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ErgoBibamus
2008-12-12, 08:27 AM
Hi everyone, first time poster here looking for a bit of feedback or advice on an idea for a 3.5 campaign I'd like to start DMing for in the new year.

The basic setting is mountain-based with cities and communities existing in elaborate systems of cave-side dwellings (think Anne McCaffrey's Pern). The strongest factions are Dwarves, Gnomes, and Humans, with Elves and Half-orcs being relatively rare. At the heart of the setting is Luck, which in this world is actually a tangible natural resource like fossil fuel or iron ore. Essentially an uneasy alliance exists between the Dwarves who mine Luck in its raw form and the Gnomes who distil Luck into usuable products, with Humans caught in between acting as merchants, pirates, politicians, etc. Currently I'm thinking that two major corporations hold partial monopolies on Luck and the players will find themselves introduced as Special Advisers to one of the companies (if Good to defend against intellectual property theft and industrial sabotage, if Evil to break into the opposing company and steal secrets/wreck havoc). From there I can explore a political deterioration of the Dwarven and Gnomish relations, maybe masterminded by an ambitious Human third party looking to put himself (or the human race) in better control of Luck.

I originally got the idea for a Luck Campaign as I was thinking about putting in a system of rewards for when players roll natural 20s. As a player I love to get into a character and try new things but have an annoying tendency to roll 2s and 3s at the moment of truth. As such, I rarely ever see a natural 20 and I think that they are something to be celebrated.
I had thought to surprise my players by augmenting a natural 20 roll in certain situations, such as:
Roll of 20 when confirming a critical threat= "True Critical" "As you swing your weapon you experience a flash of insight; time seems to slow to a crawl and every detail in the scene seems to resonate with meaning and clarity. You've experienced critical strikes before, but never like this. Every fibre, every nerve is aligned, drawn as iron to a magnet. Your weapon hums as if an extension of your very soul." Double the critical effect of equipped weapon (2x becomes 3x, etc.)
or;
Roll of 20 on a will save vs. mind-affecting spell or spell-like ability= gain the following as a bonus racial ability: "Thorny Thoughts" "You feel the clumsy stirrings of an alien sentience at the back of your mind. As the presence creeps closer you are strangely calm. Somehow, the knowledge seeming to awaken from another life, you know exactly what to do. Just as the thing poises to strike at your thoughts, you slam shut the doors of your cognition as if springing a steel-trap. In the waking world you hear a startled gasp of pain." Whenever you succeed on a will save against a mind-affecting spell or spell-like ability, the source of the mind-affecting spell or spell-like ability takes 1d4 subdual damage.

Tempest Fennac
2008-12-12, 08:32 AM
I really like the idea. You could have Luck as being something which is copnsumed on a Natural 20 if the player has a measure of it with them. (You were asking about how to apply this system rather then asking for other ideas, right?)

kamikasei
2008-12-12, 08:33 AM
There are [Luck] feats in, I think, Complete Scoundrel that may be of interest to you. That book also has some PrCs such as Fortune's Friend which, along with others such as Fatespinner, you may want to look over; you could get some ideas from them or extract some abilities and make them available as houserules or feats.

Tempest Fennac
2008-12-12, 08:40 AM
http://realmshelps.dandello.net/datafind/feats.shtml is really useful for finding feats (there's a page dedicated to Luck feats).

Athistaur
2008-12-12, 08:51 AM
You could integrate the "luck" ressource into your campaign mechanics.

For example Players could buy "luck" (as poitions, gems, jar, grains, etc.)
Each player keeps track of the "luck" he posses, for example 23 points of "luck", like otherwise you keep track of mones.

Whenever you roll a d20, after the roll, you can spend any amount of your "luck" to increase the die roll by one for each point of luck. You can't raise the score above 20, and it never count's as a natural 20.
I recommend to allow this only for d20, so the worth of a point of "luck" doesn't change with the dies you use.

On a natural roll of 20 you could award your player a "luck" point for free.
I would advice against making rolling 20's too special all the time.

With the above mechanic "luck" would really be a priced ressource for everybody and it coul make a really interesting world.
On the other side of the medal it ironically takes real luck out of the game. Fighting against a foe with a backup of 200 "luck" points .. you can't lose. Fights against cunning foes may come down to "who had more luck".

