Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SeriousConcentrate]

No sympathy. It was a Luck roll.

Punchy response aside, the only argument I can possibly see for Luck rolls is to make it where the players don't always succeed... but you can easily do that by applying penalties the stronger the spell they're casting is.

[IronyOwl]

-I want luck rolls!-

Hmmmm, how would you feel then if I kept luck rolls for you only? I mean, you really sound like you want luck rolls.

D:

Though, being able to drastically boost spell power in exchange for tacking a luck roll on would totally be something I'd want.

Seriously dude. I hate luck rolls. I can't say it any plainer than that. And as for everybody in the Westlands being a mage... did you look at the later characters like Dwarmin's? You notice something? They don't use magic. Draignean is the only sane one out of the first gen characters; everyone else jumped on being a mage because there's a lot of schools of magic and it was an easy way to differentiate your character. You know, like you're the necromancer and Tolyk's the polymorpher, etc.

The waiting list contains a charming impossible-to-hit dagger rogue and a chaos mage/necromancer who beats people with a spellbook. The non-originals contain, aside from you, a monk with melee, ranged, and spell abilities, a polymorpher who also has a longsword, and a melee guy with high cha and no defense. It's fair to say there's more melee focus than with the starters, but I'm not seeing this overwhelming shift to useful, non-magic characters in the new blood.

Perhaps more importantly, the existent characters don't seem any more prone to going mundane than they were when we started. If magic obviously sucked, you'd expect even the existing characters to start using something else, especially the ones who already had some of the skill and gear needed for it. But aside from Darvi actually using his weapons somewhat and Dwarmin's fire antics not really working, that's not what's happened- I'm still happily a necromancer, TolyK's still mutating people, etc.

Anyway if luck's included I'll probably not join. All a Luck roll does is get you excited you rolled a good number, only to snatch it away and use that number to do the exact opposite of what you wanted. I don't mind failing a roll. Ghost Wake kicked my ass in the RTD you mentioned and I didn't so much as blink an eye... because it wasn't like it was an even contest and then OUT OF NOWHERE I roll unlucky once and that's the end of it. There's already enough variation in rolling dice that you don't need to randomize the random result. It just sucks.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between failing a luck roll and a normal one. Doing the exact opposite of what you want is usually reserved for [Luck 1], which is a 1/6 chance. For you to get a good roll and then have that happen is roughly half that, so one out of twelve. The rest of the time should be low-rolling failure, relatively normal failure, or some degree of success, and I'm not sure why the fact that it's unmodified or a secondary roll is enough to make the whole thing utterly unpalatable.

Similarly, "OUT OF NOWHERE I DIE" is more an issue with game fatality in general than luck rolls. It can help, certainly, but only to the extent that [6][Luck 1] or [1][Luck 1] is worse than just [1], which is, as I've said, more a style choice.

Everyones a mage because auto-attacking as a melee fighter on a forum game really sucks.

Now that I think about it, I'd like to avoid that too. Hrm...

The big thing is, it turns the whole RPG system on it's head-usually, you get stronger as you level up and beat enemies, but the advent of the Luck Roll means you'll always suck, no matter how strong you get, FOREVER.

I think you're overstating this. You still get stronger, there's just always a chance of failure, catastrophic or otherwise. I mean, would melee combat suck if there was always a chance of missing, no matter how much damage you did on a hit?

Also, DAMN YOU SERIOUS FOR TVTROPES I NOW HAVE 8 TABS OPEN AAARRRRGGGHHHH I WAS WORKING ON THE RULES YOU ASSHOLE

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Nice job, Serious.

[SeriousConcentrate]

You're underestimating the problem. On a LR of 1, bad things happen. On LR of 2, your roll fails, no matter how good it was. On 3-5, nothing changes, good or bad. On a 6, bad things happen. You have a 1/3 chance of screwing yourself and the other players over and a 1/6 chance of wasting your turn, which is almost equally as egregious. Failing a normal roll is just a failure; I rolled a 1, I can live with that. Even if I'm trying to cast a hard spell and the resulting negative modifiers take me down to where it fails, again, that was my choice to try it and I've got no one to blame but myself. But if I roll really good, if I cast that +3 spell and make it, I WANT THAT SPELL. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE AN ARBITRARY 1 OR 2 SPRING UP AFTER IT AND WASTE MY TURN OR HURT MY ALLIES. It is not fun or entertaining; it just sours my mood and makes me wonder why I should bother continuing on.

To go back to the Westlands, I can take Chaos Mutations. That's a penalty for doing dumb things or hanging around irradiated areas, and it's only temporary if you want it to be/survive long enough to where you can get rid of them. No problem, if you get one you like you can even keep it. Powerful spells have such high modifiers you need a high skill to cast them. Again, no problem, if you wanted to cast them start with weak ones and work your way up. The problem comes from the fact there is absolutely no way to prevent bad luck from happening. I would gladly take a 'luckless' penalty that completely prevented me from, say, doing critical hits if it also prevented me from ever needing a single luck roll.

