Choose your luck

[paperexplorer]

So I have always had this theory that when you come to a scenario requiring a luck roll, you should have the option to choose to be unlucky and accept the consequences rather than perform the roll (and lose a luck point).

Knowing your luck will eventually run out, this is away of preventing lady luck from turning on you early.

One reason I raise this is there are many arbitrary scenarios where you need to test your luck which I feel are just there to burn down your luck. A good example of this is trying to sneak past a creampuff orc at the start of TWOFM (a scenario which the Orc's luck should be tested, not mine).

Would this be fair or considered cheating?

[terrysalt]

It's technically cheating but people make house rules for games all the time. If you prefer playing that way, have at it.

[sleepyscholar]

I know I'm the last person to write about Luck rolls, but this seems utterly reasonable to me. I wouldn't call it cheating for a moment.

[philsadler]

Wasn't there a Luck roll near the end of Crypt, where you tripped over a stone or something and could lose a whopping 2ST? I'd rather have lost the St that the Luck.

[kieran]

Really you're your own referee for the books. If you want to play Luck that way, treat Skill bonuses as Attack Strength bonuses, knock a few Skill points off enemies or peek ahead to avoid instant deaths, there's really nothing stopping you. Since so few of the authors bothered to balance their books anyway, it's not like you'll be spoiling anything.

[CharlesX]

Aug 9, 2022 6:27:14 GMT philsadler said:

Wasn't there a Luck roll near the end of Crypt, where you tripped over a stone or something and could lose a whopping 2ST? I'd rather have lost the St that the Luck.

Do you mean the luck roll for escaping the Rat-man with Skill 5 Stamina 6? If you fail the test you have a second Luck roll, the two of which are your enemies, not facing the Rat-man, having a -2 Skill penalty versus him, or having a 50% chance of 2 Stamina damage (and getting a +1 stamina bonus from nuts anyways).
   So, either Livingstone was cleverly burning down your Luck against Razaak or being nuts (sorry 'bout the pun).

[philsadler]

You could be right, but I'm sure that at one point you literally tripped on a stone.

[nathanh]

This seems like a thoroughly reasonable variant to me. In something like our Fortieth Frenzy thread I'd consider it cheating, but for standard play it doesn't seem too unbalanced. I doubt there were very many authors who curated the difficulty to such a level where this variant would undermine the intended experience.

Has anyone ever tried or considered a more extreme LUCK variant where you don't lose a point if you're Unlucky?

[kieran]

Aug 9, 2022 12:27:37 GMT nathanh said:

This seems like a thoroughly reasonable variant to me. In something like our Fortieth Frenzy thread I'd consider it cheating, but for standard play it doesn't seem too unbalanced. I doubt there were very many authors who curated the difficulty to such a level where this variant would undermine the intended experience.

Has anyone ever tried or considered a more extreme LUCK variant where you don't lose a point if you're Unlucky?

I recall someone proposing Luck should start at 7 and decrease when Lucky and increase when Unlucky. This would mean on average you pass slightly over half the Luck tests. It would make books like Creature of Havoc pretty tough though where there are few Luck tests but Unluckiness tends to be fatal.

[a moderator]

Aug 9, 2022 12:27:37 GMT nathanh said:

I doubt there were very many authors who curated the difficulty to such a level where this variant would undermine the intended experience.

It would be spoiling Marc Gascoigne's fun at the point where he trolls the reader during the Orc funeral.

For those not familiar with the incident, it goes something like:

SPOILER: Click to show

Test your Luck.
If you are Unlucky, you get noticed and captured and have to fight two Orcs.
If you are Lucky, Test your Luck again.
If you are Unlucky, you get noticed and captured and have to fight the same two Orcs.
If you are Lucky, the author overrules, so you get noticed and captured and have to fight the exact same two Orcs.

Being able to choose to be Unlucky and lose no Luck would render ineffective Gascoigne's malicious prank. I approve.

