Burning Luck

[danhem]

I was looking through the Beta release of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and found an interesting rule on 'burning' luck. Players can opt to permanently lose points from their Luck ability to add a bonus to a die roll in order to survive life-or-death situations. So to get a +6 on a roll to see if you can leap a chasm to avoid a horde of fifty angry goblins, you permanently lose 6 from your Luck. I find this to be a nice rule and I am going to add it to my T&T House Rule list. Burning Luck to add an equal bonus to a Saving Roll would help in those extreme situations where death is only a roll away. The only stipulation is that you must decide how much to spend before you roll the dice.

This rule would certainly increase solo survival rates; for a while at least. A permanent reduction in Luck would eventually come back to haunt you since you'll eventually need to make a Luck based SR. Perhaps it might be better to lose Luck only over the course of the adventure and at the end of the adventure you regain any spent Luck.

Has anyone ever used a rule like this in the past?

I posted a brief overview of my thoughts on the DCC RPG at the Lone Delver.

danhemsgamingblog.blogspot.com/

[gaptooth]

I saw your review of DCC and I immediately thought I remembered coming across this before. Sure enough, Jongjungbu posted a similar house rule here, and I liked the idea a lot. I've only implemented it in play in one session, but the player was very reckless, burned all his luck and almost died anyway.

[danhem]

Thanks for that Gaptooth, I'd forgotten about JJB's site and his house rules page. I'm not sure where he's gotten off to; he used to be a regular contributor here.

[mahrundl]

Every so often, I'll try to contact frequent posters who have disappeared off of the radar. I think that when I tried that with JJB a while back, I got no response. He doesn't show as logging in for around 10 months - I hope that he's OK.

[Aramis of Erak]

I've allowed a permanent -1 to reroll any one roll in T&T. Worked fine... those who relied on lucky rerolls soon had none.

[gaptooth]

Jun 10, 2011 20:42:20 GMT -5 mahrundl said:

Every so often, I'll try to contact frequent posters who have disappeared off of the radar. I think that when I tried that with JJB a while back, I got no response. He doesn't show as logging in for around 10 months - I hope that he's OK.

I appreciate your effort. It's a shame to lose touch with people who have contributed so much creative work. I think I only had a few interactions with JJB, but I learned a lot from the Wandering Persons chart from his Desert solo.

Jun 10, 2011 20:50:43 GMT -5 Aramis of Erak said:

I've allowed a permanent -1 to reroll any one roll in T&T. Worked fine... those who relied on lucky rerolls soon had none.

I like!

[apn]

I'm a fan of buying an extra die to roll, then picking three from however many dice are rolled and dropping the rest. Still relying on luck (all the dice might come out crap) but you are 'making your own luck' to a degree because you choose whether to take a TARO if it comes up (or DARO for earlier versions) or the highest dice, or if lucky, the double/triple will be the highest dice, and make the choice easy.

e.g. picking a lock with 3D6, spend two luck points, roll 5D6 and pick three, dropping two dice.

[uburoi]

A-hem.

[kwll]

7.xe have a rule where you can add your level to your SR roll in case you miss it with the dice only. If you are playing 5.xe, why not make this "buyable" with luck points? (Either 1 point or the amount necessary to make the roll.) It would somehow justify the fast increase rate for the LUCK attribute.

[mosker]

Maybe the way to handle this is with burning AP? After all, the action is something that takes you out of the gameworld, so what could be less adventurous than having the characters stop what they're doing, look up to the heavens and ask for a little statistical help?

I remember something from MSPE about characters having a propensity for being shot in the shoulder (but I don't remember the mechanic). The Marvel Super Heroes gamebooks (Don't know about the game: typical T&T player--only own the spin-off solos) allow users to spend karma points to alter die rolls as well.