The big thing is, it turns the whole RPG system on it's head-usually, you get stronger as you level up and beat enemies, but the advent of the Luck Roll means you'll always suck, no matter how strong you get, FOREVER.

I think you're overstating this. You still get stronger, there's just always a chance of failure, catastrophic or otherwise. I mean, would melee combat suck if there was always a chance of missing, no matter how much damage you did on a hit?

There's already a chance of failure. You don't need to stack the deck even further. For example, CvRTD: Ahra's got a mighty +4 defense. He can still be hit and killed. I don't need to add an arbitrary luck roll to the enemy attack, whichwould be like: 3 vs 7+4; Luck 5, looks like your defense doesn't matter at all because this second roll here was good, and you have no chance of countering it or blocking it or doing anything about it. You get hit and that's that.

If I was him I would feel bitter about it. A stupid little arbitrary number completed negated all the time I had put into that character, and made it pointless to raise his defense. Now if Malleus were fighting a powerful enemy and the rolls went 6+3 vs 3+4, if I was his player I wouldn't mind that as much. Eh, it's a powerful enemy, of course it's going to hit every once in a while. The difference is small, but it's distinct. It's true that for specializing so much he suffers in other areas; if he gets into a situation where he needs to be mobile he's going to suffer severe penalties, but that's how he built the character. If he falls to his death it's not because he's playing some epic level acrobat who rolled bad on his luck and died jumping from platform to platform when he should've been able to clear it, even if only by a little; it's because he's a knight in heavy armor trying to jump from platform to platform when clearly he couldn't make it but chose to leap anyway.

I don't know if I'm stating my point clearly or not, but I hope so.

Also, DAMN YOU SERIOUS FOR TVTROPES I NOW HAVE 8 TABS OPEN AAARRRRGGGHHHH I WAS WORKING ON THE RULES YOU ASSHOLE

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Nice job, Serious.

Post what you've got so far or it didn't happen, Tarran. ^^

[Tarran]

Also, DAMN YOU SERIOUS FOR TVTROPES I NOW HAVE 8 TABS OPEN AAARRRRGGGHHHH I WAS WORKING ON THE RULES YOU ASSHOLE

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Nice job, Serious.

Post what you've got so far or it didn't happen, Tarran. ^^

This is as far as I got. Not a whole lot changed. All thanks to you, you ass. >_>

Still on 6 TVTropes tabs... slowly running out of interesting things to read fortunately.

Spoiler: Rolls for those not enlightened in the ways of RTD (click to show/hide)

This RTD will have two rolls: Normal rolls, and luck rolls. Luck rolls occur often, excluding in non-magic combat and simple, non-luck based actions.

Normal rolls:
<=[1]: You fail so bad that you made things worse.
[2]: You failed.
[3]: You succeeded, but poorly.
[4]: You succeeded. Yay.
[5]: You Roflskate over all problems and succeed amazingly.
>=[6]: You succeeded better than you expected or were trying to do. This may not necessarily be a good thing...

Spoiler: Chaos (click to show/hide)

Chaos will be affecting you slowly throughout the game. Generally, the area will have a low chaos radiation (1 per turn), or none. However, sometimes there may be a lot of chaos radiation in the area. As chaos affects you, you will start to change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse, until you hit your limit (80) and turn into a mass of chaos. As you can tell, Chaos can become a problem over time. Chaos can be lowered and their mutations removed by drinking water that's not affected by chaos (you can test by dipping an item into the water, I'd recommend you dip a disposable item), staying in non-chaos affected areas (-1 per turn), or drinking the rare, extremely powerful Potion of Cure Chaos.

Chaos transformations happen at:
20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, 75, and 80 points of chaos. As you can guess, the last one is when you die.

Other things that will increase your chaos are:
Chaos spells casted by you.
Chaos spells casted by you failing.
Chaos spells casted against you.
Drinking Chaos-irradiated water.
Walking into Chaos-irradiated water.
Chaos creatures hitting you.
Chaos creatures standing close to you for a long time.

Spoiler: Combat; Melee, Ranged, Magic, Magic AOE, Armor, and Shields (click to show/hide)

In melee combat: The attacker rolls 1d6+(weapon Skill level, weapon to-hit bonus/penalty, and attribute bonuses) against the defender's 1d6+(defense Skill level and attribute bonuses). If the attacker has a higher roll than the defender, he hits and how much higher his roll is is the damage dealt. Then a weapon's bonus damage is added flatly, meaning only if the weapon hits, not giving a bonus to the attacker's rolls.

