D&D 5E Would a "lucky guy" class fit your setting?

This reminds of one of my all time favorite X-Men: Longshot!

The Longshot series established Longshot as an amnesiac fugitive from another dimension who discovers that he has favorable probability outcomes, or "good luck," that protect him when his motives are pure. Longshot is an artificially created humanoid life-form, with the ability to defy probability.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I actually homebrewed that class for 3.5: the Fool. Not required to actually be foolish, of course. Perfect for everyman characters, like certain hobbits...
 

This reminds of one of my all time favorite X-Men: Longshot!

The Longshot series established Longshot as an amnesiac fugitive from another dimension who discovers that he has favorable probability outcomes, or "good luck," that protect him when his motives are pure. Longshot is an artificially created humanoid life-form, with the ability to defy probability.

in the book series Necroscope a character called Darcy Clark has a psychic power they call "Guardian Angel" and it works a lot like that...
 

This class seems best fitted to a Storyteller-type system, where randomness is less integral and story is paramount.

One could design such a class in 5e. Select the class features, then use "luck" as the explanation. For example, the character might have damage resistance to any damage that occurs before he acts in a combat (reflecting that he just happened to duck when the arrows started flying). Just make sure the class features don't outshine any other class and it should work.

I suspect the reason most respondents have said "no way" is the language used in the OP post: "attacks crit on command", "always happens to have...", "always on time", etc. For better or worse, 5E uses random die rolls for action resolution and any character who "always" succeeds would be very boring and overpowered.
 

Superstitious characters are fine, but I would not give him/her any of the special benefits suggested. It seems a bit unbalanced and more than a little unfair to other players.
Why? Remember that this is a proposal for a class. In other words, while the wizard is blowing up buildings, the fighter is attacking roughly five bazillion times a round, and the cleric is resurrecting the dead, the luckyguy is... being lucky. That's the character's whole shtick. S/he's got nothing else. How is that unfair to the other players?

It's an interesting idea: The ordinary person stumbling into adventure, lacking the skills of the other PCs but favored by destiny. I'm not sure of the best way to implement it mechanically, but I'd certainly like to see what people come up with.
 

.

I suspect the reason most respondents have said "no way" is the language used in the OP post: "attacks crit on command", "always happens to have...", "always on time", etc. For better or worse, 5E uses random die rolls for action resolution and any character who "always" succeeds would be very boring and overpowered.

I was careful of my use of always.

"But Lucky Man's sword attacks crit on command. He always "happen" to have a toll or object useful for solving a problem in his bag. Arrows tend to "only hit the muscle" and miss major organs. He is always on time and his enemies tend to fail in slowing him down. The guy he is looking for tends to show up in front of him if in the right place."

I used "tend to" a lot in order to dull the thought that the "Lucky guy/gal" always succeed. Just succeeded more and could push their luck more. But guarantees would run out.

The common folk would say the person is blessed or that their charms are true. Enemies and foes see them as a walking jinx. But like everyone who presses their luck, eventually it presses back. You might dodge the first barrage if arrows, but your fortune is gone and there is no cover left.
 

Lucky


At 1st level, you gain Lucky as a bonus feat.
At Nth level, you regain your expended luck points whenever you complete a short or long rest.



Fortune's Favor


Starting at Nth level, whenever you make a roll with advantage or disadvantage, use the Lucky feat, or are subject to some other effect that causes you to reroll a die, you can reroll the die one additional time and choose which reroll result to use.



Hunch


Starting at Nth level, you can use your action to gain the benefit of an augury spell without having to cast it. (You still accrue the cumulative chance of a random reading as normal for the spell.)



