luck - or maybe more like Altered Time Rate (i.e. for 100 points, you always get to throw an extra, rather than take an extra maneuver).

If you added Wishing +100% to it, you could throw your fortune die into the mix for any die roll made in your presence. You'd be the ultimate support player! That actually sounds like it'd be a lot of fun in a superpowers game.
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Old 01-20-2023, 09:01 AM   #19
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
Having thought about it some more:

Here's how I would handle this trait.

Luck Variant

Fortune, 8/level


Fortune is an alternate version of Luck (Active -40%, Success Rolls only -10%). Once per hour, the PC may modify any single success roll (only when announced in advance, as per the Active limitation) by rolling 4 dice and picking the most beneficial 3 dice as the result. Treat this is a new trait for the purposes of adding enhancements and limitations.

Fortune may be modified by Cosmic: Unlimited Use +1200% to be used for all success rolls: Fortune (Cosmic: Unlimited Use +1200%) [104]

Since Luck (-50%) is actually 7.5, and 7.5 times 13 is 97.5, you could also just handwave this and call it a flat [100].
An interesting idea. First off, I'll note that, once you've made it Unlimited Use, Active ceases to be a Limitation (arguably, the more often you can use it the less of a Limitation it would be, but certainly once you hit Unlimited Use, it no long limits the ability in any way). However, as I noted above, "Roll 4d, take best three" is actually less powerful than Luck's "Roll 3d three times, take best result," so we need a ~-30% Limitation to account for that, so we wind up with Luck (Success Rolls Only -10%; Alternate Method -30%) [9], which when we multiply by 13 we wind up with [117]. I have no idea how it really changes the probability, but I'm tempted to have the "no replacing 6's" version be around [100] - although it needs to be a bit revised. Perhaps something like:

Fortune [100]

You have incredibly good fortune. For any success roll, roll 4d and discard the highest. However, if you roll any 6's, at least one of them must be retained.

Misfortune [-100]

You have incredibly poor fortune. For any success roll, roll 4d and discard the lowest. However, if you roll any 1's, at least one of them must be retained.


The "at least one must be retained" verbiage makes it a bit harder to roll a critical (if you roll any 6's with Fortune, the best roll you can have is an 8; if your roll any 1's with Misfortune, the worst roll you can have is a 13) without making you a bit more likely to roll an 18 (for Fortune) or a 3 (for Misfortune), which simply retaining all 6's/1's would do - the probability of rolling an 18 on 3d6 is 1/6 cubed, or 1/216, because the only possible result that can get that is 6-6-6. The probability of rolling an 18 on 4d6, discard highest but retain all 6's is the probability of rolling 1-6-6-6 or 6-1-6-6 or 6-6-1-6 or 6-6-6-1, followed by replacing that 1 with a 2, 3, 4, or 5, and finally 6-6-6-6. The permutations of one 1 and three 6's work out to a probability of 4/1296, there are 5 cases with such permutations, for 20/1296, and finally a 1/1296 chance of 6-6-6-6, for a total of 21/1296 - around 1 in 61.7, rather than 1/216, which is a pretty significant boost.
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Old 01-20-2023, 09:48 AM   #20
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: Fortune/Misfortune Trait

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
The "at least one must be retained" verbiage makes it a bit harder to roll a critical
It also makes it harder to grok the (dis)advantage instinctively, which IMO is a point against using that verbiage. Adding a conditional that goes counter to the core use of the (dis)advantage adds more than one extra step to the understanding of it.

"Roll 4d, drop highest/lowest" is quite simple. Not only to do, but also to understand why it's good/bad. If you see a 6 (or 1) you can just remove it without looking at the other 3 dice.

Adding the "at least one 6/1 must be retained" conditional means that you have to look at rolls in a different way. Now you have to scan all 4 dice to see if one or more of them satisfy that condition. If you see two, you can remove one of them and be done. But if you only see one, you now have to scan the other 3 dice to see which one of them is the highest/lowest.

And while the condition is not super complicated or anything, but it is still an additional thing to parse when comparing it to other Luck based (dis)advantages. It's not immedately clear how much of an impact the condition has and how it alters math in favour of/against the character. Yes, you could math it out to get a solid answer, but that is not something you should expect from anyone not already interested in statistics.

In fact, I expect the average player would look at the Advantage and go something like "It costs 100 points, why does it have a built in downside?". While the Disadvantage probably looks less negative than it actually is.
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