The Secrets of the Luckbringer (PFRPG) PDF

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Wanted: players who want good fortunes rather than great plans!

This new base class is designed for use by player characters at every level of play, allowing the character to manipulate probablities. The luckbringer's abilites allow it to make narrow escapes, cause sudden and strange occurances to damage and hinder thier opponents,and increase its chance of making a critical hit. This class can also be easily introduced into any new campaign with a simple plug and play first person introduction.

The Secrets of the Luckbringer is brought to you by the same designer who crafted the hugely successful Book of Monster Templates and the best-selling Feats 101. In addition, this product is the fifth book in "The Secrets of" series.

Author: Steven D. Russell
Cover Image: Caravaggio
Pages: 9

Includes HeroLab data files (requires the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core data files to use).

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4.80/5 (based on 5 ratings)

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Excellent class, poor editing

4/5

The luckbringer class itself, and the fluffy introduction are awesome. However, the document suffers a great deal for it's terribly shoddy editing. This includes referencing the class by a different name, and generally poor punctuation, such as the omission of commas, words, and misspellings.


Luckbringer

5/5

This was my first introduction to Rite Publishing, and I have to tell you I was amazed. I purchased this because I read it was inspired by the Time Thief a class that I really enjoy playing.

Loved every bit of this class, it had flavor, a fun to use mechanic. Like the Time Thief it was a different take on a martial/skill monkey. The very next character I'm going to play is a Luckbringer.

I could go on and tell you all the features but others have done a good job of that already. What I will say is this, I would have paid $9.00 for this PDF and still would have said it was worth the money, both from a GM point of view as well as a Player's point of view. Do I recommend this absolutely.

Not only did I buy this it impressed me enough to pick up Secrets of the Gunslinger, 101 New Skill Uses, 101 Renegade Class Feats, and #30 Flesh Graphs. None of these disappointed me.

If you are worried about 3rd party products do your self a favor buy this class and give it a shot I'm sure you will like.

My rating a well deserved 5 stars.


A luck based class.

5/5

The Secrets of the Luckbringer by Rite Publishing

This product is 14 pages long. It starts with a cover and credits. (2 pages)

New Base Class Luckbringer (9 pages)
This section is all about the new base class. D8, 6 skills, medium BaB, 2 good saves, all simple and one exotic weapon, light, medium armor, and shields.
Moment of Chance – They gain luck points and can spend them to do one of three things.
Improbable – is gained at 2nd level and every 2 levels afterwords. There is a choice of 11 abilities to pick from. Once the ability is learned the can be used just like with Moment of Chance.
Nothing is Written – works just like Improbable With 11 powers to choose from.
Longshot – Another collection of powers gained at 5th and every 4 levels afterwords, but otherwise works like Improbable. With 7 powers to choose from.
Highly Improbable – Starting at 10th level 11 new powers are added to the Improbable pool of powers to pick from.
Major Disaster – The cap stone ability. Cause a area to suffer every natural disaster at once.

It ends with a OGL and ads (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. The artwork is black and white and pretty good. Layout and editing where good. I didn't notice any obvious errors or problems. This classes uses the same type of system as the Time Thief book and the earlier Taskshaper book. I thought the rules where better written and much more clear than Rite Publishing's first attempt with the system they did with Taskshaper. The concept of the class is someone that is very lucky, they spend their points to use powers that mimic powerful luck for themselves or bad luck for enemies. Each of the class abilities introduces a new set of powers they can learn getting steadily more powerful.

I will be totally honest, the concept of the class really isn't something I am personally interested in. But I know others do love it, one of the guys in one of the groups I play with absolutely loves the class. He really enjoys the concept and powers behind this class. So with that in mind I am going to give this a 5 star review. The class does exactly as promised and does it well and if the concept interest you in the slightest I think you will enjoy it and I recommend picking it up.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus.


Kiss the Blarney Stone

5/5

Well, no, the luckbringer isn't Irish. An irishman might wish he had the luckbringer's ability to alter chance.

This is written from the perspective of Rikva Cardsharp, a self titled luckbringer. I love this first person point of view. From her expository on her abilities we learn about this specialist class. There is no question that the luckbringer is a variant of a rogue core class, but it has abilities specific to altering fate rather than rogue talents. One noted traditional rogue ability the luckbringer does not get, and that is the sneak attack.

What does the luckbringer receive in place of the missing rogue abilities? The first called “Moment of Chance” is a pool-point ability, which increases as the luckbringer’s levels increase. With this the luckbringer can cause minor things to happen which alter fate just a touch. In game terms this can mean a reroll to have a chance at a different result, adding +1 or -1 to a roll resolving an action that takes place near the luckbringer, or even an added possibility of avoiding a deadly result from an attack or spell. As the luckbringer increases in experience she gains more chances per day and more and greater abilities to affect fate around her.