For example, the attacker rolls 5+2+1(weapon Skill level, weapon to-hit bonus/penalty, and attribute bonuses) and the defender 3+2(defense Skill level and attribute bonuses). The damage dealt to the defender is 3. However, the attacker's weapon gives +4 to damage. The actual damage is 7.
Another example, the attacker rolls a 3+2-2 and the defender 4+2. The attacker fails to hurt the defender. The weapon's bonus does not do any bonus damage because the attacker missed.

Afterwards, the armor bonus comes into effect. More on that later.

In ranged combat: The attacker rolls 1d6+(weapon Skill level, weapon to-hit bonus/penalty, and attribute bonuses) against the defender's 1d6+(defense Skill level and attribute bonuses). If the attacker has a higher roll than the defender, he hits. Damage dealt is based on the ammo's die roll.

Afterwards, the armor bonus comes into effect. Again, more on that later.

In ranged non-AoE magic combat: The attacker rolls 1d6+(spell school skill bonus) against the defender's 1d6+(defense Skill level  and attribute bonuses). Obviously, the lack of stat bonuses to the spellcaster's to-hit makes it harder to hit a person at range than with a bow or crossbow. The damage dealt is based on the spell's die roll.

Afterwards, the armor bonus comes into effect. Yet again, more on that later.

In ranged AoE magic combat: The attacker always hits. However, AoE spells also do far less damage than every other spell. They also do splash damage, though. The damage dealt is based on the spell's die roll.

Afterwards, the armor bonus comes into effect. See below finally.

Armor Bonus: Armor bonus is how much damage your armor will absorb. Each piece of armor has Armor Health Points (AHP), meaning your armor has health for itself. Each armor also absorbs a certain amount of damage dealt to you. This makes armor very important in lengthening your survival.

Shields are special pieces of armor. They take up hand slots. Their special ability is a chance to take ALL damage dealt to you. However, once again they too have AHP. Much less so than regular armor. This means they won't last long but they can really be useful at taking damage instead of you.

Spoiler: Attributes (click to show/hide)

You have 65 points to spend at the beginning and gain more with levels. In the character sheets, your points will all start out at their lowest, 0 points, with none spent. The penalties are really bad. That's why you have more than enough to break even at 10 points.

List of stats:
Strength: For every 5 points in this, you get +1/2 (50% chance for bonus) to using a weapon that uses this attribute, and +1 HP. You also gain 5 additional encumbrance points for each point.
Agility: For every 5 points in this, you get +1/2 (50% chance for bonus) to using a weapon that uses this attribute. You also gain +1 to defense every 5 points in this.
Toughness: For every point in this you gain 1HP. For every 5 points in this, you can stay alive 1 additional turn while mortally wounded and gain +2 HP.
Intelligence: For each 5 points in this while below 10, you gain +1 to spellcasting. Afterwards, for every 5 points in this, you gain +1/2 (50% chance for bonus) to spellcasting.
Charisma: For each 5 points in this while below 10, you gain +1 to talking. Afterwards, for every 5 points in this, you gain +1/2 (50% chance for bonus) to talking.

With no points spend, your attributes look like this:
0 Strength: -2 to using a weapon that uses this attribute. 0 encumbrance points.
0 Agility: -2 to using a weapon that uses this attribute. -2 to defense.
0 Toughness: 6HP. Can stay alive for 0 turns while mortally wounded.
0 Intelligence: -2 to spellcasting.
0 Charisma: -2 to talking.

Spoiler: Magic schools (click to show/hide)

In The Westlands, there are many schools of magic. Some of them have very little spells, some have many. Some are defensive, some are offensive. As long as you're at least novice in two magic schools, you can attempt to combine them at the same time at a -2 penalty, along with both unskilled penalties if the schools have them. The result will be realistic-ish. Magic schools have difficulty levels, ranging from trivial (+1 to casting) to impossible (-6 to casting).

Fire magic is... well, fire magic. There's not much else to explain besides that Fire magic allows you to create raw fire with magical power and manipulate it however you wish. Fire magic is obviously offensive.

Water magic is self explanatory. You control water, though it's hard to create water out of nothing. You can also freeze water making it a solid barrier too, but you can't unfreeze it without fire. Water magic is offensive, defensive, and utility.

Earth magic is... oh come on, do I really need to explain this?! You control earth, which is everywhere. Earth has a variety of uses, if I, the Earth, am to be believed. Earth magic is offensive, defensive, and utility.

Air magic allows you to control the air, of course. Obviously the air is everywhere, so you can use it whenever, except underwater. Air magic is both offensive and defensive.

Polymorph magic is a very small school, but an indeed interesting one. It allows transformations of your body and enemy bodies into basically anything. Indeed, it allows you to "reverse" the affects of chaos, though it doesn't remove the radiation, meaning it's still there, just not affecting you in any direct way. Polymorph magic is utility.

Energy magic is a magic type that uses the affects of pure magic as an offensive weapon. Typically, these attacks are weak. However, there's no natural resistances to this. Anything that resists this resists every other magic type. Energy magic is offensive.

