Quasqueton said:My game uses Luck Points. PCs (and only PCs) get one LP at character creation, and then one at each level up. They do not regenerate. Once used, the Player hands me back the poker chip. Using a LP lets the Player reroll one die.
I like this house rule. My Players like this house rule. It seems to work well. But something came up last game session that pointed out a potential problem.
Should a Player find out the result of the die roll before deciding to cash in a LP? For instance, rolling a 1 on a save is obviously a bad result. But there are different degrees of "bad". Failing a save versus doom is not as bad as failing a save vs. hold person is not as bad as failing a save vs. phantasmal killer is not as bad as failing a save vs. disentigrate, etc.
And what if revealing the spell or effect, to let the Player decide whether to use LP or not, also reveals a secret ("He can cast a 7th-level spell?!").
And rolling saves against spells is not the only thing that can open this can of worms. "Holy crap, that's Con poison?!" "He does 22 points of damage with a grapple check?!" Etc.
Should a DM using Luck Points, Action Points, Hero Points, whatever, tell what the results are of a failed roll or make the Player decide without knowledge of how bad the result is? I mean, one way you can have Players "wasting" LP on nuisance problems, and you can have them decline a new roll on save-or-die situations.
Should a DM give a hint, "You *really* should consider using a LP for this."?
Quasqueton
It depends on how much influence you want the luck points to have on the game. With so few of them (only one per level), if you want them to have a significant influence, you should definitely let the players decide after the roll. Heck, if it were my game, i'd let them decide after the results of the roll are known--basically, the LP becomes a "get out of jail free" card.
I'd also hand out more of them, though not tons more. But if there's the potential for "wasting" a LP, then you *definitely* need to make earning them more common, IMHO. So, if you're going to go with spending the point before the result is known, i'd recommend making it easier to earn LPs in the first place.
It seems to me that you've already made the decision that you want to give the players a bit more control over how the game goes, or you wouldn't be using LPs. Given that, you should make the LPs significant enough in the play of the game to actually alter the level of control a player has. Yes, it means that they'll get out of a few more jams, and effectively be a bit more powerful. But if all you're letting LPs do is give a reroll, then all you're doing is eliminating the occasional abysmal roll--it's really just fudging in the hands of the players, but they have to decide when it's important enough to fudge. If you were making LPs more powerful, then you might need to worry more about their use. But it sounds like they're really just a small cushion, a small measure of player control over the way the game goes. After all, the players are there to have fun, not to win, and random really bad luck is never fun.
OK, i'm starting to ramble, so we're gonna call it done.