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KLGChaos 01-25-08, 09:21 AM

Just want to get some opinions on a house rule: My friend and I added a new ability score to our games: Luck. Well, he started it and I just kind of adapted it. You roll 3d6 when you create your character and that's your Luck score. It gets bonuses and penalties like every other stat (though it doesn't factor into the overall stats of your character for determining whether the character is playable or not). Basically, what this affects is two things: Random events-- Let's say the party is surrounding a mindless creature, such as a Zombie or Construct. When that creature attacks, it'll probably attack randomly, so instead of just rolling a die to determine who gets hit, we have the players roll their Luck. Whoever gets the lowest roll (plus or minus their bonus/penalty) is the unlucky one who gets attacked. Critical Misses-- We figured that instead of critical misses causing mishaps as a standard rule, we decided to spice it up a bit and give the character a chance at determining his fate. Whenever he rolls a 1 on an attack roll, he then makes another d20 roll, adding his Luck bonus or subtracting the penalty similar to confirming a crit. There are four possible outcomes from this: Natural 1-- Something really bad happens, though not party crippling. He might swing and accidently throw his sword, striking an ally for damage instead of the opponent, or he may trip and hurt himself instead. 2-10 (or modified 1)-- Something moderately bad happens, such as dropping his weapon, falling over, etc.... basically, like a normal critical miss rule. 11-19 (or modified 20)-- The attack just becomes a miss without any added penalties. Natural 20-- Through some sheer miracle, his unluckiness actually becomes a boon to him and through some twist of fate, he manages to do something good for the party, such as actually hitting the foe through some strange manner or knocking the opponent down, etc. Now, while I like this as it adds a new dynamic to the system, my friend's version of the Luck check never changes. So if you roll one bad roll at the beginning (and end up with a 5 Luck score or a -3 penalty), you get the short end of the stick (though it's not game-breaking). Now as Kharma is the belief that what you do now affects you later, I was thinking about keeping the mechanics of Luck and changing it to Kharma with the following changes: Great deeds of valor and charity will gain you a Kharma point (such as nearly dying trying to save a village from a plague, defeating a great evil Oni that threatens the Imperial City, etc). This will max out at 18. Extremely evil deeds (such as unleashing the plague upon the village in the first place, summoning the Oni to attack the city, etc) with lose you a Kharma point (to a minimum of 3). Now, this would make evil characters kind of unlucky, but the Luck check isn't really a game-breaking new mechanic, as I said, it's just something fun, so I don't think it would really hurt them, but it adds to the flavor of the campaign and keeps with their beliefs of Kharma. For those who want to be really evil, but really lucky as well, I could create a Feat that allows them to switch their modifiers (ie. bad Kharma becomes good luck and good Kharma becomes bad). Just wondering what people think.