Chaos magic is a dangerous type of magic, using the raw forces of chaos as weapons. This is the most destructive of all magics, but it has a major drawback: Each spell irradiates you with chaos, and failing a spell radiates you even more than if you succeeded. The more powerful the spell, the more radiation. Pay attention to the amount of radiation each spell causes. Chaos magic is offensive.

Force magic is another magic type with very little spells. It uses pure kinetic energy as weapons. No, it's not like the Star Wars force, this force is hard to control, it's impossible to pick up a small item like a sword from a distance without bringing everything else within 3 feet with it. Anyway, Force magic is initially very weak, however the higher the levels the more bone crushing the pushes. Force magic is offensive.

Shield magic is Energy magic in a defensive form. It's different enough to warrant it's own school. Shields come in two flavors; Shields and Barriers: Shields block fractions of damage but last longer, and can only be casted upon objects or people, they can also move along with the object. Barriers block all damage but have limited heath and can only be casted on an area, and are immobile. Afterwards, there's Placing or Maintaining a shield. Placing a shield allows you to just put down the shield and do other stuff, however you cannot place shields until 5 turns afterwards and the shields that normally have unlimited HP now have HP, but the ones that had HP and regenerated now do not regenerate. Maintaining is spending your entire attention on the shield, which gives the shield it's fullest abilities, including unlimited health for Shields and regeneration for Barriers. The higher level the spells, the more damage they can sustain or reduce.Shield magic is, of course, defensive.

Healing magic is magic that, well, heals you. Only downside is that if you get a 1 you may pull a Cheddarius. However, I'm not mean enough to make it hurt much. The higher levels of healing magic may allow you to revive someone from the dead. Healing magic is utility.

Necromancy magic is the foulest of magics. It allows you to play around with souls and bodies and stuff. General necromantic stuff. However, to prevent you from going crazy resurrecting enemies, resurrection requires you to use some of your own health in order to bring things back to life, their life depends on how much life you spent. Necromancy magic has some offensive spells, too. Necromancy is offensive and defensive.

Spoiler: Weapon effectiveness. (click to show/hide)

Do remember that weapon accuracy also affects damage, so the negative damage will have to counter the positive accuracy bonus. So don't be surprised if you see a large negative modifier on your weapons.

Take Longswords as the base. They have normal hitting chance and normal damage.
Shortswords will have a higher hitting chance now, but lowered damage.
Daggers will have a very high hitting chance, but very low damage. However, they have a small chance for a critical strike damage bonus.
Hammers have a low chance of hitting and low damage, but they outright ignore armor.
Maces have a decent chance of hitting but low damage. In addition, armor has half the affect on them.
Clubs just outright suck, however armor has half the effect on them.
Whips have a decent chance of hitting, but piss poor damage, and any non-cloth armor makes them do no damage at all. However, they have a decent chance of making an opponent loose something they're equipping, forcing them to pick it up again before using it.
Axes have a low chance of hitting but very high damage.
Spears have a decent chance of hitting, but poor damage. However, they have a critical chance, like daggers, which is weaker, but happens much more often.
Polearms have a poor chance of hitting, and poor damage. However, you always get the first strike with a polearm if you're attacking the same person that's attacking you regardless of initiative. and you also have a chance of a critical, however it's far less often then spears.

Crossbows have slightly higher chance of hitting than longbows and their bolts do more damage.
Bows are average. You may think this makes them worthless compared to crossbows, however each bow has a small chance for a "quick turn" which makes you hit regardless of if you rolled a miss when you roll a miss.
Slings are poor at aiming and poor at damage. However, armor has 1/2 the affect and it's extremely easy to find ammo.

Spoiler: Skills and list of Skill types (click to show/hide)

Skills are your ability to use related items. You have 24 points to spend with a max of 16 in each skill type. In the spoiler below, you'll see how much you need to spend in each skill for a bonus. Below in this spoiler is the list of skills you can spend points on with the main attributes for the related items. You will gain experience in skills every time you use them.

Melee:
Longswords: The ability to use longswords. Longswords use Agility bonus+Strength bonus/2.
Shortwords: The ability to use shortswords. Shortswords use Agility bonus.
Daggers: The ability to use daggers. Daggers use Agility bonus.
Hammers: The ability to use hammers, clubs and maces. Hammers use Strength bonus.
Whips: The ability to use whips and various variants. Whips use Agility bonus.
Axeman: The ability to use Axes. Axes use Strength bonus.
Spearman: The ability to use Spears. Spears use Strength bonus.
Polearms: The ability to use Polearms, staffs, etc. Polearms use Strength bonus.
Wrestling: The ability to wrestle and punch. Wrestling uses Agility bonus+Strength bonus/2.
Misc Object: The ability to use objects that are not weapons as weapons. The bonus varies depending on how heavy the item is.

