Goodman Games

So the one question about Luck is:

If a character, a warrior lets say, has a luck score of 14 burn 4 luck he goes down to 10. Pg 19 says the luck is burned permanently. But after completely the adventure they regain luck. So if they were to gain 2 would they be back to 12.

I guess the word permanently is what is throwing me.

It basically means that the Luck does not naturally return/refresh/regenerate; without that Luck reward they'd still be stuck at 10 after burning it. If you didn't say "permanently" then folks might assume they could spend the Luck, only to have it return naturally at a later point (such as at the start of the next session).

Colin

Yeah, it is just to differentiate from other ability losses that you can recover by spending the time to heal up.

Sebacore wrote:I guess the word permanently is what is throwing me.

With the exception of the Thief and the Halfling, yes it's permanent.
But check page 361 for how to regain Luck.

Personally, I'm also rewarding my PCs with regained Luck for solving puzzles and avoiding danger without using Luck.

NetHack has a lot of ways to gain Luck during the game, which affects a lot of mechanics. Some thoughts on adjustments to Luck, taken from http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Luck:

-2 Break a mirror. (Other glass items have no effect on Luck.)
-n Breaking n eggs laid by you (at worst -5).
+1 Sitting on a throne (sometimes).
0 Throwing a worthless gem at a unicorn.
-1 to +1 Throwing unknown valuable gem at cross-aligned unicorn.
-3 to +3 Throwing known valuable gem at cross-aligned unicorn.
+1 Throwing unknown valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
+2 Throwing named valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
+5 Throwing identified valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
-1 Hitting a blind floating eye (1 in 500 chance).
-1 Jumping in Sokoban.
-1 Breaking a boulder in Sokoban.
-1 Casting stone-to-flesh on a Sokoban boulder.
-1 Polymorphing a Sokoban boulder.
-1 Reading a scroll of earth in Sokoban.
-1 Being pulled by a thrown iron ball in Sokoban.
-1 Hurtling through the air in Sokoban due to Newton's 3rd Law. (i.e. throwing something while levitating)
-1 Squeezing past a boulder in Sokoban (or walking over one when polymorphed into a giant)
-1 Killing a tame monster.
-1 Killing a peaceful monster (sometimes). See note below.
-2 Killing a peaceful human, and you are not chaotic. ("You murderer!")
-5 Killing a co-aligned unicorn.
-5 to -2 Cannibalism (eating your own species), unless an orc or a caveman.
Set to 0 Praying with negative regular luck (sometimes: "golden glow" boon).
-3 Praying on wrong altar.
-3 Praying before your prayer timeout has expired.
-5 A sacrifice (not your own race) on Moloch's altars in Gehennom.
-3 Being converted by trying to convert an altar.
-1 Otherwise unsuccessful at converting altar.
+1 Successfully converting an altar.
-1 Sacrificing at another god's altar.
-1 Kicking another god's altar ("Thou shalt pay, infidel!")
-1 Trying to engrave something on another god's altar (also gives "Thou shalt pay, infidel!")
+2 Sacrificing your own race on your own chaotic altar.
-2 Sacrificing your own race on Moloch's altar.
-5 Sacrificing your own race, you aren't chaotic.
-1 Sacrificing an unidentified fake Amulet of Yendor.
-3 Sacrificing an identified fake Amulet of Yendor.
+1 Sacrificing, slightly mollifying your god, negative luck.
Set to 0 Sacrificing, mollifying your god, negative luck.
+1 Sacrificing, having a hopeful feeling, negative luck.
Set to 0 Sacrificing, reconciling, negative luck.
0 to +5 Sacrificing, god happy.

Note about luck penalty for killing peaceful monsters, from [1]:

If you manage to kill a peaceful monster without angering it, you have a 50% chance of losing one point of Luck. This is in addition to the Luck penalty for murder described above and the penalty of -5 Luck for killing a unicorn of your own alignment. However, simply killing a peaceful monster with one whack from a melee weapon will anger it before it dies, avoiding this penalty. Most wands and spells will also anger a monster even if they kill it in one zap, but "beam" attacks such as striking or polymorph have a chance of killing without angering, and incurring the additional penalty.



Obviously a lot of those may not have true application to a DCC tabletop game, but there's a few ideas in there, in particular throwing gems at unicorns, sacrificing to the Gods (in NetHack, via corpses, but DCC tabletop could be monetary donations as well), etc.

That's a really cool table.

NetHack shares a lot w/ DCC in terms of atmosphere and, frankly, difficulty. Deceptively simple to play, but nearly impossible to master (in NetHack terms, ascend; in DCC terms, I guess make it past level 3 or something?

beermotor wrote:Deceptively simple to play...

