Goodman Games

Characters can burn off Luck to survive life-or-death situations. Any character can permanently burn Luck to give a one-time bonus to a roll. For example, you could burn 6 points to get a +6 modifier on a roll, but your Luck score is now 6 points lower.

I don't know if this is an issue or not, but is there a way to burn luck to reduce the severity of an attack against a character? Perhaps add to their AC for a round (or as a penalty to the attack against the character, which works out to the same), or to soak up damage? Like, let's say a starting character has 4 hit points, but 10 luck. He gets hit for 5 damage--could he spend 2 points of luck to reduce the damage from "you're dead" to "you're horribly injured? Or, spend 5 to make the attack do no damage at all?

Aside from saves, it seems like a lot of life and death situations are the result of passive defense, not active rolls.

This would make Thieves and Halflings much less killable.

True, but also reduces the need for the cleric to be a "heal bot."

Hrm...when I first play test it, I'll go with RAW, but I might try one or two sessions with this and see how it shakes out...

talmor wrote:Aside from saves, it seems like a lot of life and death situations are the result of passive defense, not active rolls.

The 'recover the body' roll is active though, Luck could be pumped into it to ensure survival.

So maybe thieves and halflings are a lot more powerful (harder to permanently kill) than their position on the 'XP-to-next-Level' table suggests !!!!

geordie racer wrote:

talmor wrote:Aside from saves, it seems like a lot of life and death situations are the result of passive defense, not active rolls.

The 'recover the body' roll is active though, Luck could be pumped into it to ensure survival.

So maybe thieves and halflings are a lot more powerful (harder to permanently kill) than their position on the 'XP-to-next-Level' table suggests !!!!

Tolkien would approve. Bilbo's recovery at the Battle of Five Armies inspired the mechanic.

//H

talmor wrote:I don't know if this is an issue or not, but is there a way to burn luck to reduce the severity of an attack against a character?

Luck can only be used to modify a roll the halfling player (or thief or whoever else) is making, not a roll made by another person.

We've tried the "modify the other guy's roll" in play. It opens up a real can of worms in terms of "dueling Luck usage":
"I subtract 3 from his roll!"
"Oh yeah? Well I add FOUR so now you're at -1!"
"Okay, fine now I do another -1 to subtract one more point!"
Etc. etc. Not a good scene in actual play. Gets complicated (and, sometimes, very silly) fast.

But, as noted above, if the character doesn't make it that still leaves open one last check for body recovery.

I love the idea of rewarding players for creative ideas, good RPing, etc. Whether it's bennies in Savage Worlds or Fortune in WFRP, my group has always responded well to this sort of mechanic and I'm really tempted to reward them with Luck when we start our DCC campaign. What do you guys think?

muherd wrote:I love the idea of rewarding players for creative ideas, good RPing, etc. Whether it's bennies in Savage Worlds or Fortune in WFRP, my group has always responded well to this sort of mechanic and I'm really tempted to reward them with Luck when we start our DCC campaign. What do you guys think?

I'm tempted to do something similar--with players getting luck for extraordinary actions and the like. That, or, when I railroad them into something horrible (so, you're all captured and tied up naked in front of the lich king--oh, you also all get 1d3 luck points for this), but I fear that would take the game away from the Old School style and towards FATE (which is about as New School as you can get).

talmor wrote:

muherd wrote:I love the idea of rewarding players for creative ideas, good RPing, etc. Whether it's bennies in Savage Worlds or Fortune in WFRP, my group has always responded well to this sort of mechanic and I'm really tempted to reward them with Luck when we start our DCC campaign. What do you guys think?

I'm tempted to do something similar--with players getting luck for extraordinary actions and the like. That, or, when I railroad them into something horrible (so, you're all captured and tied up naked in front of the lich king--oh, you also all get 1d3 luck points for this), but I fear that would take the game away from the Old School style and towards FATE (which is about as New School as you can get).

I'll be doling out Luck in this fashion whether it's official or not. I'm not doing it during the playtests because I'm trying to test the game as unmolested by my preferences as possible. But this idea is definitely how I roll.