[CharlesX]

This thread reminds me a bit about the infamous stairs in The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain Tin Man Steam App. I haven't played the App, but my understanding is you have to Test Your Luck maybe 5 times and a single fail is fatal for you.

[paperexplorer]

Aug 9, 2022 12:36:58 GMT kieran said:

Aug 9, 2022 12:27:37 GMT nathanh said:

This seems like a thoroughly reasonable variant to me. In something like our Fortieth Frenzy thread I'd consider it cheating, but for standard play it doesn't seem too unbalanced. I doubt there were very many authors who curated the difficulty to such a level where this variant would undermine the intended experience.

Has anyone ever tried or considered a more extreme LUCK variant where you don't lose a point if you're Unlucky?

I recall someone proposing Luck should start at 7 and decrease when Lucky and increase when Unlucky. This would mean on average you pass slightly over half the Luck tests. It would make books like Creature of Havoc pretty tough though where there are few Luck tests but Unluckiness tends to be fatal.

Oh, I like this variation. If you had the chance of it going up, I'd use it far more in battle

[thealmightymudworm]

Despite stiff competition, I think LUCK is probably the stat that makes least sense out of the three in FF.

– You've had a lucky find! Gain 1 LUCK point!
...unless you had to Test your LUCK to make that find, which will have cost you a LUCK point.

– You have no choice over when your LUCK is tested
...unless it's a punch-up, in which case you can close your eyes just before your blow lands, or something.

– You butchered an innocent man for his 20 gold pieces?? The gods look upon you aghast. Lose 2 LUCK points
...but don't worry! You can use 10 of those gold pieces to buy a Potion of Fortune which raises your LUCK higher than it ever was before!

IMO it's unclear why Testing your LUCK should always automatically result in losing a point (and it seems pretty clear that the authors often weren't paying much attention to that fact).

It intuitively makes sense if you're thinking of the gods swooping in to save you from catastrophe and eventually getting sick of your character proposing log-rolling contests in rivers you've been told are full of crocodiles. It makes sense if you're deliberately 'spending' it too. But when it's used for more trivial reasons without you having a choice in the matter this seems less reasonable. The gods are presumably muttering "I helped him find that penny earlier, I can't be around now his foot's gone through a bridge as well."

I'm inclined to think that the system is sufficiently broken that adopting a house rule to fix it is reasonable. The fix of choosing to be unlucky will probably work better for some scenarios than others. TWoFM isn't to hand but presumably in that it would make sense for you either to choose to pray for divine assistance or alternatively stomp on in trusting in your own awesomeness.

[misomiso]

I love the Luck stat! I like the idea of making test your luck optional SOMETIMES though. You can have mandatory tests, but also optional tests where you don't know what is going to happen if you fail.

From a game design perspective it's also very cool that it 'runs down', as it's essentially a saving through that gets worse everytime you use it.

I understand people here saying sometimes it should go up or down or stay the same, but IMO part of what makes FF so great is the simplicity of the system, and over complicating it too much would not be helpful.

ON the other hand the BIG improvement for the system would just to be have very thorough playtesting, as that would mean you could be very careful on how much Luck is used.

[bloodbeasthandler]

The testing luck and losing a point each time is probably connected to an idea that if you keep chancing things, your luck is going to run out.

I quite like the stat, to be honest. For me it represents those heroic or nearly implausible moments from film and literature. The hero falling off a pirate ship gets miraculously tangled by the ankle by the netting, Indiana Jones running through an cave with pressure pads setting off dart traps and not getting a scratch etc.
Maybe that is how it ought to be used, rather than 'unluckily you trip on a stone lose 1 stamina point'

And maybe there could be instances where you could 'spend' LUCK points to make something happen [or not]. Spend a LUCK point to add 2 to your SKILL roll as you jump across the pit onto the moving platform .. that sort of thing.

If the author wants truly random events happening in the book, then just make use of a d6 roll in the text: 1-2 go to para 123, 3-4 go to 234, 5-6 go to para 345.
That's a form of luck too, isn't it?