It isn't. The user interface is everything but friendly, unless you grew up using Unix terminals. Still, it's an awesome game with lots of good stuff to steal.

I'm still unsure about Luck (can work round it though it would be nice to know the intention of the rules):

- Is the initial score rolled at PC generation a hard limit on Luck, or can you exceed that e.g. you rolled 13, burnt 2 points in adventure, get +3 at end of adventure, is your Luck now back to 13, or is it 14? If the latter, is there an upper limit of 18, or higher?

- How does this interact with Thieves and Halflings who only temporarily spend Luck? If they gain +3 Luck at the end of an adventure, does that increase their permanent Luck as it would for other PCs?

- With multiple Halflings, only one can be a good luck charm for the party i.e. spend Luck for others. Who decides? Does one of the Halflings agree to bite the bullet and spend for others?

Ravenheart87 wrote:

beermotor wrote:Deceptively simple to play...

It isn't. The user interface is everything but friendly, unless you grew up using Unix terminals. Still, it's an awesome game with lots of good stuff to steal.

I don't know, it's just move and hit stuff, or throw stuff/cast spells/zap wands, at a basic level. The graphics might be tough to get acclimated to if you're under, say, 30, but if you grew up in the 80s/90s, you probably played a bunch of games just like this (I know I did).

I play it on my phone a lot, I've never ascended... had level 30 characters though, but once I got the Amulet, the Wizard was just too much to deal with eventually and I got whacked.

d(sqrt(-1)) wrote:I'm still unsure about Luck (can work round it though it would be nice to know the intention of the rules):

- Is the initial score rolled at PC generation a hard limit on Luck, or can you exceed that e.g. you rolled 13, burnt 2 points in adventure, get +3 at end of adventure, is your Luck now back to 13, or is it 14? If the latter, is there an upper limit of 18, or higher?

- How does this interact with Thieves and Halflings who only temporarily spend Luck? If they gain +3 Luck at the end of an adventure, does that increase their permanent Luck as it would for other PCs?

- With multiple Halflings, only one can be a good luck charm for the party i.e. spend Luck for others. Who decides? Does one of the Halflings agree to bite the bullet and spend for others?

Stats are pretty flexible in DCC, unlike in other games. I would answer your questions above with "14, 18, yes but +3 is a huge reward (better have been a damn good reason), and haven't had to deal with it but I'd just work it out at the table."

You are stealing my thunder, I'm hoping to have a "Roguelike" module for all to playtest soon

beermotor wrote:NetHack has a lot of ways to gain Luck during the game, which affects a lot of mechanics. Some thoughts on adjustments to Luck, taken from http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Luck:

-2 Break a mirror. (Other glass items have no effect on Luck.)
-n Breaking n eggs laid by you (at worst -5).
+1 Sitting on a throne (sometimes).
0 Throwing a worthless gem at a unicorn.
-1 to +1 Throwing unknown valuable gem at cross-aligned unicorn.
-3 to +3 Throwing known valuable gem at cross-aligned unicorn.
+1 Throwing unknown valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
+2 Throwing named valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
+5 Throwing identified valuable gem at co-aligned unicorn.
-1 Hitting a blind floating eye (1 in 500 chance).
-1 Jumping in Sokoban.
-1 Breaking a boulder in Sokoban.
-1 Casting stone-to-flesh on a Sokoban boulder.
-1 Polymorphing a Sokoban boulder.
-1 Reading a scroll of earth in Sokoban.
-1 Being pulled by a thrown iron ball in Sokoban.
-1 Hurtling through the air in Sokoban due to Newton's 3rd Law. (i.e. throwing something while levitating)
-1 Squeezing past a boulder in Sokoban (or walking over one when polymorphed into a giant)
-1 Killing a tame monster.
-1 Killing a peaceful monster (sometimes). See note below.
-2 Killing a peaceful human, and you are not chaotic. ("You murderer!")
-5 Killing a co-aligned unicorn.
-5 to -2 Cannibalism (eating your own species), unless an orc or a caveman.
Set to 0 Praying with negative regular luck (sometimes: "golden glow" boon).
-3 Praying on wrong altar.
-3 Praying before your prayer timeout has expired.
-5 A sacrifice (not your own race) on Moloch's altars in Gehennom.
-3 Being converted by trying to convert an altar.
-1 Otherwise unsuccessful at converting altar.
+1 Successfully converting an altar.
-1 Sacrificing at another god's altar.
-1 Kicking another god's altar ("Thou shalt pay, infidel!")
-1 Trying to engrave something on another god's altar (also gives "Thou shalt pay, infidel!")
+2 Sacrificing your own race on your own chaotic altar.
-2 Sacrificing your own race on Moloch's altar.
-5 Sacrificing your own race, you aren't chaotic.
-1 Sacrificing an unidentified fake Amulet of Yendor.
-3 Sacrificing an identified fake Amulet of Yendor.
+1 Sacrificing, slightly mollifying your god, negative luck.
Set to 0 Sacrificing, mollifying your god, negative luck.
+1 Sacrificing, having a hopeful feeling, negative luck.
Set to 0 Sacrificing, reconciling, negative luck.
0 to +5 Sacrificing, god happy.

