Luck based powers

[Kallatari]

I had a player who was a priest of Tymora in one of my campaigns. The player's most popular prayer was "Tymora's Blessing" which was an Affliction (Advantage, Luck) that he'd cast on party members in tough situations.

[Note: I used a house rule of Luck [5 x level] in which you get 1 reroll per day per level of Luck]

He also had a small Modular Ability to put points into any skill he needed, but it was Unreliable (I think that was the limitation name; don't have rules handy at the moment to verify); that is, had to roll to randomly see if it worked. The skill gained was roleplayed as "got lucky" as opposed to him actually knowing what he was doing. Essentially a special effect.

Otherwise, Visualization, and the Wishing enhancement for Luck are probably all the other valid options.

Other than that, the character had quite a bit of Luck and Serendipity... and as part of his good roleplaying, the player would often use it on "trivial character story things" as opposed to only using them for "adventure solving" issues.

[Gorkamorka]

Thanks

I knew the Hive-mind would not fail.

I had thought about luck granting to other. I was aiming at about 5 points per one luck re-roll and some extra cost to grant to others and some minus because a proper prairie had to be performed.

I had not thought about modular ability. Might give that a look. Same with the Blessed out of heroic feats.

About the -1 and -1d6. It's because my group has added a system to alter rolls to our GURPS. I thought manipulating that system would be great for the Tymora preast, but we don't have a formal point system on it.

Thanks again. If you have any more ideas, keep them coming.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Agent

Another possibility: Blessed (Heroic Feats) out of Characters. Just key it to HT, IQ, or DX rolls instead of ST, HT, and DX.

Key it to skill rolls only.

All DX rolls is worth 10 CP. So all skill rolls, whatever attribute or sub-attribute they're based on, is probably 15 CP. Maybe as low as 5 CP if it covers non-combat skill rolls only.

[Gorkamorka]

Here is what I have so far.

Luck, 6 per level
Breakdown (Base cost 5 per re-roll per session, Divine -10%, Affect Other +50%, Preparation Required (1 min) -20%)

Serendipity, 15 per level
Breakdown (Base cost 15 for 1 per session, Divine -10%, Affect Other +50%, Preparation Required (10 min) -30%, Unreliable on 14 -10%)

Modular Ability 11 points, using Divine Inspiration (powers page 63), with 4 skill points
Breakdown (Base cost 22 , Divine -10%, skills only -10%, Preparation Required (1 min) -20%, Unreliable on 14 -10%)

What to people think?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Gorkamorka

Luck, 6 per level
Breakdown (Base cost 5 per re-roll per session, Divine -10%, Affect Other +50%, Preparation Required (1 min) -20%)

I don't think you can take Affect Others like that on Luck. Wishing seems to preclude it.

[Kallatari]

Another thing to get the right feel of a "luck power" is to use Randomize (a 0% feature) on as many abilities as you can. That is, for every 3.5 levels of one or more aspects of a trait, change it to 1d instead. This works out to 4 levels becoming 1d, 7 levels 2d, and 10 levels 3d.

The priest in my campaign bought an Innate Attack (a sunlight laser beam of some sort, as, if I recall correctly, Tymora has the domain of Sun) at level 4, and instead of doing a 4d attack with it, he did a (1d)d attack each time he used it.

For the Luck advantage (with my houserule of 1/level/day), he bought 7 levels and got a randomly determined 2d luck points each day.

You can do this to a lot of things, e.g., buy 4 levels of a Talent, add Randomize, and give a +1d bonus each time you roll a relevant skill instead of +4. If you have a duration of 3.5 minutes or a multiplier thereof, randomize it as well (for example, a duration of 20 minutes becomes 6d minutes instead).

[Gorkamorka]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't think you can take Affect Others like that on Luck. Wishing seems to preclude it.

I'm going to go for the 50% option (well as long as the GM is alight with it). The wishing option is just to expensive for it to be feasible in the game I'm playing. Is it right or wrong...That remains to be seen.

[Kallatari]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't think you can take Affect Others like that on Luck. Wishing seems to preclude it.

I disagree. They're two different effects, and frankly, Affect Others is the worse of the two.

Wishing can be used on anyone in sight, and can affect anything, friend or foe alike. There's no "resistance" to this.

With Affect Others, +50%, you first need to take a Ready Maneuver to touch the other person to affect them. You must then remain in physical contact, or it's lost. In combat, that's very limiting. Granted, for non-combat skill rolls, it can still be useful... but it requires knowing in advance that you want to use it.

If you want to affect people at range, you need to take one or more levels of Area Effect. At this point, it's just as if not more expensive than wishing. And, you still affect only 1 person at a time, and you have to "ready" the subject, so you must still actively pick a subject to affect before he needs to use it; you still can't just decide to change a skill roll.

Finally, even with Affect Others at range, you still can't affect an enemy's roll, because, if I recall correctly, the subject has to be willing.

So, all in all, I find Affect Others on Luck to be rather limiting compared to wishing. If someone wanted to take it, I'd therefore allow it.

[Kallatari]

As a final suggestion for "luck" abilities, don't get caught up by the name of advantages and traits. They're just names. The important thing is the game effect.

So, you could have a "Combat Luck" ability defined as the Combat Reflexes advantage with a Divine -10% power modifier, making it cheaper than actually having mundane Combat Reflexes.

The same can be done for many other traits with creating special effects defining your power, as "luck" can be a very versatile focus.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kallatari

As a final suggestion for "luck" abilities, don't get caught up by the name of advantages and traits. They're just names. The important thing is the game effect.

So, you could have a "Combat Luck" ability defined as the Combat Reflexes advantage with a Divine -10% power modifier, making it cheaper than actually having mundane Combat Reflexes.

The same can be done for many other traits with creating special effects defining your power, as "luck" can be a very versatile focus.

Yes. For instance Luck with Spells Only can be used to represent great expertise at spellcasting: You get Critical Misses less often than others.