Ranged:
Bows: The ability to use various short and long bows. Bows use Agility bonus+Strength bonus/2.
Crossbows: The ability to use crossbows. Crossbows use Agility bonus.
Slings: The ability to use slings. Slings use Agility bonus+Strength bonus/2.
Throwing: The ability to flat out throw things. Throwing uses Strength bonus.

Magic: All listed use intelligence bonuses.
Fire magic: The ability to use Fire magic.
Water magic: The ability to use Water magic.
Earth magic: The ability to use Earth magic.
Air magic: The ability to use Air magic.
Polymorph magic: The ability to use Polymorph magic.
Energy magic: The ability to use Energy magic.
Chaos magic: The ability to use Chaos magic.
Force magic: The ability to use Force magic.
Shield magic: The ability to use Shield magic.
Healing magic: The ability to use Healing magic.
Necromancy magic: The ability to use Necromancy magic.

Misc:
Defense: This affects your defense. See the Combat spoiler.
Crafting: This affects your crafting. Based on Agility+Intelligence/2.
Conversation: This affects how well you can talk to other people.
Bartering: This affects your bartering. Based on Charisma+Intelligence/2.
Lockpicking: This affects your lockpicking skill. Based on Agility+Intelligence/2.

Spoiler: Skill Levels and Player Levels (click to show/hide)

Skill levels are reached when you have a certain amount of points in skills. Each skill level gives Skill Level Points (SLP). Each level also gives bonuses to using related items. Player levels are increased once you reach a certain level of combined SLP from all skills. Once you reach higher Player Levels, you gain more ability points which you can spend.

Skill levels:
No skill: N/A points required. -1 to using the related item.
Beginner: 4 points required. Negates no-skill penalty.
Novice: 8 points required. Worth 1 SLP. 1/2 chance for +1 to using related items.
Adept: 16 points required. Worth 2 SLP. 3/4 chance for +1 to using related items.
Skilled: 24 points required. Worth 3 SLP. +1 to using related items.
Expert: 32 points required. Worth 4 SLP. +1 to using related items with a 1/4 chance for +2 to using related items instead.
Master: 40 points required. Worth 5 SLP. +1 to using related items with a 1/2 chance for +2 to using related items instead.
High Master: 48 points required. Worth 6 SLP. +1 to using related items with a 3/4 chance for +2 to using related items instead.
Grand Master: 56 points required. Worth 7 SLP. +2 to using related items.
Heroic: 64 points required. Worth 8 SLP. +2 to using related items with a 1/2 chance for +3 to using related items instead.
Legendary: 72 points required. Worth 9 SLP. +2 to using related items with a 3/4 chance for +3 to using related items instead.
Epic: 80 points required. Worth 10 SLP. +3 to using related items.
Epic+x: n-2x8 points required. Worth n-2 SLP. +yadda yadda you know the drill.

Player levels:
1: Costs 4 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
2: Costs 5 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
3: Costs 6 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
4: Costs 7 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
5: Costs 8 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
6: Costs 9 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
7: Costs 10 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
8: Costs 11 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
9: Costs 12 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
10: Costs 13 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
11: Costs 14 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
12: Costs 15 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.
n: Costs n+3 SLP. Gives 2 attribute points.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Only suggestion I have is maybe leaving some of the bonuses as they are since .5 is unwieldy to calculate and instead slowing down progression more, like having 1-3 give no points to the skill, 4 give 1, 5 give 2, and 6 give 3 EXP. And yes, I am an ass. :3 But I'll own up to it.

[Tarran]

.5 isn't actually all that difficult. Just roll one dice, if it's at or above 4, you get the bonus. It takes seconds, and I'm already doing it with skills. 1/4ths are a lot more tedious, but it's still one roll.

Slowing down progression for skills isn't the biggest problem, it's the stats that lead to too much bonuses mostly. Everyone is min-maxing and gaining ridiculous bonuses. I'm trying to lessen them and penalize min-ing.

But I am going to lessen skill bonuses. No, I will not slow down progression because then you guys will complain about too slow progression, again, and you will also level up too slow.

[SeriousConcentrate]

^^ All right. So... how's it going so far? :3

*wanders off to run C IV turn, reminds himself to poke Draignean for CvRTD turn*

[Tarran]

Up to 7 TVTropes tabs, eyes blurring a little from reading. No more progress.

All your fault.

On another note, yay for another turn for your RTD!

[SeriousConcentrate]

I like writing for it. ^^ Still doesn't stop me from glancing through TVTropes myself and checking the updated topics list, though...

That's right, I should probably update the first post with something about the combat...

Er. That sounded a bit foreboding. Actually I'm taking Dwarmin's advice about auto-attacking and adding some things you can do during a fight to keep it a bit more interesting.

Last edit, I swear: OK, finished that. I added the ability to call shots, disarm opponents, and force criticals. Any other ideas to mix up combat a little?