Note about luck penalty for killing peaceful monsters, from [1]:

If you manage to kill a peaceful monster without angering it, you have a 50% chance of losing one point of Luck. This is in addition to the Luck penalty for murder described above and the penalty of -5 Luck for killing a unicorn of your own alignment. However, simply killing a peaceful monster with one whack from a melee weapon will anger it before it dies, avoiding this penalty. Most wands and spells will also anger a monster even if they kill it in one zap, but "beam" attacks such as striking or polymorph have a chance of killing without angering, and incurring the additional penalty.



Obviously a lot of those may not have true application to a DCC tabletop game, but there's a few ideas in there, in particular throwing gems at unicorns, sacrificing to the Gods (in NetHack, via corpses, but DCC tabletop could be monetary donations as well), etc.

Sweet, I'd love to collaborate with you, or just playtest.

d(sqrt(-1)) wrote:I'm still unsure about Luck (can work round it though it would be nice to know the intention of the rules):

- Is the initial score rolled at PC generation a hard limit on Luck, or can you exceed that e.g. you rolled 13, burnt 2 points in adventure, get +3 at end of adventure, is your Luck now back to 13, or is it 14? If the latter, is there an upper limit of 18, or higher?

- How does this interact with Thieves and Halflings who only temporarily spend Luck? If they gain +3 Luck at the end of an adventure, does that increase their permanent Luck as it would for other PCs?

- With multiple Halflings, only one can be a good luck charm for the party i.e. spend Luck for others. Who decides? Does one of the Halflings agree to bite the bullet and spend for others?

I read the RULE as: if you start with a 13 Luck mod. +1 and you burn 3 during the game. Your Luck is now a 10 but you retain the +1 mod. If you regain luck from the DM as a reward it can not go above your original roll.
Now if you choose to QUEST for greater Luck, and succeed at this Quest then your Luck score actually changes to its new amount, let's say 16. You now have a +2 mod. and you start over again.

That is why being a Thief or Halfling is AWESOME where luck is involved, because they can get it back in 3 ways: DM reward, Questing, or as Class!!!

And yes the Halflings decide to either be the groups Lucky charm, or say "Heck with you guys, I'm saving my luck for myself!" Now as a Halfling loving player I would play up my part as the PC's Lucky charm and be totally scamming everyone for favors and protection etc.

My group has very different views on the earlier question re-posted here -->

"Is the initial score rolled at PC generation a hard limit on Luck, or can you exceed that e.g. you rolled 13, burnt 2 points in adventure, get +3 at end of adventure, is your Luck now back to 13, or is it 14? If the latter, is there an upper limit of 18, or higher?"

I would love to get an official answer from goodmangames on this topic of Luck. Does one's initial Luck ability score set the maximum? If not, could not players save up their luck and get Luck ability scores of 18, 20, 30, 40?

(My personal hope is that the initially rolled score does set the maximum since I like to think that people are born lucky or unlucky, and also it is harder to change other ability scores easily.)

My reading/interpretation would be that you can gain luck above your starting score -- but I think 18 is the max for any ability, without magical intervention within your campaign.

My thinking is: if luck rewards are given by the GM at the end of an adventure or campaign chapter or whenever, if someone hasn't spent/lost any luck, but can't go above their initial score, then that 'reward' is kinda sucky.

Well, the reward wouldn't be so sucky, it would just encourage players to use a couple points of luck during the module.

Yes, but I think the spirit of it is the notion that your luck can change over time. So it could get better than the day you started adventuring and obviously, it can get worse if you use it up.

Aaaand, Table 7-9 on page 361 is called 'Luck Changes', which sure doesn't sound temporary to my ears. My knees disagree, but pfft, I don't really listen to them...

If Luck can increase above the starting score, then Luck largely becomes an irrelevant ability at character creation. Yes, I know that one randomly determined birth augur is locked in at character creation, but it is very likely that the randomly determined augur will not have an impact to the character (most likely Luck is 9-12 or the randomly determined result is not relevant to the class chosen).

