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View Full Version : An interesting Idea: The Luckiest Man Alive



TheArsenal
2012-01-20, 07:17 PM
Well I remember watching this soviet cartoon about- doesn't matter.

The point was that there was this character who was introduced by safely walking over a river that almost drowned two other protagonists.

At first they question if he is a mage, but he reveals that he is simply "Blessed" with pretty much impossible luck.

Then suddenly a table appears right in front of him with food, the food feeds him automatically and then disappears after a napkin wipes his mouth.

Well the point of this was just some interesting inspiration for you all. A person SO lucky that hes bored out of his skull.

Arrows would self destruct before contact with his face, spells would return to sender, dragons would implode if he got tired of ones company.

Maybe you have a mage who tries to steal the luck of an entire country to become this man?

navar100
2012-01-20, 07:41 PM
3E Complete Scoundrel offers Luck feats that allow you rerolls for various events. There's a prestige class to emphasize this Luck.

TheCountAlucard
2012-01-20, 07:44 PM
There's also a build for Shadowrun known as "Mr. Lucky," a human with an Edge score of 8. :smalleek:

HMS Invincible
2012-01-20, 07:57 PM
There's also a build for Shadowrun known as "Mr. Lucky," a human with an Edge score of 8. :smalleek:

I built that, on a mage. You roll like 10-12 dice for your mage skills, and then throw in an extra 8 if you feel like novaing someone to death. Not worth it, I rather have 7 edge and 25points the advantage, and 25 points spent on edge on some more money/equipment. Gogo foci/focus

Need_A_Life
2012-01-20, 08:25 PM
Mr. Lucky in Shadowrun is a great Jack-of-All-Trades. Decent on his own, amazing 8/times story. Against a focused specialist? Amateur.

Fortune's Friend (Complete Scoundrel) in D&D seems decent, though I've never actually tried it in a game. Seems like a fun concept, though.

True Faith powers in Dresden Files can mimic superhuman luck fairly easily? Guide My Hand is all about showing up at just the right time, for example.

Demonic_Spoon
2012-01-21, 06:52 AM
There is also the fatespinner prestige class from ca, and the various items and powers and such we allow you to reroll a lot. Carry around a thousand or so luck blades in a portable hole and you should be able to nat 20 anything. Or become a god of high enough dr and auto nat 20 everything.

Ravens_cry
2012-01-21, 07:04 AM
There is also the fatespinner prestige class from ca, and the various items and powers and such we allow you to reroll a lot. Carry around a thousand or so luck blades in a portable hole and you should be able to nat 20 anything. Or become a god of high enough dr and auto nat 20 everything.
If you become a god, you're pretty much the luckiest person alive anyway.
What kind of luck is left as a question for the reader.

TheArsenal
2012-01-21, 07:47 AM
Well gods have to use POWER to deflect arrows cause implosions.

The man is simply....lucky.

If he was a criminal he would simply wait until the money he wanted fell into his lap.

There are two ways you can do this:

The falling anvil

Or the vortex way.

The falling anvil means that nothing "Unnatural" is involved in the mans luck.

Hes fighting a god? Well its just HAPPENS that that very moment a portal with a n ambush party of 50 balors would try to kill that god tonight.

Trying to shoot an arrow at him? Oops, the bow breaks.


OR the vortex when his powers simply mean he is invincible.

Arrows combust, people explode, gods die.

Worlok
2012-01-21, 08:01 AM
Bards are your go-to friendly everyman class. They neatly blend into fortune's friend, and if you swap out Bardic Knowledge for Bardic Knack, you kind of get this utterly unfazable dude who's simply just lucky. Arcane Disciple the Luck Domain, or get it some other way to keep the granted ability - I think a common one is simply dipping Cleric, Cloistered Cleric for keeping skill points and replacing your traded-out Bardic Knowledge specifically, and by the point you're, like, 11th level, you're just about the luckiest guy alive. All the more since that Cha score on your Bard base helps with... "getting lucky". :smallwink:

From hard-earned experience, I can also tell you that gestalting Paladin of Freedom, what with the alignment and all, plus some ACFs and trade-outs (Heavy and Medium Armor as well as Shield Proficiency dropping for Dodge, Mobility, etc., because your guy's training was centered around dodging and parrying rather than moving in metal, or something like that) for more party buffing and the appropriateness of tying a Karmic Strike build to the Good Karma feat is an all-time-winner. And maybe putting up Divine Crusader after Fortune's Friend (Complete Divine, I believe, if it is the one that basically grants you full BAB and access to one domain) can even help you nick Cleric entirely.

But that's really just 3.5, I'm a little unclear on what other systems offer. :smallredface:

TheArsenal
2012-01-21, 10:01 AM
Geez, Im not asking how to make a character. Im just giving some roleplaying ideas.

Worlok
2012-01-21, 10:17 AM
And I'm throwing out notions on how to make them work. No offense. :smalleek:

Jerthanis
2012-01-21, 10:28 AM
Of the two, I like the "Anvil" variety better. It seems like it would result in the more entertaining descriptions of events.