Starting at second level is the next set of abilities called “Improbable” from which the player can choose at every even level after. These relate to greater “weal or woe” affects on those the luckbringer targets. “Nothing is Written” is the name of the next set of abilities that arise at 3rd level with which the PC can use to escape negative results from a free reroll to added evasion or even extraordinary luck while chasing or being chased. And then at 5th level are the “Longshot” abilities which are expansions of the “Improbable” abilities received prior. At 10th level are even greater probability alterations termed “Highly Improbable.” Finally at level 20 there is an ability which sends a massive natural disaster upon the luckbringer’s target and can do a great deal of damage unless somehow avoided.

This class reminds me of one of my favorite characters in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, Matrim Cauthon. I think it would be fun to play a perhaps less than talented rogue who keeps getting into and out of scrapes by sheer luck and not even knowing why. Cool! I love the luckbringer! This is a well-thought out fun character class and it doesn’t hurt that the art sprinkled throughout is eye catching as well. I rate Secrets of the Luckbringer at 5 of 5 stars.


A very cool take on the trope of fortune's favored

5/5

This pdf is 14 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 9 pages for the new base-class of the Luckbringer. Let's check it out!

After a great IC-introduction to the new luckbringer-class (which ranks among the coolest and most amusing ones I've read by Rite Publishing), we are introduced to the new class. Mechanically, it's a medium BAB, good ref and will-saves, d8, 6+Int modifier non-spellcasting class somewhere along the lines of Super Genius Games Time Thief in the manner that the class focuses on cool abilities that can be activated via free actions. The key difference, of course, being that the abilities center around luck (or lack thereof) rather than time. So, let me explain a bit further:

The base ability of the class is called moment of chance and can be used to get a save to avoid being dropped below 0 HP, add a bonus or penalty to checks or reroll one roll within 100 ft. The class gets 3+level points for this ability, ensuring that it gets additional uses every level. You think that is cool?

At second level and each even level after that, they get to choose a so-called Improbable ability from 11 different abilities. These abilities do use moment of chance points and range from becoming better at escaping, get benefits of critical feats, force miss chances upon enemies or negate them, take 20 if they normally couldn't etc. It should be noted that almost all abilities can be used in favor of the luckbringer or to the detriment of opponents, necessitating fair scaling saving throws mostly dependent of level on Cha-mod of the luckbringer. If you're like me, you do now get what archetype this class lends itself to. The coolest ability, by far, though, is Hazard (Su) : With this ability, the luckbringer can cause a damaging, improbable mishap to happen to an enemy, which is DAMN cool - both the player and the DM can each and every time determine specific, extremely improbable mishaps. This has to be one of the best abilities to encourage funny/cool ideas at the table ever.
Luckbringers get even more choices, though: Over the course of their 20 levels, they can choose up to 6 "Nothing is Written"-powers from a list of 10, which are not dependent on the pool and range from rolling twice a random roll and taking the better result, over evasion up to being extremely lucky when escaping/giving chase. Especially the latter is plain awesome for both PCs and NPCs. "You'll NEVER catch me!" *cackles with glee*

Need more customization opportunities? The class has more to offer: Luckbringers also get to choose from up to 5 longshot powers from a list of 7, which range from a pool of freely usable bonuses per day over making botches crits and vice versa up to automatically getting an item via improbable means.

Beginning at 10th level, the list of Improbable abilities you get to choose from is expanded upon by 11 additional powers, some improving other abilities while others are brand-new, resulting in a highly customizable class.
The capstone ability is also great - the luckbringer summons a landslide, supercell-lightning-bolt or something alike on his enemy, causing 200 points damage. Nice and just as cool as Hazard.

Conclusion:
The pieces of b/w-artwork by Toby Gregory are nice, the public domain art also fits the theme. Layout adheres to the two-column classic RiP-standard. Formatting is top-notch. Editing was flawless up to the final two pages, where some minor errors have found their way into the book. The pdf is extensively book-marked, making electronic reference at the table easy. The IC-writing for which I love almost all RiP-products reaches a high point in this pdf, being among the most entertaining and yet cool, offering a nice gender-twisted touch to the traditional scoundrel myths and behaviors. Oh. That was it, wasn't it? The bad "S"-word. Yep. I said it. Scoundrel. Like in "Complete Scoundrel." Before you start to get reflexive headaches due to remembering how broken that book was, let me assure you: Luckbringer is NOTHING like Complete Scoundrel. Yes, it focuses on the players who want to play the perpetually lucky hero, but everything Complete Scoundrel did wrong, Secrets of the Luckbringer does right and the few things CS did ok, this pdf improves upon. BIG TIME. Mechanic-wise there nothing to complain about. The IC-writing is glorious and even in the rules-section I really can only list one point of criticism: I encountered three minor editing glitches on the last 2 pages. While they did not really deter all too much from me understanding anything, they just jumped at me due to the more or less flawless nature of the rest of the pdf. I would have loved to see more powers, though there are enough to make them versatile indeed. Thus, my final conclusion will be as follows: If you don't care about some minor editing glitches in an otherwise completely awesome, cheap class-book, this pdf is 5 stars. If you're as pedantic as I am, consider it 4.5 stars. In any case, Steven D. Russell has once again created a great new class and the only question I'd like to ask is: When do we get more support for the luckbringer? I'd definitely love to see a sequel.



