Goodman Games

So let's say I roll up a character with a Luck of 8, and I roll 24 on the Birth Auger table ("Speed of the Cobra: Initiative"). Does the above quote mean that the character will always have a -1 modifier to his initiative for the duration of his career? Furthermore, the value of the Luck score changing for completing adventures and doing things in line with his alignment/class will NOT impact the "-1 to initiative", but will just be used for in-game Luck checks and for the DM to determine how things are going "karma-wise" in general, totally decoupled from the "Speed of the Cobra" aspect of the character?

You have it exactly right. The modifier, positive or negative, applies as a special case for these rolls for this character, and does not change as luck rises and falls over the characters career. The same applies to a warrior or dwarf's lucky weapon.

So a 0-lvl character with a -1 Luck penalty that opts to become a warrior is incentivized to choose a weapon that they'll never plan to use, effectively defining a weapon that the character, for whatever reason, never quite grasped or attuned to. Is this right?

Sounds good to me!

I've actually been ruling that the Lucky Weapon bonus doesn't stack with strength. It makes Lucky Weapon less of a big deal, but could be used to offset a low Dex for a ranged weapon.

Another houserule I've made for Birth Augurs is that the bonus applies only once a session, so one could let it all add up, but make it more of a moment of luck...

Basically, I had a few players start out with ridiculous rolls in a few things at 1st level... so I nerfed it.

Or, perhaps the character has taken a vow not to use a certain weapon for some reason, but when pressed to use one, fate penalizes him.

Or there's a cultural taboo against that weapon, so training as neglected.

You're getting it.

caveman, I have to say I'd be a bit annoyed by that as a player. Characters are really fragile in DCC, you don't need to nerf them to preserve the possibility they may die at a moment's notice.

I believe starting luck is an extremely important ability by design. After all, it is only through luck that most protagonists succeed in these stories!

I have a simple solution for lucky weapon. The bonus for lucky weapon is fixed but in my campaign this can never be negative. Never. This is a class feature and a ability not a disadvantage. I even considered ruling lucky weapon as having a minimal +1 benefit. No need to penalize DCC characters even futher. Choosing a lucky weapon and then using a totally different one is counter-intuitive to me.

"I'd find that annoying as a player"
I hear that, but I found that 1st level characters weren't that fragile, and that the luck bonuses were combining to create characters with wild variation in ability at first level. For example: 16 str with a 17 luck and "add luck to melee attacks" birth augur combined with Lucky weapon, that's +9. It seems excessive to me. In general I feel that Warriors are pretty dominant.
Anyways, I love the game and am happily tweaking it to suit my fancy!

This is possible via the rules but is really highly highly unlikely. Even if you consider alternate rolling methods such a character would be unlikely. Plus having a minus to luck and a birth augur "add luck to melee attacks" can result in a character with NO bonuses to attack or even a worse bonus than a 0-level character. That is not something I would agree with. So in my games 'lucky weapon' will be either capped in some fashion or renamed as a weapon focus/specialization type mechanic.

Its unlikely, but it happened twice in my game! Warriors were accidental munchkins!

See the key word here is accidental. It can sometimes happen true. But players cannot build towards this, there is no powergaming involved. As for my reasoning - I do not believe class features like lucky weapon should be negative in nature. If you have a negative luck modifier you are already screwed. You do not need to be screwed any more. The choice for such a player would be to pick a so-called lucky weapon and then use a completely different one. I find that that kind of behaviour problematic. His "lucky weapon" should be something he is comfortable with, something that rests well in his hand, something he trained with and can strike better blows with.

Well, I'd probably be pretty lenient with a negative luck thing, though I can see it being a great role-play instigator!
I guess I just see the Lucky Weapon and especially the Birth Augurs as varying too much in utility, kind of like feats in Type III-IV, with some being irrelevant to a particular character and other capable of taking over every battle. So I decided to mellow out the curve/spike by making lucky weapon/birth augur unstackable/limited use, respectively.

I've got a whole host of houserules like this. My fave parts of the game are the deed dice and the spells. All the rest is being tinkered with.

cheers

I'm a fan of the permanent "feature" of Luck, bad or good. I see nothing wrong with it, and it really adds flavor. DCC RPG is really avoiding the whole super-hero aspect of modern gaming. Being permanently and forever unlucky with "initiative" or "a sword" is very flavorful. It really adds to the whole "knives hate me" kind of character. It's also an opportunity for a "change in luck". It'd be perfectly fine for the world to "flip" and have everyone's lucky roll change during some major world changing event. James Raggi of LotFP loves to have fountains that change ability scores, there was a trap in Tomb of Horrors that changed the sex of characters. There are some of us that _like_ to play nerfed characters, just like we did in the 80's.

I dig that. I really enjoy the random character generation. I found this link to a background generator on the Hill Cantons blog that's pretty sweet. http://www.multifoliate.com/quickiebackground.html

Is this all down to semantics? By calling it "lucky" one instantly thinks of good luck, but of course the stat is also a bad luck indicator if it is low enough. Thus, the Warrior's "lucky weapon" is, in these instances, his "unlucky weapon" and because he's such an unlucky kind of guy, he just never gets good in any other particular weapon.

As a Player, I really enjoy the whole aspect of how luck plays apart of all things the character might do. If say, the stars aligned just right when a character was born to be warrior on the battle field, then he has all the right modifiers to be a bad ass at first level. The Fates of Man are really fickle to say the least. Some guys have all the luck and some have none. Most characters are going to be somewhere in the middle.

On the otherhand, if you don't have much luck or natural ability, it is going to be a short character life. Granted, no player wants to play the Quadroplegic, Vegetable who sits in a wheel chair at 0 level. But his friends in his Character Pool, (ie. the other PCs that one player controls,) will gladly thank the Q.V. for his valient sacrifice. Especially, if it meant rolling the Q.V. down the hillside as a distraction, so the rest of the party could escape the gaping maw of certain death.