I was thinking about changing the way luck points worked. So instead of just giving you 3 extra dice (which may fail), it would automatically give you 1-3 bonus successes (a random factor limited by your base skill number). I think it kinda sucks to spend a luck point and not get anything out of it.
What do you guys think?
I think itâs been too long since Iâve thrown FS3 dice, but from what I remember, I didnât have a huge problem with a Luck Point still not gaining you anything if you still roll abysmally. I mean, yes, itâs frustrating, and annoying, but not critically-so in my opinion.
I think that the danger in making it automatic successes is that in any sort of contested roll (like combat), it may still not end up succeeding (you wouldnât Miss, but you could still be Dodged), and in other situations, it would entirely remove any risk to rolling (you need to succeed in your Athletics check to not fall while you jump between the two ships).
Overall, I donât know that it would hurt anything to make that change, it might help, but I donât know that it would have the effect (at least to me) that youâre intending it to have.
Oh, youâre right that itâs not an auto-success in an opposed roll, but it still has a very meaningful effect.
With just 3 extra dice, you get:
+0 successes: 42%
+1 success: 42%
+2 successes: 14%
+3 successes: 1.4%
With the way Iâm suggesting, it would be:
+0 successes: 0%
+1 success: 33%
+2 successes: 33%
+3 successes: 33%
So even on an opposed roll, you become much more likely to succeed.
It would remove risk from unopposed rolls, but isnât that a good thing? Isnât that the definition of a lucky break?
Iâm tempted to say âyesâ , because I HATED spending a luck point and still failing.
But Iâm a little concerned that, although in practice it simplifies things, it may be harder to understand. Iâm not sure how much your average person gets what âsuccessesâ are or how they factor into things, especially if theyâre on a game thatâs using combat but not really general skill rolls.
Iâve run one game that relied mostly on the combat end, and it wasnât until I started getting deep under the hood to code for a game that relies on rolls more heavily that I really got it (and Iâd read all the FS3.2 documentation seeeeeveral times). Iâve explained it to my husband like 5 times now, and have to re-explain every time Iâm asking his thoughts on a system change.
So IDK. I think itâd probably be a good idea if you can come up with a good way to make it easy to understand without having to completely get what all goes on under the hood of a combat roll (speaking of, I now give a tiny lol every time someone tells me how simple FS3 is). A table with percentages like you gave above might do it.
And really, I think some people probably interpret +3 to mean a straight +3 like in DND anyway so.
Thatâs quite true, but Iâm not sure that most players really do try to understand FS3 mechanics though. They donât have to. They know that theyâre âGoodâ at something, and they can roll it and get âSuccessâ or âGreat Successâ. They donât really care how the dice work under the hood.
If I made a roll/luck command that spent luck on the roll, it could all be handled behind-the-scenes and they wouldnât even need to know that there was a +3 involved at all, let alone what it meant.
Yeah, my point is kind of that I think players sort of get what +3 means, but probably wouldnât get what +1 success means. So youâd need to have a good way of communicating the effects of it without having to get nitty gritty.
I was kind of thinking while I typed, you can probably tell.
Do you really need to have a good way of communicating the effects though?
The only reason people knew it was +3 at all is because thereâs currently no way to factor in luck into a roll unless you do it manually. So they have to know that spending a luck means they type roll Whatever+3 even if they donât really understand what the +3 does for them.
If that was hidden in the code via a roll/luck command, they wouldnât even know that it was +3 in the first place. It could be +2 or +5 or something that automatically converts half of your dice to successes, or just something that automatically succeeds.
They wouldnât need to understand the luck mechanic any more than they need to understand the roll mechanic itself, or the combat/subdue mechanic.
Unless of course youâre the type who wants to know the mechanics, in which case you can read the mechanics documents to find out whatâs going on behind the scenes. I think most players, though, donât really dive that deep.