[IronyOwl]

Slowing down progression for skills isn't the biggest problem, it's the stats that lead to too much bonuses mostly. Everyone is min-maxing and gaining ridiculous bonuses. I'm trying to lessen them and penalize min-ing.

Maybe you should replace attribute numbers and modifiers with modifiers and exp, with higher levels costing more.

So for instance, currently every 8 SLP you gain 2 stat points, and every 5 or 10 points you gain +1 to related rolls. What if instead, every X SLP you gained Y stat points, but the points needed for your next +1 depended on what the bonus was already at. Maybe to go from +0 to +1 took two points, +1 to +2 took four, +2 to +3 was six, etc. Eventually you'd get to the point where players would have to ask themselves- do they want another +1 to spellcasting, or +4 to dodging?

The only trouble, of course, is that progression would slow down. Potentially you could do it in reverse- your other stats get cheaper the higher the ones you're buying are- but that might be a bit wonky.

You're underestimating the problem. On a LR of 1, bad things happen. On LR of 2, your roll fails, no matter how good it was. On 3-5, nothing changes, good or bad. On a 6, bad things happen. You have a 1/3 chance of screwing yourself and the other players over and a 1/6 chance of wasting your turn, which is almost equally as egregious.

Whoa whoa whoa, I object to a lot of that. There's a difference between 3, 4, and 5, and a 6 isn't just a 1 in disguise- it's so good that it has consequences, not just lol u fail. There's a 1/6 chance of screwing yourself over, a 1/6 chance of wasting your turn, a 1/6 chance of kind of doing some of what you wanted, a 1/6 chance of doing what you wanted, a 1/6 chance of doing even better than expected, and a 1/6 chance of doing more than you wanted to the point where it might be a problem. Sure, that leaves a 1/2 chance of something "bad" happening, but at least a 1/2 chance of something good, and more like 2/3 that you'll make progress.

More to the point, though, I'm not sure what this has to do with luck as opposed to rolls in general.

Failing a normal roll is just a failure; I rolled a 1, I can live with that. Even if I'm trying to cast a hard spell and the resulting negative modifiers take me down to where it fails, again, that was my choice to try it and I've got no one to blame but myself. But if I roll really good, if I cast that +3 spell and make it, I WANT THAT SPELL. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE AN ARBITRARY 1 OR 2 SPRING UP AFTER IT AND WASTE MY TURN OR HURT MY ALLIES. It is not fun or entertaining; it just sours my mood and makes me wonder why I should bother continuing on.

To go back to the Westlands, I can take Chaos Mutations. That's a penalty for doing dumb things or hanging around irradiated areas, and it's only temporary if you want it to be/survive long enough to where you can get rid of them. No problem, if you get one you like you can even keep it. Powerful spells have such high modifiers you need a high skill to cast them. Again, no problem, if you wanted to cast them start with weak ones and work your way up.

Again, you're very clear that you loathe bad luck rolls, but make no real mention of how they're different from regular rolls gone awry. It sounds like you either feel you're being taunted by having a high roll within a bad result, or simply object to the notion of having to roll at all. If it's the former, I'm not sure how that's different from rolling a high attack roll but having your enemy roll a higher dodge roll (or vice versa). I'm not sure how it could be the latter.

The problem comes from the fact there is absolutely no way to prevent bad luck from happening. I would gladly take a 'luckless' penalty that completely prevented me from, say, doing critical hits if it also prevented me from ever needing a single luck roll.

Well, let me ask you then- how would you feel about a 'rollless' penalty that stopped you from ever failing by simply automatically accomplishing what you should statistically do per turn?

I think you're overstating this. You still get stronger, there's just always a chance of failure, catastrophic or otherwise. I mean, would melee combat suck if there was always a chance of missing, no matter how much damage you did on a hit?

There's already a chance of failure. You don't need to stack the deck even further. For example, CvRTD: Ahra's got a mighty +4 defense. He can still be hit and killed. I don't need to add an arbitrary luck roll to the enemy attack, whichwould be like: 3 vs 7+4; Luck 5, looks like your defense doesn't matter at all because this second roll here was good, and you have no chance of countering it or blocking it or doing anything about it. You get hit and that's that.

Again, I'm not sure how this differs from: 6+4 vs 8+3; aw, you missed, looks like your attack and damage don't matter at all because the second roll here was good, and you have no chance of following up or attacking again or getting ready to counter or anything. You miss and that's it.

I would also like to point out that every one and thing in the game is beholden to the same rules, so it's not like your enemies would be wearing a trollface, flawlessly casting spells at you while you fumble yours because lolplayer.

If I was him I would feel bitter about it. A stupid little arbitrary number completed negated all the time I had put into that character, and made it pointless to raise his defense.

Again, this section is pretty much perfect for replacing "luck roll" with "skill roll" to get the same result. It's not pointless just because it doesn't work every time.