I wanted to thank Liz "Werewolf" Courts for getting this up.


Now with a free preview (right click save as)


Reviewed here, on OBS and sent to GMS magazine. Will post it on Enworld as soon as their site works properly again.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Nice review End.


Thanks end,

I really am very proud of this class


Thanks, both of you!


Rite Publishing wrote:

Thanks end,

I really am very proud of this class

You should be. It is really very clever.

Oh, and I have written a review.


Thanks Dark Sasha (5/5 Woot! Snoopy Happy Dance of Joy!)

Yes my roots in the Call of the Horn WoT Rpg fansite really came out on this one. Also my love for Owen K.C. Stephens' Time Thief and Wolfgang Baur's Fortune Hunter.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Reviewed.


Nice review, D_M!


Thank you for the review DM 5/5 Snoopy happy dance of joy.


I wanted to thank Realmwalker for taking the time to do a review of my favorite class.

Steve Russell
Author


Now with the Herolab datafiles. (Requires core set only)


Fun, fun class. Using one as an NPC with the party and really enjoy the flexibility it gives me, as she doesn't outshine them at anything and yet is still very useful. In fact she saved the samurai from a possible critical that would have killed him from Gutwad's spear with a Fatespin that turned it into a miss. I would play this class in a second.

Plus I LOVE that it's on Herolab for easy updates. Excellent job.


Meholder wrote:

Fun, fun class. Using one as an NPC with the party and really enjoy the flexibility it gives me, as she doesn't outshine them at anything and yet is still very useful. In fact she saved the samurai from a possible critical that would have killed him from Gutwad's spear with a Fatespin that turned it into a miss. I would play this class in a second.

Plus I LOVE that it's on Herolab for easy updates. Excellent job.

Excellent, there is nothing I love more than hearing about their use in actual play. I am glad you are enjoying it.


Raising this from the dead since I have a quick question. With the Hazard ability:

Quote:

Hazard (Su): Using her ability to affect

probabilities a luckbringer can cause a hazardous
condition to affect a single target. This hazard
deals 1d6 points of damage + 1d6 points of
damage every two class levels. A successful Reflex
Save (DC 10+1/2 the fate spinner’s class level +
her Charisma modifier) results in half damage.]

What is the correct damage for a level 2 luckbringer? 1d6 or 2d6? By my reading it sounds like it is 2d6 but I really wasn't sure if that was intentional or not.

Dark Archive

I am not Steve, but I would have that particular sentence rewritten as follows: "This hazard deals 1d6 points of damage per two luckbringer levels (minimum 1d6)."


1d6 base damage plus 1d6 damage for every 2 levels the luck bringer possesses.

So a level 2 luckbringer does 2d6, a level 4 luckbringer does 3d6, a level 6 luckbringer does 4d6 etc.


quick question...

The Secrets of the Luckbringer wrote:

Moment of Chance (Su): Each day, the

luckbringer has a pool of moments of chance equal to
three plus her class level. Once a round, as a free
action, a luckbringer can expend a moment of chance
to do any one of the following things:

Most things on here, including most of the Improbable abilities can only be activated when someone else makes an action. That means it is NOT your turn. Unless I'm mistaken, Free Actions can only be taken on your turn. These should be immediate actions

Free Actions

The sentence:

'Free Actions" wrote:
In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn't your turn. Speaking more than a few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.

(emphasis by me), implies that normal free action cannot happen on your turn.

Is this class meant to be based on an exception to that rule as well?

Love the class, and what it offers to a party. Just want clarification. My DM probably won't allow such a huge alteration to a big rule.

Thanks!!!

-

EDIT: P.S. The Powerful Necromancer that all Gnomes have grown to fear cast the ever dreadful Epic Level (3.0) Spell: Animate Thread.

All quiver as the beast shakes off the dust that has settled on it's once peaceful corpse and starts to march toward the developer...

Who will save them?!?


the updated version in The Secret of adventuring addresses this issue. Its an exception to the normal rule(the rule is ambiguous at times).

