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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6750099" data-attributes="member: 6775031">One unlikely coincidence is usually acceptable to most audiences, especially if the writer hangs a lampshade on it. As well, prophecy and phenomenal cosmic forces are beyond the purview of simple luck. If you have a mysterious force engaged in a contest with another force, and they can each conceive of some end scenario, and they can calculate the entire causal chain necessary in order to get to that point, then that shouldn't actually require retro-causality to pull off. It might be difficult to contemplate, based sheerly on the scope involved, but it's just straight-forward cause-and-effect from the moment it's all set into motion.That's not quite what this thread is about, though. Unless I've lost track of things, you want a class of character that can contribute in meaningful ways (and not die) due to the sorts of lucky coincidences that befall protagonists. Something like always having the right thing in its pockets, failing in productive ways, and being in the right place at the right time? You could do that, if it was all being controlled by a mysterious cosmic power that was working toward an end goal, but there are issues with that in an RPG. First of all, I've never known a pawn of prophecy to die unexpectedly against a troll. You don't usually get characters with mysterious luck that only gets them halfway to a goal before it fails them. Second of all, it would be hard to let a player exercise any of that power, since the player doesn't know what the end goal is, and anything that they think might be the goal could be incorrect. As a minor example, it wouldn't be satisfying for the player to spend a Foresight point (or whatever) to declare that they packed iron-soled shoes this morning, only for it to later be revealed that the spiked floor (which they were hoping to cross with the shoes, and was the reason why the player spent the resource in this instance) is also heated in such a way that iron-soled shoes would make the floor impassable. It would seem like the DM is just messing with the players, even if it was set up ahead of time and could have been independently verified, and in that case it wouldn't be lucky at all for the character to have packed such a thing.And of course, on the last point, it's not terribly satisfying to play a character that is being manipulated by fate. Protagonists in fantasy novels often express similar feelings, when they find out about it.So the question remains, how would you represent such a character in an RPG? I mean, first you need to figure out the in-game reason for whatever it is that seems like luck to the characters. Then, you need a way to mechanically represent that, without causing unfortunate side-effects. Since I don't know what you're specifically trying to model, I can't offer much input on how to model it, though I would highly recommend that whatever mechanic should prove immune to testing - if the character always has the right item on hand, then it should fail to have the right item on hand if the situation was contrived based on the premise that the character would have the right item without knowing about it beforehand - in much the same way that cursed items appear to be functional items until circumstances warrant.</blockquote>

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