As it pertains to Pathfinder.

Last night Taco Planet and I flushed out the details for adding “Luck” as an ability in Pathfinder. What follows is what we came up with. If you have no interest in Pathfinder or pencil and paper RPGs in general, you might want to stop being so lame. Or you can skip to the part with the boobies.

Luck is an ability.

Like strength or charisma or wisdom, etc. You roll the ability score the same way you roll the rest of your scores. The modifier is calculated the same as well (-10 and divide by two, round down).

You might be wondering why you would want/need luck. Taco Planet’s idea was that you could press your luck in the event of a failed saving roll or you could gamble on a situation (opening a treasure chest, slapping a sleeping bear, etc.) for greater rewards or more severe consequences.

How luck works as an ability.

Think of luck as how much sway you have over the outcome of events. Luck would be the only skill where a negative modifier would be just as influential as a positive number of the same value.

How to roll for a luck check.

Imagine you are in a situation that you have chosen to press you luck with. Let’s say you decide to open this dubious looking treasure chest. You announce your intention to open the chest and add that you will press you luck by doing so. At this point, your Gamemaster (GM) would create two outcomes, one really good and one really bad. The “normal” scenario is now no longer a possibility. The GM would also assign a value to good and bad (either high or low). This value would be the DC check.

As with all other ability checks, a standard D20 roll, plus or minus your modifier will be required by the player. If, let’s say the good value was set to high (being 11-20), and your luck mod was +2 and you rolled a 9, your score would be 11, which is high, and you would get the really good outcome. And so on.

You would be allowed to press your luck once per day, plus once more for every three levels over level one (1 at level one, 2 at level four, etc.)

That’s what we came up with so far. He is about to run a Hell Knight one shot with the Rev. Dark Wombat and Dave, and they will test play this new skill in the campaign.

Today is Thorsday, which means I am stupid busy.

Try to have wonderful day.

And here’s the boobies I promised you:

See ya’ tomorrow.

More soon. ~SC