Lucky Number


At Nth level, choose a number between 3 and 19 (inclusive) to be your lucky number. Whenever you encounter a numeric value in the world that differs from your lucky number by 1, you can change that value to your lucky number. For numbers of 20 or larger, you can change the largest digit this way; if you do, change all the other digits to 0. For example, if your lucky number is 7, you can change a group of 8 orcs to 7 orcs, or a find of 615 gold pieces to 700. You can't change major or previously established campaign information; for instance, you can't change the Eight Counties of Ubarth into the Seven Counties, or the amount of gold pieces in your backpack from 615 to 700. You also can't change die rolls, DCs, or other abstract values. The DM has final say on what you can and cannot change.
Once you have changed a value to your lucky number, you can't change another number until you complete a short or long rest.
At Nth level, you can change a value that differs from your lucky number by 2 or less to your lucky number.



Lucky Shot


Starting at Nth level, when you roll the maximum result on any damage die, you can reroll the die and add the new roll to the original result.

 

Fundamentally, the question is, "How can we have a person who lacks an obvious extraordinary skill, balanced in a party where everyone else is extraordinary?"
The obvious answer is to give them more mundane skill to make up for their lack of extraordinary skill, but that's already the whole concept behind the Champion and Rogue. In 3E, I would have said to play a high-level Commoner or Expert to balance against lower-level Fighters and Wizards.

This class would be very useful for balancing hobbits with Gandalf and Aragorn, and similar sorts of situations where you want someone 'normal' to achieve extraordinary things.
The hobbits were balanced against Gandalf and Aragorn due to story contrivance. They were given addition plot armor to make up for their lack of skill. Their extraordinary power was to invoke poor writing on the part of the author.

Given that D&D does not include story contrivance or plot armor within its ruleset, this sort of "class" would be a poor fit for the game. If you wanted to represent a less-than-stellar warrior that was protected by plot armor and contrivance, play a Fighter with Strength and Dex of 12, and have the DM go easy on you.

Edit: To clarify, we already have luck and plot armor represented in the system - luck is in the die roll, and plot armor is in DM fiat. If you try to introduce alternate methods of representing these elements, then you introduce inconsistency to the game world, and that is not a flaw which can be easily overlooked.
 
Last edited:

The obvious answer is to give them more mundane skill to make up for their lack of extraordinary skill...

Why is that in any way obvious? It violates the basic concept, and as you say yourself it moves the character into a wholly different concept that is already served.

The goal here is to have a character which does not normally excel at anything in particular (at least compared to other potential PC classes of the same level), but whether through luck, destiny, or just because the universe likes him so much he regularly saves the day. This is a sort of character that occurs a lot in fiction, usually in the form of a comic sidekick. It's a character which it seems the whole world could best, but which - when the chips are down - always comes through. Currently there is no way to play that character using any D&D rules set I'm familiar with. Since it is a wholly appropriate fantasy archetype, that's a whole in the rules IMO.

And you can't just fill that whole with Rogue/Swashbuckler and similar sorts of things in every case. The idea is to have a fresh faced lad or lass straight off the farm, who at first level isn't a useless class like Commoner, but proves to be useful to have around. He's a Paragon. He's not necessarily trained at something, he's just capable in and of himself and things tend to work out his way.

The hobbits were balanced against Gandalf and Aragorn due to story contrivance. They were given addition plot armor to make up for their lack of skill.

No. It's not plot armor. The hobbits are defended by things that are not as tangible and not as obvious as steel and muscle, but it's explained within the text. Tolkien isn't stuck for a solution and coming up with things because he's written himself into a corner. Tolkien is crafting the story this way on purpose to make a point. The armor the hobbits have - their basic decency, their humility, their courage, their tenacity is going to serve them better against the real threats they face than Boromir's prowess at arms. That's the point of the story. The point is that the real challenges of life aren't things you can just swing a sword at. The point of the story (well, a point, because it has a lot to say) is the Hobbits are extraordinary in ways that we don't normally admire people for being in extraordinary compared to our admiration of people who can hack off limbs, and maybe we ought to change what we are fantisizing being like just a bit.

Their extraordinary power was to invoke poor writing on the part of the author.

Those are fighting words.

