Goodman Games

Luck is not a crutch for players to lean on, the rules are fine as-is. Man, if you give players an inch, they'll take a mile! If my players complain that the pay-off for spending Luck isn't lucrative enough, I'll just remove the rule entirely for them.

Or if you need a really valid comparison, set up a series of three or four encounters, including at least one trap and one fight, and see how each class individually fares with it alone...

I don't want the characters balanced or even equally important. I just don't want a thief that normally does 1-6 damage per round able to make that 11-166 (or more) for an insta-kill. That's not their role (and yes I know they have backstab but that's too take out the mook guards they encounter but can't sneak past, at least in my opinion).

If Conan and the Gray Mouser square off I want a fun, dramatic battle. I don't want the Gray Mouser burning all his luck on the first hit and stabbing Conan through the heart. That's just "gaming the system" there.

As I said, we could make it so that Luck on dmg can be spent only if the thief scored a crit. Makes sense because a crit is a lucky shot, and the thief can be even luckier. But this way, the thief can't rely on that to happen often (not even with backstabs).
Otherwise we could houserule some max Luck burnable (is this even a word?? ), like 2x Thief Level, on a single roll.
We could use both rules together.
This way only a 5th level thief could do 10d6 extra dmg (and only on a crit.)
A 1st level Thief will just do some 2d6 extra dmg

Yeah, but in my experience with DCC, the Thief couldn't even take out that mook guard with backstab. He "blinded" him and did 2 points of damage. Or the guard made a Fort save and then took 1 point of damage.

The combat effectiveness is not something I'd be worried about regarding the Thief. IME, they're okay. But overall pretty sucky.

And that's with me giving the Thief a backstab whenever he could "flank" an opponent. So, yeah, I even beefed up backstab and it STILL was almost a non-issue.



I agree with this here. I don't want Thieves being able to front load a Luck spend to one-shot an encounter either.

That said, I think their damage output in DCC is anemic compared to even the AD&D Thief. That's saying something...

Thieves do include assassins in this setting, so I'm not totally convinced that the massive luck spend to beat one encounter needs to be a problem. Whether that sort of thing happens much in play will depend hugely upon how the DM plays things. Much like the assassin in AD&D. If you do manage to sneak up on the final bad guy, get complete surprise and initiative, maybe this is an okay result?

Well, I haven't been able to convince anyone to playtest DCCRPG with me, but if I let that stop me from posting my half-baked opinion, then I don't belong on the internet. So:

I agree that burning an Ability Score point for a simple +1 on a single roll seems a poor trade.

If the target is to grant 1-2 Luck per adventure (An odd unit of time IMHO. If you are in a sandbox, when does an "adventure" end? How many sessions is that? How many levels?), I would expect the PCs to be spending 1-2 Luck per adventure. As it is, if I were in their shoes, I would rather just hoard them until I get my Luck up to 18 and enjoy that sweet +3 bonus on all my lucky weapon attacks/spell checks/turn checks/corruption rolls/whatever. I belive the boon for spending a point of Luck needs to be better.

I have played a lot of SAGA Star Wars, which grants PCs a pool of Force Points each level which can be burned for a +1d6 to any d20 roll (among other things). At higher levels, you can roll 2d6 or 3d6 instead, and add the result of the best roll to your check. We find them very useful and use them constantly, though part of that is because they don't carry over between levels. And, of course, they aren't tied to an Ability Score.

I would suggest something similar but somewhat toned down for DCCRPG: Burning a Luck point grants you a +1d4 to a roll. The thief's Luck Die increases this to 1d5 at 1st level, then 1d6, 1d7, 1d8, & 1d10 as he advances to 5th. I would also rule that you can apply the bonus from your luck die to your AC vs. 1 attack, and that you can spend a Luck Point to turn an enemy's critical hit into a regular hit. Finally, I would rule that when you spend a Luck point to modify a roll, you must roll an additional number of Luck Dice equal to the absolute value of your Luck modifier (as it was before you spent the point, so, if you were a Fighter with 18 Luck, you would roll 4d4). If your Luck modifier was positive, you choose the best Luck Die roll to add to your check. If it was negative, you choose the worst one.

As for Thieves being able to burn a bunch of luck to do megadamage and kill off the BBEG in one blow, I believe that is how Thieves survive in a hostile world. Fighters go toe to toe with their enemies, chopping them apart piece by piece with their mighty Attack Dice. Thieves off their enemies with one lucky/destined strike, like Bard vs. Smaug.

One thing that just came up for me...

Exactly WHAT dice rolls can Luck be spent on? I had a newly promoted 1st level thief ask if he could spend luck to make sure he got the full 6 hit points for his class level. After all having more Hps did indeed make the difference in a "life or Death situation" as per the text, they reasoned with me

Now props to them for the idea, but off the top of my head I couldn't see from the scanty text on Luck weather this was legit or not. At the time I said yes BUT this would happen Before his Thief regenerating luck could kick in so he's burn Luck permanently to achieve a Hp boost.

Needless to say that cooled his enthusiasm!

So can we get some more detail on exactly what you can burn luck for? I think I'd be willing to accept a few less luck points if I could for definite add to my Hps like this. But is it ONLY meant for Skill checks and combat rolls? If so where is that stated explicitly?

I don't think you're allowed to spend Luck for HD rolls. That's an "out-of-game" mechanic. It would be like burning luck to roll differenttly on the occupation table.
Luck burning is ok when the game presents a situation where the thief could do well not because he's strong or smart, but just because he's lucky : Saves, ability checks, attacks, spellchecks, weapon damage, turning undead, lay-on-hands healing, and so on.