Still this could make a very interesting world to play in. If you challenge the BBEG you don't hope for the best in this world. I comes down to who did the better planning. And you can make any ridicilous plan work!
Why challenge the BBEG to a Fight if you could place a big rock on a soon to erupt volcan, throwing the rock miles away and having a ridicilous chance of hitting the castle of the BBEG... With enough luck, it's a sure hit.

ErgoBibamus
2008-12-12, 09:16 AM
I think encorporating Luck as potions, gems is really good idea and totally makes sense with the world. Thinking about the Luck points build-up, I had thought to take a more conservative measure and have items equate luck feats found in Complete Scoundrel as in: lesser rod of metamagic could become less Lucky Charm granting the use of one of the level 1-3 luck feats once per day.
I was thinking about the issue of allowing huge build ups of Luck points in battle and I had thought that applying Luck to the actual game mechanics would involve adjusting D20 rolls for a set amount of time. For example: for the same cost as a Potion of Cure Light a Potion of Least Luck would give you a +1 on D20 rolls for 1 round.
As to the bosses: I like the idea that you can plan ahead for Luck. I think it will make things pretty interesting and allow for a lot of outside-the-box ideas from the characters. But I hear what Arthistaur is saying,
"On the other side of the medal it ironically takes real luck out of the game. Fighting against a foe with a backup of 200 "luck" points .. you can't lose. Fights against cunning foes may come down to "who had more luck".
I don't think I'd ever have a system where you could accumulate that many luck affects at the same time, I think I'll write it to make sure that any boost you get to attacks/saves/etc. is classed as a Luck bonus so that multiple sources wouldn't stack and allow you to totally break the flow.
Also, I had thought about a boss who was vehemently against Luck and despised chance-events. He might live in a sanctum that was either located in an old Luck mine (where all the Luck has been sucked out) or magically enchanted with a kind of Anti-Luck aura that supressed all luck effects. Up against him the whole game so far would be flipped on its ear and players would have to adapt their strategies. One idea was that every single dice roll was always calculated at its average rounded-down. Ie. All D20 rolls became 10s, all D6 became 3. And the PC's would have to figure out how to handle that kind of setting.

allonym
2008-12-12, 10:20 AM
If you're set on the high heroic fantasy of D&D, then I'm afraid I can't help you, but if you just want a fantasy RPG where 'luck' is an important factor, I'd suggest you try Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

In it, your character has a number of 'fate' points (usually two or three to begin with) and a number of 'fortune' points (usually equal to your fate points, though there's a talent (a feat, basically) that gives you one more).

Fortune points recharge every day. Spending one allows you to take another half-action, to gain another parry or dodge attempt (you're very limited in these regards), to gain a reroll, and a handful of other benefits.

Fate points never recharge. You can sometimes gain them, based purely on GM discretion, for doing major acts of heroics. Two for killing the big bad at the end of a year-long campaign, say. One for saving the lives of hundreds of people. None for killing another goblin war-band or taking on some minor lackey. You spend a fate point to avoid death or permanent crippling. If you are hit by a blow that would kill you and spend a fate point, you are out of the action, but by some fluke you don't die. You wake up surrounded by the bodies of the fallen, or in the enemy dungeon, or in your allies' camp, or whatever. And of course, if you spend a fate point, you get one less fortune point per day. If you have no fate points to spend, then death is death.

Perhaps not the flavour you're looking for, but just pointing out that other systems have inherent luck-based gameplay elements. Maybe you can lift some ideas from it!

Tygell
2008-12-12, 10:57 AM
I've considered something like this before. My plan was to give characters 1d10 plus their Charisma bonus in Luck Points (LP) at the start of every day. Remaining LP carried over each day, but was capped at 20 LP. You gained 1 LP every time you rolled a natural 20, or someone rolled a natural 1 against you. You could use the LP to increase any of your own d20 rolls by certain amounts.

Changing a dice roll from a natural 1 costs 2 LP per increase no matter what. Any other increase from 2-15 costs 1 LP each. Increasing to 16-20 was 2 LP each.