Now if Malleus were fighting a powerful enemy and the rolls went 6+3 vs 3+4, if I was his player I wouldn't mind that as much. Eh, it's a powerful enemy, of course it's going to hit every once in a while. The difference is small, but it's distinct. It's true that for specializing so much he suffers in other areas; if he gets into a situation where he needs to be mobile he's going to suffer severe penalties, but that's how he built the character. If he falls to his death it's not because he's playing some epic level acrobat who rolled bad on his luck and died jumping from platform to platform when he should've been able to clear it, even if only by a little; it's because he's a knight in heavy armor trying to jump from platform to platform when clearly he couldn't make it but chose to leap anyway.

For anything that isn't guaranteed- that is, doesn't need a roll at all- there's still going to be the chance for Malleus to get hit by 8-2 vs 1+4, or a legendary acrobat to roll 1+9 vs DC 12. Either is going to be infuriating, because either is extremely unlikely, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen, or else, as I've said, it just means you didn't need to be rolling for it at all. Same thing with rolling poorly several times in a row, or an enemy rolling well in succession- of course it's "not right" on some level, but would you advocate disabling that somehow?

Furthermore, we're mostly talking about internal rolls here. It's not a goblin running up to you and forcing you to make a not-die check that you're unlikely to pass, it's you deciding you want to make some lava or summon a dire wolf or suck the life from an enemy, and then either succeeding to various degrees, failing, or occasionally making things worse as the dice command.

I don't know if I'm stating my point clearly or not, but I hope so.

You're getting across that you're frustrated and infuriated by luck rolls quite well, but the exact reasons aren't quite so clear. It sounds a lot like your issue is just that the odds are too low- you feel a warrior should hit at least X% of the time or dodge no fewer than Y% of the time, and luck rolls take casting beyond acceptable limits. There's heavy, heavy overtones of them being unfair in some manner beyond that, but you're not really explaining the difference between, say, 50% skill hit and 50% luck hit, and a flat 25% hit chance. You also seem to say that Die+Modifier is acceptable but Just Die is unfair, but again don't really distinguish between different methods with the same odds. I guess I understand that rolling the [5] in [5][Luck 2] is irritating, but I've never considered it "I've been cheated" or "The GM/RNG is making fun of me" level enraging, and as mentioned you don't explain how it's different from the [5] in [5] vs [6].

[SeriousConcentrate]

Spoiler: Just check the TL;DR if you want to skip all this. (click to show/hide)

I think there's a basic difference in our understanding of the Luck roll. You believe I would prefer it if I always succeeded, which is not the case; failing can give the GM an opportunity to do something interesting, so I'm OK with it, and nobody's perfect. Even if I build a character to be, say, a ninja, and he dies because I tried sneaking into a heavily guarded facility that was just a little too hard for him, I'm fine with it, it was my mistake. I should've planned better and made some basic preparations like learn the layout, the guard routes, shut down the cameras, etc. Now I gotta think of a new character, but, y'know. That's my fault, not the GM's.

The problem I have is that the Luck roll completely negates every single choice you made during character creation, and makes advancement of any sort pointless. Depending on that roll, a master thief, who has spent years plying his trade, is just as good at hacking computers as a child who can't even spell his name yet. An archmage has the same chance of accidentally calling Cthulu when casting a basic light spell as the warrior who just picked up a spell book and randomly read out a passage, despite most likely pronouncing all the eldritch words wrong and having no MP to cast with in the first place, has a chance of casting a semi-decent fireball spell.

Let me try this as an example. Let's say you're playing an RPG and are grinding an enemy for the loot he drops. There's a percentage chance he'll drop anything at all, let's say 5%. Of that 5%, there's a 50% chance what he drops is a crappy item you don't want, 30% one that you don't want but can at least sell, 15% a good item for a class you don't use, and 5% chance of dropping the item you're after. You grind for hours and hours and hours for days on end but never get the item you want. A while later you get the chance to look at the source code and find out that, after the drop rate is rolled, after the item dropped is rolled, there's a third roll that has a probability to make it where he doesn't drop an item (1) or downgrades it one level on the list (2), drops what was rolled (3-5), or makes him drop a lot of GP instead (6).

So you have 50% of 5% of 5% of actually getting the result you want, or roughly 0.125% chance of getting the item... with absolutely no way to change that for the better. There's no stat you can put points into or item you can equip to raise that by even 0.005%. No matter what you do, you will always have that low chance of success. Sure, the GP is nice, but it's not what you wanted, and you can't use it to buy the item you were after in the first place. It's not necessarily something bad, but it's still not what you were aiming for. You don't want the lower rated drops, but you'd rather have them than nothing at all.

