The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: LordVreeg'Basic Carnal', which is, by the way, Nomadic's Favorite skillset, does, in fact, have seduction as a a subskill.  Charisma and wisdom have very strong effects in both skills, and appearance adds a very big bonus on as well to Seduction'.  

Only when it doesn't involve snargash, naked dwarven bondage, or trolls in tight leather outfits.

Quote from: Sdr$g$n1984I think a more appropriate example would be luck. If you're lucky, then dammit, you're just lucky. It's not because you read some book on being lucky. Sitting in some monastery for hours on end won't improve it, either. It's just... there. I can't see any argument for luck being handled like a skill. I think this is the whole point of using advantages and disadvantages in a skill-based system. I think it's also one of the flaws in core d20, but it's certainly fixable, at least to some extent. Assuming players don't mind being limited to one advantage per character, they could accept a first-level-only feat, which could work very much like an advantage. Of course, an actual advantage/disadvantage system could be attached to core d20 (or even integrated in a d20-based system), but that's beside the point.

tunnels & trolls actually had luck as an attribute.
It was really funny, becasue if you didn't think you could make the appropriate save on an attribute, you could try to make a slightly harder save on luck...

I'm not really sure I can accept "it's been done before" as an automatically valid justification for a certain mechanic, though. Just because it's been done before doesn't mean it's not problematic.

tunnells and trolls was totally problematic...that was my point...

In that case, I take my comment back. Not on the grounds that it's no longer valid, but on the grounds that it's no longer really relevant :P

Quote from: SIH$veDoll$rSignsInMyN$meI think a more appropriate example would be luck. If you're lucky, then dammit, you're just lucky. It's not because you read some book on being lucky. Sitting in some monastery for hours on end won't improve it, either. It's just... there. I can't see any argument for luck being handled like a skill. I think this is the whole point of using advantages and disadvantages in a skill-based system.

really[/i] JUST luck, just randomness, it shouldn't really be a stat--no one should be capable of having different levels of luck. No one really benefits more from the randomness of the universe than others on a repeatable and dependable basis for reasons having nothing to do with skill or training. People can be resourceful, and be able to use random situations to their advantage more often than others, and we can call it luck, and it could be "trainable" with experience.

Or someone could be lucky, and win the lottery or such--but really, they were just lucky that once--the random roll benefited them that one time. That in no way makes them less likely to catch a cold, or more likely to win the next Nascar pool. They might, but again--they were just lucky this one additional time. Luck as a stat, trainable or not, doesn't make any sense in the "real" world.

It does, of course, make sense if you're telling a story about someone is just lucky over and over again, because you (the player or dm) want them to be. But it's not a real thing and I'm not sure why the rules of reality should be applied to only one part of it. :)

I have always seen the d20 roll during a skill check as part of that luck. It shows how lucky you got on that attempt alongside how well your natural talents and abilities helped.

Quote from: brainfaceBut it's not a real thing and I'm not sure why the rules of reality should be applied to only one part of it. :)

I disagree with this. There are people who seem to continually defy the odds, sometimes to very unbelievable levels. Just look in the Guinness Book of World Records for some examples. Unless you can think of some other explanation for Roy Sullivan.

<rant>
Is there some reason to think that there are more Roy Sullivan-types than statistics would predict?

People get struck by lightning and survive all the time. Seven times, that is certainly unusual. And surviving that many is certainly "lucky" from Roy's point of view. But for this to provide evidence that Roy has some special attribute, you'd have to compare Roy's experience to the number of people who've been struck once or twice and survived vs. died. Then take into account the fact that Roy's profession as a forest ranger puts him at higher risk, and the number of forest rangers out there over the years, etc. You might find that it is actually reasonably likely that there would be someone out there who had been hit many times and survived. And it was Roy's fortune, for good or ill, to be that person.

Even if you did find that such a thing was quite unlikely, you'd still be left with at least three possible explanations:

1. Roy is just a statistical fluke - out of the ordinary run of events but not for any particular reason. Things like that happen from time to time, in one area or another.

2. Roy has some kind of characteristic that attracts lightning but at the same time protects him from the effects. No idea what that might be or how it would work.

3. Roy has some kind of non-material characteristic (call it "luck") that causes odd events to occur. No real idea how it operates.

Even if option 1 seems statistically unlikely, it could be that it is still the best explanation (in absence of further information). Since we have no idea how options 2 or 3 might work, they seem inherently implausible and that counts against them just as the statistics count against the first option. The statistics only rule out option 1 if there is a more likely alternative explanation.
</rant>

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

I will admit a certain fascination for a character or NPC whose luck is plain better than other people.  Whether the blessings of the gods or just a loveable rogue, somehow this makes for a fun character.
Going beyond mechanics for a second, the point is a fun game.

If you have 6 billion people on the earth, some of them are going to be lucky over and over again. It's not because they were intrinsically lucky. Pick all the people struck by lightning out of 6 billion, and many people are going to have survived none, some will have survived once, many fewer will have survived 3 times, and one guy gets on wikipedia because he survived 7 times. He's just on one end of the bell curve. He's not defying the odds. The odds are that very few people can survive multiple lightning strikes, and very few people have survived multiple lightning strikes.

To put it another way--look at the lottery. The chances of winning are basically crap. It's a money dump. If you look at just the winner, he's beaten the odds. If you look at the winner among all the players, the odds haven't been beaten. They're the same crap odds the lottery always is. Arguably, the really lucky guy is the lottery owner.

The same thing's true of someone that's won multiple lotteries--as a single individual, they're awesome. But among all the lottery players ever, well, yeah, someone's going to win two or three times, just because there's so many people. That's the odds. They're then going to put on the newspaper because they're awesome and "lucky", and it stands out. The masses and masses of people that lost every time they played? They don't get a newspaper article.

I may be getting a little off topic :). I think my point was that any abstracted skill could be viewed several different ways, especially if a character is viewed as part of a story as opposed to a simulation of a real person. If I'm playing Kenny Rodgers, I want a Luck stat and I want it to only get more awesome as I gain experience, and I don't care if it's "realistic" or not. :)

Snakefing, may I quote that post to create a new thread, so not to derail this one too much?

@sdragon: Sure, quote away if you must. It is really a rant, though - lick an itch I just have to scratch, no matter how much I know I shouldn't. So it is off topic on this board - I'll participate in another thread.

@LV, brain: I certainly agree that Luck as a game mechanic is something worth pursuing. I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it myself, but there's nothing wrong with making up your own metaphysics for a game. It is supposed to be fun - however you define fun.

I leave luck to the dice. It makes it fun when you have that really lucky or unlucky player who keeps rolling those 20/1's and the whole group can't help but laugh at their streaks.

Quote from: Crippled CrowPerception skills are the most glaring examples: How the hell do you train "listening"? this has nothing to do with your training, only your talent.... nobody could do formal training of any kind in "listening".

Actually, I have spent some time teaching university courses on exactly this subject.