Thoughts on LUCK as an attribute?

[GreyLord]

The RPG I've tried/played maybe one you've tried also, at least in gamebook form. The Fighting Fantasy series had Luck as one of the big three attributes. They also used it in the RPG form. It worked decently, but the more you used it...well...eventually you're luck would run out if you used it too much.

 

[Dorn_the_warrior]

I'm not so sure about it being an attribute. It seems to me that luck is something that you can't really quantify for good or bad. Giving it a score is to measure that which can not be measured: the randomness of the world.

I hope that make sense. I apologize if it doesn't...I'm writing this after getting home from my Computer Accounting class at school, so my brain is slightly scrambled.

 

[Hand of Evil]

seen it and played with it but I have always felt the dice were the luck attribute.

If I was going to build it into a game, I think I would make it a two dice system, one for good luck and one for bad. You would roll both dice and the higher wins, with the difference being the plus or minus for the action.

Example: The Luck dices is 2d10, roll; get 6 on the good luck dice but get a 10 on the bad. This means the action takes a -4 on the roll.​

Would then build positives and negatives in skills and items. Things like born under a lucky star, blessed by the luck god or a spell, suffering from a curse, carry a luck fetish, etc.

 

[Morrus]

The type of situation I could see a use for it.

Say your characters are flipping a coin or drawing a card to win the Millenium Falcon or a pile of GP. All other things being equal, it's a 50/50 situation.

Now, you could just flip a coin. But what if your character was a naturally lucky one? Or naturally unlucky?

So instead of that, both participants roll on their Luck attribute and the highest wins. If they have the same Luck attribute, it's still 50/50. But if one has a higher Luck attribute, the odds change in their favour.

It only works if you Luck in your world is a thing. If there's a god of Luck, or Fate is a force of some kind, or there really are lucky and unlucky people. You have to buy into that fiction. But in an RPG that's easy enough.

 

[the_David]

The first RPG I played was Marvel Universe RPG, and it had a modifier you could choose that was called good/bad luck. It would add points to all your actions, but only if that would make you succeed by 1.