I'm inclined to agree with Abk108. I just am not sure that the rules state that clearly enough yet.

There IS a part of me that could see why a player might wish to accept a crippled Luck roll for a while if they could get more Hps like this. If that was the players choice then I can respect it, the problem is that Thieves and Halflings will "get away with it" for nearly nothing as things stand...

If a player wanted to burn permanent luck for enhanced Hps I think I can live with it, Mages and Thieves/elves are fragile enough sometimes.

I let my players burn a luck point for a re-roll. It's not as easy to game, and can still be quite costly, as opposed to a thief or halfling trading luck one for one with hit points.

And any player who burnt 5 luck to max out their hp roll and then wanted to sit around resting until it recovered (as a thief or halfling) would have some events interrupt that rest, believe me...

i think that when the dm is punishing/railroading PCs it's a sympthom that there's something wrong with your group. Not about the DM, not about the players specifically! But i think that if i would be forced to toss bugbears every night to prevent peaceful rest (if i didn't plan it ahead of time and it's just a trick against pcs that want to trick me or the game itself) I'd just stop and talk straight to the player, saying : you got a boon (HP) for a price (luck). Accept it and now stop metagaming (PCs don't know they regain 1 luck every night!!)

I believe that 'burning luck' can only be used for the following (I could not find the posts on it, so this is from memory).

Combat 'to-hit' roll
Saving Throw
Skill Checks

you cannot us it to:

adjust crit rolls
damage
hp rolls

It is fairly tight on what you can use it for to prevent abuse of the system.

why not dmg? It's a choice... if you burn on the attack roll you have an increased chance of dealing some damage. If you burn for dmg, you deal more dmg in the event you hit. It's not much different from Power Attack feat in 3E

Because for a Thief is is too unbalancing. I know DCC not about 100% balance, but allowing a 5th level thief to burn 10 points of luck to roll 10d7 for extra damage on a hit is very unbalancing to a campaign. That means if a Thief hits a boss type monster, it could basically die.

Hit points and AC are not as extreme as in prior versions of DnD, so that damage is huge.

Plus, in DCC RPG a Thief is not a striker.

So basically just checks (i.e. check to see if you hit, if you save, or if you succeed on a skill). That is helpful. Thanks.

That's a good reason. The other good reason is consistency. The Attack roll is about "chance". Luck modifies chance. Damage is not on the same "scale" as "chance" so using Luck to modify damage doesn't work. It's like there's a unit mismatch and no direct conversion.

Currently the beta rules say that luck can be used to modify the spellcheck rolls. That's similar to using it for rolling extra damage or modifying crit rolls. I hope the use of luck with spellchecks is removed to be more consistant (plus, it seems redundant, since spellburn can be used to modify a spellcheck roll).

I don't think it is inconsistent. It is still a check to see if something succeeds.

But it also is a menu, just like the crit chart or rolling for hit points. Things like to hit rolls and saves and ability checks are simple pass/fail tests, but all those menu items allow for cherry picking from multiple choices by adding x luck points after the die roll. If it's allowed from one kind of menu, why not the others?

I think it belongs with the spell checks because then (for example) a warrior could succeed on a spell check by burning luck when reading a scroll. The crit and hp roll doesn't need to succeed.

Personally I am not concerned with cherry picking.

Oh yeah, i read that before, maybe on htis very thread! I suggested that luck burning for added damage could be allowed only on crits. This way that thief should be really lucky (5% on a d20) or really skilled (if he manages to get a backstab ) to kill a boss in 1 shot.

Not to pick nits, but there is no such thing as a "striker" in DCC. Part of its design is that it avoids these kinds of roles that are imposed in 3rd Ed, and even more so in 4th Ed. Subsequently, who cares if a thief can save up all of his luck and drop a "boss"? Remember, he has to rest 8 hours to get luck back equal to his level. Second, he's going to have to survive getting to the boss without burning any luck. Finally, he's going to have to survive without luck after the "boss" is dead. Sure do hope he rolls well trying to disarm the traps protecting the bosses treasure! ; ) I also hope the party completely cleared the dungeon of all its other traps and denizens before they face a "boss".

The DM and other players who were geared up for an epic battle and got a one-shot kill instead. And not a cool one-shot kill like rolling a 20 and then maxing out the Critical Hit table (through the heart!) but a "my class allows for a totally broken damage mechanic against what would otherwise be a tense, exciting monster fight we could all tell stories about" one-shot.

As a GM across many years, if I set up a single opponent as a final 'epic battle', I am making a mistake. Even if someone gets that natural 20 and goes crazy with whatever adds on to that and takes out the baddie, well, others could be disappointed to not have been able to participate. The 'boss' should be a part of that epic battle, but if I don't include other elements and obstacles and challenges to really make it epic, I'm always running the risk of it being anti-climactic.

At least in DCC RPG, it is as was mentioned above: The Thief has got to be saving up appropriately in order to even do that. That assumes he knows where and when the group is going to cross paths with the 'boss', and that events leading up to that have been such that he can not use his best ability to face them. The Thief has been a spare tire, waiting to be deployed. This is just my opinion, but: I don't see that happening too often (i.e., never), primarily since it wouldn't be much fun to play that out, waiting at the back of the group for the chief bad guy to appear...

I don't think I've read anything about actual play that suggests the mechanic is broken for such a reason as this. It didn't seem broken in the playtest I was in. It doesn't read as broken to me.

And besides, sometimes the one-shots are the stories that get told...