TL;DR

More or less the core of my argument is that applying Luck to every roll makes it where it's even more boring than automatically succeeding at everything, which I wouldn't want either. You might as well just play some random schmuck off the street since they would have fully as good a chance at doing anything as someone who's trained for it all their lives; I only hate Luck rolls when they're applied to every single action you take. If they're used sparingly (like in Dev 22, although they're becoming a little more prevalent there ) then I don't mind.

[Draignean]

(like in Dev 22, although they're becoming a little more prevalent there )

Once I actually swing the system update and add skills for observance, reflexes, finesse, and an overhaul of the psionics. As well as an overhaul to enemy skills and a unified chart for hostiles and add-ons.

I actually got pissed by the number of luck rolls I've been having to make, rolls for Crits (Which are going to bottleneck and become impossible to make soon enough if I don't govern it with a skill.), rolls for determining whether or not you get a saving throws, etc. So I've been making skills to determine all of them, luck will get relegated to determining the outcome of matching rolls.

I'm with serious on this one, luck should be used for determining the outcome of two equal and opposing forces.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Yeah, I've been meaning to update my RTDs today but I've been reading Dev22 from the beginning instead of writing. Up to page 153 now. ^^; I had noticed that trend though, that most of the time in the earlier sections luck came in when it was like (Melee 2+2 vs Dodge 3+1), which is a perfectly acceptable use of Luck in my opinion. ^^

QuickEdit: Moar skills? :3 Sounds good.

[IronyOwl]

I think there's a basic difference in our understanding of the Luck roll.

I agree. You seem to be under the impression that it arbitrarily replaces skill rolls.

Even if I build a character to be, say, a ninja, and he dies because I tried sneaking into a heavily guarded facility that was just a little too hard for him, I'm fine with it, it was my mistake. I should've planned better and made some basic preparations like learn the layout, the guard routes, shut down the cameras, etc. Now I gotta think of a new character, but, y'know. That's my fault, not the GM's.

Like this. You keep giving these examples where the idea is that you failed because you made bad decisions, not because you got particularly unlucky. But we're talking about luck rolls versus regular rolls, not rolls versus stat comparisons. If your point was that it's less likely that your master ninja will die because he rolled poorly I could sort of understand your point, except that doesn't directly have anything to do with how dangerous sneaking into a facility is- it certainly implies that succeeding will be harder, but it's just as easy to have a straight skill system where even a "master" is likely to fail.

The problem I have is that the Luck roll completely negates every single choice you made during character creation, and makes advancement of any sort pointless. Depending on that roll, a master thief, who has spent years plying his trade, is just as good at hacking computers as a child who can't even spell his name yet. An archmage has the same chance of accidentally calling Cthulu when casting a basic light spell as the warrior who just picked up a spell book and randomly read out a passage, despite most likely pronouncing all the eldritch words wrong and having no MP to cast with in the first place, has a chance of casting a semi-decent fireball spell.

No, it doesn't. A master thief might roll [1+3][Luck 2] and hack the computer but not be able to accomplish what he was after or succeed but alert security, whereas a child might roll [6-4][Luck 5] and not accomplish anything except for noticing a nearby grate to sneak through or simply not alerting anyone to his attempt. Luck rolls modify skill rolls, they don't override them.

Let me try this as an example. Let's say you're playing an RPG and are grinding an enemy for the loot he drops. There's a percentage chance he'll drop anything at all, let's say 5%. Of that 5%, there's a 50% chance what he drops is a crappy item you don't want, 30% one that you don't want but can at least sell, 15% a good item for a class you don't use, and 5% chance of dropping the item you're after. You grind for hours and hours and hours for days on end but never get the item you want. A while later you get the chance to look at the source code and find out that, after the drop rate is rolled, after the item dropped is rolled, there's a third roll that has a probability to make it where he doesn't drop an item (1) or downgrades it one level on the list (2), drops what was rolled (3-5), or makes him drop a lot of GP instead (6).

In this example, the only reasons that could possibly be an issue are:

1. The rates are lower than you want. This is a design choice, and has nothing whatsoever to do with how the game calculates the odds.

2. The documentation has lied to you. This is also a design... feature, and similarly has nothing at all to do with the method of calculating odds, other than maybe being complex enough to have caused the mistake.

So you have 50% of 5% of 5% of actually getting the result you want, or roughly 0.125% chance of getting the item... with absolutely no way to change that for the better. There's no stat you can put points into or item you can equip to raise that by even 0.005%. No matter what you do, you will always have that low chance of success.

All of this was always true. There was no Better Loot stat, there were no Increase Drops items, and there were no More Items skills. And even if there were, they'd still increase your drop rates like they were supposed to; the only way they wouldn't is if this tertiary roll is somehow unknown and therefore uncompensated for by the developers, in which case you've got deeper issues.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I'll go by my personal experience in the Westlands, which is Luck DOES override skill. There is no other explanation for a Healing spell becoming a Necromancy spell. If that's not the way you intend it to work then we're clearly not on the same page at all.