However, in an RPG, this MUST have rules or restrictions, or else it's a character who succeeds at everything he does, just with a descriptor on his powers called, "Luck" instead of "Power" or "Magic".

If I were to roleplay a character like this, I'd mostly be paranoid about meeting a person or group who could take advantage of my supreme power through trickery or some ability to nullify my protection or control my mind. As such, I would absolutely hide my powers and avoid using them whenever I could.

The antagonist of the book Jericho Moon (if you can find that obscurity, I think it's an ebook now) had a power kind of like this now that I think about it. He basically had invincibility and walked without shoes, but only because rocks would never conspire to turn in such a way that they might hurt him. Arrows shot at him would be caught by the wind and so on. In that book, the way he acted was in abject fear of the individual granting that power to him, since what could be given could be reversed tenfold. So this theoretical "Lucky Man" could basically be scared that one day his luck will run out and he will be every bit as unlucky as he is now lucky and all kinds of awful things will happen to him.

So... I guess the way I'd play such a character would be as a terrified coward.

Dimers
2012-01-22, 12:29 AM
Ringworld is good fiction that includes the luckiest woman alive, with luck being an inheritable genetic trait focused into her by a long-term alien breeding experiment. The implications of her luck go way beyond the immediate "can't ever get shot", ultimately bending reality so that entire cities worth of people act to protect her future interests. A good and fairly short read that's kinda-sorta on this topic.

Greenish
2012-01-22, 12:34 AM
Ringworld is good fiction that includes the luckiest woman alive, with luck being an inheritable genetic trait focused into her by a long-term alien breeding experiment. The implications of her luck go way beyond the immediate "can't ever get shot", ultimately bending reality so that entire cities worth of people act to protect her future interests. A good and fairly short read that's kinda-sorta on this topic.See also: Gladstone Gander.

Thyrian
2012-01-22, 01:20 AM
Had a vaguely similar idea for a bounty hunter that would attack the party, for every round he managed a proper "attack" (confirmed hit) he'd deal unarmed strike damage (so as he's not a monk or the like-nothing) and for the following 10 minutes he'd roll 2d20's wherever he'd roll one and likewise the person who was 'attacked' would roll 2d20's and take the worse.

This effect would stack both on him and on an enemy- an enemy's 'luck' would be full stolen after 4d20's but I'd allow the bounty hunter's to stack up to his level.

Completely BS ability that would ruin a DM's life if it was on a PC? Yes, yes it is. But it could make for some interesting interactions after the initial engagement when the PC's know what he can do.

Not as powerful by yours by any means- as the dude's actively stealing luck in small amounts as opposed to having obtained MASS luck!

Atcote
2012-01-23, 12:21 AM
See also: Gladstone Gander.

The great thing about Gladstone is that his luck isn't really useful; not in the terms of how Gladstone usually thinks of it.
Instead it's there to act as a passive foil for the constantly unlucky/clumsy/just asking for it Donald Duck. Thanks to his luck, Gladstone has no achievements - he's never had to work for ANYTHING before, so why would he start now? He gets by by doing exactly nothing, and luckily, that works for him. Using that luck would just feel like a waste of effort - and effort to him is a rather confusing word.

The luckiest man in the world could, essentially, make a very good antagonist, if he could be compelled to have a goal that was in opposite to the protagonists, like how Donald and Gladstone compete for Daisy.

Vknight
2012-01-23, 01:34 AM
These are Knights

To Explain
As I have a variety of notes including ones for ideas as novels which I would never write for a variety of reasons.
Knights were one of the first.
They simply can't be put down. A bullet jams the gun a grenade pin sticks but still activates the explosives, a swords one impurity causes it to shatter the glass lands inside the building the Knight jumped out of.
No matter the situation it was they simply had a luck that should not exist.
It is more a combination of Anvil & Vortex
There are several other things but that was the basic idea. Beings that were super lucky

TheArsenal
2012-01-23, 02:24 AM
Well Its cool to hear other media also about lucky people.

It reminds me of ANOTHER kids show (Don't remember what it was) in which they defeated a lucky crook by making everybody on the planet earth as lucky as him.

As a result people won the lottery-but had to share thier prizes with billions of people.

Because of this huge amount of luck the earth survives (As in not even come into awareness) a meteor storm that should have destroyed it a billion times over.

The Villain was of the anvil type.

TheThan
2012-01-23, 03:09 PM
How about this luck thing being based around Domino’s (http://marvel.com/universe/Domino_%28Neena_Thurman%29) or Longshot’s (http://marvel.com/universe/Longshot) powers. Domino’s mutant power is how I’d imagine a character gifted with (nearly) impossible luck would function. It can’t be a completely passive thing. Good things happen, mostly due to the character acting. There has to be reason why good things happen to him, and if he is at least partially the cause of those reasons, so much the better.