So, whereas the other abilities will have long lasting impact to the character and are hard to modify, the initially created Luck ability does not really matter. For that reason, I am not a fan of Luck increasing above starting value.

In any case, if we could get a more official response, even if it is just what the author's intent was, I would be appreciative so we can eliminate the speculation.

Also, from what I've read, I have not seen any hard cap of a score of 18 in the rules (only that abilities are initially created via 3d6), so what is to prevent someone from accumulating more than 18 Luck? A clarification on this would be appreciated as well.

Thanks so much!!!

Captain Punka wrote:Also, from what I've read, I have not seen any hard cap of a score of 18 in the rules (only that abilities are initially created via 3d6), so what is to prevent someone from accumulating more than 18 Luck?

FWIW, at a game run by Goodman in Pacificon we were able to burn Luck all the way down to 1 (rather than 3). I know there is already enough speculation here, but perhaps letting luck go above 18 is ok as long as a natural 20 on a luck check always counts as a fail (a luck-check "fumble," if you will).

Captain Punka wrote:If Luck can increase above the starting score, then Luck largely becomes an irrelevant ability at character creation. Yes, I know that one randomly determined birth augur is locked in at character creation, but it is very likely that the randomly determined augur will not have an impact to the character (most likely Luck is 9-12 or the randomly determined result is not relevant to the class chosen).

So, whereas the other abilities will have long lasting impact to the character and are hard to modify, the initially created Luck ability does not really matter. For that reason, I am not a fan of Luck increasing above starting value.

I see your reasoning, but can think of some counterpoints. First, the rules suggest that monsters and traps will tend to target the least lucky characters first, so early on in a campaign, it's greatly advantageous to have started off with a high Luck score. Second, if you're going to survive long enough to get those Luck rewards, you need every advantage you can get, and starting off with, say 15 points of luck that you can burn in you first few adventures is certainly an advantage over starting with 5 points.

If the judge plays against the recommendations of the rules by rolling concealed and fudging things to promote character survival, then yes, you're right that everybody could eventually end up with a pretty high Luck score. But that's not in keeping with the philosophy of DCC in general, and it ignores the fact that in addition to Luck rewards, the judge is also granted the license to convey Luck penalties.

I agree with your points pointing out, though, that in the playtest allowing a character to drain Luck to 1 does not answer the question whether one can increase above starting value.

If a player is very frugal with their luck, only spending it when they might otherwise die, I would see that in general Luck would steadily rise.

I have not yet found a chart showing what the modifiers are for ability scores above 18, but there is at least one monster that with a STR 22 and a +6 ability score modifier (ogre?). Now, imagine a character with Luck 22. They get to add this +6 modifier on all relevant die rolls (fumbles, spell casting, etc.). Since most bad things are happening on a d6 or d8, they become immune to any bad stuff. That is certainly not the intent of the rules. The problem increases as Luck increases (e.g. would Luck 30 add +14?).

Capping a character's Luck at starting value avoids all this power-gameyness.

Captain Punka wrote:I agree with your points pointing out, though, that in the playtest allowing a character to drain Luck to 1 does not answer the question whether one can increase above starting value.

If a player is very frugal with their luck, only spending it when they might otherwise die, I would see that in general Luck would steadily rise.

I have not yet found a chart showing what the modifiers are for ability scores above 18, but there is at least one monster that with a STR 22 and a +6 ability score modifier (ogre?). Now, imagine a character with Luck 22. They get to add this +6 modifier on all relevant die rolls (fumbles, spell casting, etc.). Since most bad things are happening on a d6 or d8, they become immune to any bad stuff. That is certainly not the intent of the rules. The problem increases as Luck increases (e.g. would Luck 30 add +14?).

Capping a character's Luck at starting value avoids all this power-gameyness.

Yeah that approach sure seems like it would break down. But I don't think a lot of people are saying that Luck (or other stats) should be allowed to exceed 18, but rather that it should be able to raise above the level rolled for the starting character. I mean, if luck can go up and down during the course of a character's life, why assume that the day the character started adventuring was the luckiest day of the character's life?

The problem is that nothing in the rules says Luck can't exceed 18. and there is a precedent that ability scores can go over 18 (e.g. spell effects, etc.). My view on it is that some people are just born luckier than others - but I recognize that is my own worldview and not shared by many.

In any case, IMO this is an area of the rules that are sufficiently vague and subject to abuse, so it would be very helpful to the community if the game designers weigh in on it.