Given that D&D does not include story contrivance or plot armor within its ruleset, this sort of "class" would be a poor fit for the game.

Hit points are an example of something in the D&D game that amounts to plot protection. For that matter, saving throws are often justified in the same way.

But yes, to a certain extent I agree that D&D's normal rules set doesn't provide a lot of hooks for creating this sort of class. Mechanically, there is no reason you couldn't have a class that lacked spells and wasn't a great fighter, but which had through other sorts of class abilities many advantages. For example, this 'lucky' character could have all good saves. They just tend to escape harm. The core mechanic I've been using for the class has been a stock of daily replenishing 'destiny points' that they can use to buy rerolls (or advantage in 5e terms), negate critical hits against them, buy bonus dice, and attempt stunts by way of attempting trained only skills as if they were trained or acting as if they had a feat of their choosing. This is a rather different sort of skill monkey than a rogue, in that they have a limited resource like spells, that they can use to manipulate the game to simulate just being 'lucky' or 'destined' or being subject to divine providence.

If you wanted to represent a less-than-stellar warrior that was protected by plot armor and contrivance, play a Fighter with Strength and Dex of 12, and have the DM go easy on you.

That's ridiculous. There is no reason that character's with this concept can't be as capable in their own way, and contribute as much to the team as any other (non-broken, balanced) class. The point is not to have less grand adventures. The point is to succeed in those grand adventures in a slightly different way.
 

Why is that in any way obvious? It violates the basic concept, and as you say yourself it moves the character into a wholly different concept that is already served.
It's obvious because that's how classes are designed - you have stuff that everyone can do, and everyone can do that, and if you want to do stuff that nobody else can do, then you have to balance that somehow. If you don't sacrifice any of your generic power in order to gain exceptional abilities, then you end up better at that stuff than anyone else.

It sounds like that isn't what you want, though. You want someone who does have extraordinary power, but doesn't seem to. That's a much different question, and I'll try to address that in a subsequent post.

This is a sort of character that occurs a lot in fiction, usually in the form of a comic sidekick. It's a character which it seems the whole world could best, but which - when the chips are down - always comes through. Currently there is no way to play that character using any D&D rules set I'm familiar with. Since it is a wholly appropriate fantasy archetype, that's a hole in the rules IMO.
In the vast majority of fantasy worlds, luck isn't a real thing within the world. Most fantasy worlds operate by internal causality, such that luck is a non-factor to anyone paying attention. Most of those comic sidekicks should be dead, and would have died many times if the author had not intervened.

To paraphrase Dumbledore, The Lord of the Rings is not a realistic depiction of a magical war. John Tolkien never actually fought any Dark Wizards. Real life is not like stories.

In the rare occasions where luck can be quantified within the world, it leads to even more ridiculous situations, and you end up with something more akin to Discworld than anything else; any world where luck is tangible and quantifiable would have to be significantly more fantastic than even the highest of high fantasy.

Tolkien isn't stuck for a solution and coming up with things because he's written himself into a corner. Tolkien is crafting the story this way on purpose to make a point. The armor the hobbits have - their basic decency, their humility, their courage, their tenacity is going to serve them better against the real threats they face than Boromir's prowess at arms. That's the point of the story. The point is that the real challenges of life aren't things you can just swing a sword at.
Then it's an escort mission, the power disparity is real, everyone acknowledges the power disparity, and you bring them along for moral guidance. If you try to set up the rules of the world such that the hobbits - thanks to luck and whatever - are just as good in a fight as a Fighter, or just as good at exploration as a Rogue, then you're entirely missing the point that they're special for RP reasons in spite of not being good at fighting or exploring.

Of course, the Stormwind Fallacy still being a thing, there's not much reason why anyone would want to RP a weak character if they could RP a strong character to the same effect. In a D&D world, which doesn't follow storybook logic, a hobbit is a liability who will get everyone killed, and there's no reason why a professional adventurer would consent to bring one along unless it can demonstrate its competence.
 

Remove ads

Top