Using a moment of chance is a free action that you can perform even when it is not your turn.


I don't have that one... I'll look it up.

But thank you for the clarification!!!

Sadly, not sure if this'll fly with this DM... Ooh well!

I'll hold onto it for the future.

Great work though!


Thank you its my favorite when it comes to class design. The Secerts of adventuring (which is on sale now) compiles all but one of our The Secerts of X series (Divine channler, Taskshaper, luckbringer, magus, inquisitor, oracle, combat maneuvers) it also added on things like 101 Rengeade Class feats, 10 luckbrigner feats and 10 luckbringer items and the divine channeling articles form pathways. its a big compilation.

Grand Lodge

What is the best way to build a Luckbringer?

There doesnt seem to be any direct melee/ranged bonuses making me think that I should just build one as a buffer/debuffer with maxed Charisma to boost DCs.

Outside of the Fate's Favored trait (which I think is manditory for this class) is there any feat or trait that lends itself to the Luckbringer?


What are your experiences with the Luckbringer class? Is it balanced at all levels? Is it fun or irritating for other players?


I have some concerns about these mechanics:

  • Just a Scratch seems to provide infinite healing.
  • Fool's Luck gives unlimited re-rolls.
  • Hazard gives free action damage every round. Let alone a free action stun attempt at 10th level.
  • I'm not aware of pathfinder abilities that use mechanics like "after the result is known", "per game session", changing actions mid-stream, or subbing in a skill check for a saving throw.


You misread...a lot.

Let me clarify:

"Just a scratch" is an Improbable ability and requires the expenditure of a moment of chance (pg 4), which has a hard cap (3 + class level, pg 3). No infinite healing. Also: You may use just one moment of chance use per round. Same goes for hazard, which is also an Improbable ability and thus draws from the same pool. It's your moment of chance that round, it should better do something worthwhile.

"Fool's Luck" reads: "She may use this ability a number of times per day equal to her Charisma bonus (minimum +1)" (pg 6) - no infinite rerolls.

Hope that helps!


Addendum: Sorry if I came off as brusque; wrote the above in a hurry.

Hope you'll have fun with the luckbringer; been using them in my games for a while now and they make for nice 5th men-type of characters. Just be sure to read the class carefully; it has quite a few moving parts.

Cheers!


Endzeitgeist wrote:

You misread...a lot.

Let me clarify:

"Just a scratch" is an Improbable ability and requires the expenditure of a moment of chance (pg 4), which has a hard cap (3 + class level, pg 3). No infinite healing. Also: You may use just one moment of chance use per round. Same goes for hazard, which is also an Improbable ability and thus draws from the same pool. It's your moment of chance that round, it should better do something worthwhile.

"Fool's Luck" reads: "She may use this ability a number of times per day equal to her Charisma bonus (minimum +1)" (pg 6) - no infinite rerolls.

Hope that helps!

No worries. I got those two wrong. It's this I'm concerned with now:

"I'm not aware of pathfinder abilities that use mechanics like "after the result is known", "per game session", changing actions mid-stream, or subbing in a skill check for a saving throw."

I'm the DM, so I'm trying to figure out if this is a viable class for a player who's interested.


Skill check for a save is not something I like, even if the substitution is limited; personally, I make those skill checks based solely on ranks (d20 + skill ranks). Why? Skills are easily boosted through the roof. That being said, shouldn't break the class.

Per Game Session should not provide issues. Lots of RPGs use such mechanics.

"After the result is known" - matter of taste, I guess. Personally, I don't allow for forgotten bonuses etc. to be applied after the roll is made, which means that this actually made the class feel more unique to me.

Action-change mid-stream. Example, please - not sure what you mean.

That being said, I've been using the luckbringer for quite a while. Supernatural skill monkey/5th man, basically. Didn't break the game or come off as a really powerful option; it's a flavorful class, but not one my minmaxers would choose to make super-death-engines.

Cheers!


Endzeitgeist wrote:

it's a flavorful class, but not one my minmaxers would choose to make super-death-engines.

Hey buddy, you rang?


Oh dear lord, not you! Did you hide behind my couch?? Where were you? OO


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Endzeitgeist wrote:
Oh dear lord, not you! Did you hide behind my couch?? Where were you? OO

I lurk in the Space Between Aprils, waiting to pull your world into this one at the End of Da... I mean, yeah bruh, behind your couch and it's kinda dirty back here. Could stand a bit of a shine.

See you in four months, hope you're ready to say hello to my lil' frien'. Leave a light on, Endzie.


Ähhh...okay, I'm gonna leave you and your buddy a beer and some pretzels for now.

*hastily starts checking holiday options for April*

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