So if someone rolled an 18, they could choose to spend 4 LP to make it a 20. If they rolled a 1, they could spend 2 LP to avoid that critical failure. Based on the cap of 20 LP, the most they could ever increase a roll was from 5 to 20.

I never got a chance to test it, but it felt like this system would prevent hoarding of LP to the point of it becoming an automatic win, while still giving players a chance to ensure a few spectacular results in a day.

Feel free to use this if you want, just be sure to let me know how it turns out.

EDIT: Based on the previous posters mention of "Luck" Potions and using it as a resource, you could easily incorporate that into my system. Maybe a Magical Lucky Coin that automatically gave you 5 extra LP a day, or a luck potion that restored 1d8 LP, never exceeding the cap of 20. Perhaps homebrew some feats that increase your LP cap, or doubles LP gains, or reduces LP costs. The possibilities are endless.

Seffbasilisk
2008-12-12, 03:01 PM
Perhaps reflavor action points as Luck points or somesuch? Just take the existing mechanics and apply them. As for getting Luck points, perhaps when their character is extraordinarily lucky (nat 20 on attack, nat 20 on a cruical save, etc) a fat spark of luck leaps off, and they can capture it or somesuch?

Tacoma
2008-12-12, 03:16 PM
When I hear about people talking about having "XP" in their campaign as a real substance that is purple and a couple inches across per point, or "Luck" as a mineral that can be distilled, my first reaction is to ask if you could buy personal lubricant made out of Luck or XP.

Marketing would be very easy. It's not just called "Lucky Lube" or something like that. It's actually MADE of Luck. Luck is listed as an ingredient on the back of the bottle. There's a government-required percentage of Luck in the product before it can be labeled "Lucky." The logo would be a shamrock or a leprechaun winking and giving the 'thumbs-up'.

These are the things I think about.

Draz74
2008-12-12, 04:16 PM
All these suggestions that a Natural 20 give you an additional luck point or whatever. Don't they make you worry that players will go picking extra fights or doing anything lame that requires a d20 roll, just to get another chance at a Natural 20?

Fighter (to Chicken-Infested Follower): Gimme another chicken to fight.
*Chicken dies a brutal death*
Fighter: Dang, rolled a 14. Gimme another.

Tacoma
2008-12-12, 04:19 PM
All these suggestions that a Natural 20 give you an additional luck point or whatever. Don't they make you worry that players will go picking extra fights or doing anything lame that requires a d20 roll, just to get another chance at a Natural 20?

Fighter (to Chicken-Infested Follower): Gimme another chicken to fight.
*Chicken dies a brutal death*
Fighter: Dang, rolled a 14. Gimme another.

You just need one chicken in a room with you, if you just constantly Trip it.

Eventually it would die of fright and exhaustion.

ErgoBibamus
2008-12-12, 07:20 PM
When I hear about people talking about having "XP" in their campaign as a real substance that is purple and a couple inches across per point, or "Luck" as a mineral that can be distilled, my first reaction is to ask if you could buy personal lubricant made out of Luck or XP.

Marketing would be very easy. It's not just called "Lucky Lube" or something like that. It's actually MADE of Luck. Luck is listed as an ingredient on the back of the bottle. There's a government-required percentage of Luck in the product before it can be labeled "Lucky." The logo would be a shamrock or a leprechaun winking and giving the 'thumbs-up'.

These are the things I think about.

It's funny I was thinking about throwing in some silly game flavoring like, even though it's a roughly middle-aged tech level, having advertisements on cave walls or posters on the sides of double-decker horse-drawn carriages that would have posters of famous adventurers endorsing various luck-related potions and merchandise. And maybe pretty ladies in an ad for Luck Lite, just like regular Luck only half the calories.

Tacoma
2008-12-12, 07:52 PM
I'd plumb ads from the 1880s-1910s. Stuff like this (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/). Encourage them to buy Equilax high-powered laxatives (gentle as a rabbit ... MAKES YOU CRAP LIKE A HORSE) and shaving foam infused with mercury. People hang out in opium dens all night and you can buy laudanum from street-corner "Morphine Boys" who also shine shoes and sell newspapers.