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

[Minigiant]

Well there are few archetypes for the "lucky person". There are many example to choose from. X-Men's Longshot and Domino, Good Luck Girl's Ichiko, Disney's Gladestone Gander, Dresdenverse's Michael Carpenter and Father Forthill, LOTR's hobbits.


The Born Lucky
This person is born lucky. Fortune smiles on them for some reason. A dozen orcs trow javelins at them and only one hits. They just happen to step on the giant's foot when dodging his club. They draw the only hand that could win in the poker game the first time they play. They choose the red wire because their mom's hair is red and the bomb doesn't explode. Not everything goes their way. They fail. But when everything depends on one thing happening, you want them to do that.

The Blessed by the Unseen
These people are blessed by a higher power because of something they do. Someone up there or down below is personally helping them succeed and they believe it. It is their motives that keep divinity on their side. These can come off as the old school cavalier or paladin who doesn't have outright magic powers but seems to resist harmful effects and take down stronger foes.

The Good Luck Charms guy
These people believe all the superstitions and follow them religiously or by indoctrinated compulsion. But unlike our world (maybe), these charms and rituals to ward off bad luck works.

The key aspect is that the base character is just skilled enough in something that people entrust him or her in their party or for important roles. It's their good luck that removes second guesses. The lucky person might one shot the enemy wizard but that is just 1 of 20 monster fought that day. He or she still can go toe to toe with orcs, but not at the level of a fighter or rogue who has reliable skill.

 

[Uchawi]

A cleric type character with access to a luck domain would probably be the best fit. Without access to spells, you do not have much room to expand the concept. A bard would be another obvious choice as a model.

 

[the Jester]

Not a chance. "Lucky guy" isn't an archetype. Lucky fighter is just the fighter archetype with a helping of luck.

There's a feat for this guy.

 

[empireofchaos]

Fool character class

I have also developed a homebrew Fool class with a "lucky" feature (attached). It's a bit setting-specific for a Russian-themed campaign, but it can easily be made more generic.

(First-time poster here).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ponder this.
An adventurer does a series of ritualistic gestures and actions and avoids certain taboos throughout his life. All in attempts to bring good luck.
He wears a necklace of four leaf clovers, rabbit's feet, bells, and other charms everyday. He avoids mirrors, black cats, and other jinxes. This is not aa compulsion but a purposeful action of his own will.
And the universe rewards him. The level of commitment is rewarded.

Basically this character expands the Lucky feat into a whole class. Maybe he or she is blessed by a deity,his just lucky, or figured out the Secret hack into the universe's method of probability.

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.

Would you allow some luck obsessed adventurer who is just looks very fortunate from the outside until his or her luck runs out in your setting? What setting would it fit into?

I think I'd allow it into my normal D&D if it was a group, not just some individual. Fatespinners, or luckbenders or whatever. By some process, by some training, by some ritual, by some knowledge, they actually do manipulate luck. This could be "training," or it could be something that some people are born with (a "gift"), or whatever, but it would have to be more, IMO, than "this one guy is lucky and that's his class!" It'd have to have a role in the world, a bit in the setting, some context.

 

[Dit464]

I would think that would be way to overpowered or would involve WAY too much attention and tracking for most DM's you would not only have to either know every lucky/unlucky mannerism or create your own to fit the campaign. On its own the class would be way too abused, I crit the dragon that shows up and turn what was meant to be a challenging fight into a normal encounter. Having it as a feat (like it is currently) or a distinct group such as explained by I'm A Banana, makes things slightly more balanced and fitting in a campaign. One of the few things I would like if I were to DM a game with a PC wanting to be like this is just the sheer hilarity of the fact that the character is reliant upon luck, so he could start at lvl 20 and be killed by a CR0 mob, literally falling into bad luck and forever having to roll crit 1's. Imagine the lvl 20 maxed out character with the best magic items available to that class loses to the CR 0 Black Cat that happened to pass the character before fighting him. Although this is an example of how a character like this would not scale well, he either gets crit 1's or crit 20's meaning he either hits all the time or never.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I feel like it would work best as a background or feat. I cant see it stretching to a whole class. subclass maybe... something like the diviner? An invoker of luck type thing. I guess diviner already kinda does that

 

[Leatherhead]

This is how I play my Halfling Wild Mage.

So much dice manipulation.

 

[Celebrim]

In the vast majority of fantasy worlds, luck isn't a real thing within the world.

In the vast majority of fantasy, superstitions are real and superstitions are all about managing luck in some form. The exact origin of that luck is different between settings, chiefly in whether or not the luck is caused by sentient forces, but luck exists in everything from Grimm's fairy tales, to Diana Wynne Jones, to the work's of Tolkien, to Robert Jordan. Indeed, in The Hobbit, the beginning of the story revolves around the need of 13 Dwarves to select a 14th member of their party because 13 would bring terrible bad luck. As it turns out, without making that choice, the quest would have failed. In the vast majority of fantasy worlds, luck is real - even tangible.

Most of those comic sidekicks should be dead, and would have died many times if the author had not intervened.

In the vast majority of fantasy world's it's explicitly not the external author of the story intervening that is the source of luck, but some internal agent existing within the story. Indeed, since in the vast majority of fantasy stories superstitution is real and has a basis in fact, you could have Knowledge (Luck) in a setting and as long as you were willing to go through the work of layering that aspect of reality on to your fantasy world, then it would be in and of itself quite powerful.

What you really mean is that in the vast majority of D&D worlds, luck doesn't exist. That, I agree with.

To paraphrase Dumbledore, The Lord of the Rings is not a realistic depiction of a magical war.

JRR Tolkien served on the front lines in WWI. His son fought in the RAF in WWII. What exactly is your basis of judging the story realistic? How are you qualified?

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.

I think you are the one missing the point here, on multiple levels. The concept of the class is not to be just as good in a fight as a Fighter, or just as good at stealth as a Rogue. The concept is to be a viable Jack of All Trades, because luck - as an expendable resource - makes up somewhat for the deficiency in native skill. The point is not that Ron Stoppable is in any way as competent as Kim Possible. The point is Kim needs Ron on the team, because he adds resources to the party that Kim doesn't have. And this strange and unexpected but observable fact is something that D&D doesn't handle well. If you can balance a martial class with a spellcaster, you can certainly balance a martial class with lucky guy.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I don't see this as a class. I see it as purely flavour text.

Take any class, give them any combination of abilities and then describe them as never training and with all of their successes being due to luck. Bang, lucky guy archetype fulfilled.

The base state of an adventurer is that they succeed at things. The 'lucky guy' archetype is purely the addition of 'despite being bad at everything' to the end of that. There is no mechanical change needed for that. It's the same as 'because I was trained by an ancient order' or 'because I learned to survive in the wilds' or 'because my world needs me'.