The other night I was running a game in a specifically ad-hoc manner...
The party decided to help an upstart rogue to 'run off' the Thieve's Guild Leadership in exchange of rinformation. I had an idea of what was in the Thieve's Guild, but not specifics...
The party approaches the guild house (cleverly disguised as a brothel...) and the absent minded Wizard (with ranks in Disable and Perseption) starts investigating the door. One of the girls 'advertising' from her window sees this and goes to get a guard. While the wizard is checking the door, it opens: "Whatcha want, Dogger?" is the gruff introduction from the guard. The party stumbles around a bit and is told, "If ya aint here fer bizness, you need ta go!" One of the party members says, "We're here for business!" They negotiate a price and then the guard leads them into the building. Once in the foyer, the party casts Silence, and subdues the guard; but, the guard rattled the door, trying to get it open while the party's Oracle was pushing against it to keep it closed.
So, as Silence's effect ended at the door (line of effect and all that) I needed to know who was on the other side of the door, because he was going to need a Perception check to har the door! The guard was not banging on the door, he was tryong to pull it open, past the elf that was trying to keep it closed. So, there were three types of bad guys, rogues, fighters and a pair of sorcs. The Boss was not going to be on guard duty, and neither were the sorcs...so, it was a random roll of either Rogue or Fighter. The fighters were pretty poor on Perception (-1) while the rogues were pretty good (+8)...
How to decide which was on guard? I went with a DC 10 CHA check, for a random character in party; it ended up being the 18 CHA Paladin, and she rolled well enough that the guard ended up being a Fighter (that did not hear the door--was he sleeping, reading or was his iPod too loud?)
So, if you have to make a 'luck' check, does CHA make sense?
GNOME
I always looked at luck as totally random, for good or worse. With that being said I would of just did a 50-50 roll to decide and to make it interesting I would have a random PC decide high or low. If they choose low then it would be a 50% or lower roll that fighter shows. If they choose high then it is 51-100% roll to get the fighter. Easy to do can be done quickly with little game interruption.
You can do this for 3, 4, or any number. If you have a halfling in the group give them the +1 modifier in their favor what else are halflings good for, just joking guys/gals....
So, if you have to make a 'luck' check, does CHA make sense?
GNOME
huh
never thought about it like that
personal magnetism does factor into charisma.
Charisma is the way the world responds to you, luck could totally fit that instance.
Not to mention most "lucky" people throughout literature and nonsense happen to be the beautiful charming people. Perhaps there is a connection? Not saying ugly people cant get lucky, but letting ones charisma factor in is not only something I could get on board with, it almost makes sense?
I might give this a go in my game. Ill let you know how my players feel about it.
Not to go on a tangent, but how often does luck come up in your guy's games?
Edit: every time you roll the die xD but seriously when does an actual luck roll come into play
Not to go on a tangent, but how often does luck come up in your guy's games?
Oh, not a tangent at all! It's an important question in line with the topic! How *often* does 'luck' pop up in a game? Not just the "I roll d20 and add this and that" but in the "Since we didn't plan getting past the guard, how likely is it that the guards patrol passes us as we are climbing the fence?" kind of way.
Noteleks, Of course 'luck' could just be a flat, percentage, but in all honestly I was looking at experimenting with a way that would make an underused, undervalued stat more useful with out it 'breaking' the game :)
Toker, that is kind of what I was thinking, the world just works for some people. How could you reflect that kind of literary ideal in a PnP game?
Does anyone remember the old R.Talsorian Cyberpunk with its LUCK stat? at any point you could burn daily luck (up to your stat's value) to add to a die roll. Need a 34 to hit, but can only get a 32? Burn four luck and add that to your roll!
GNOME
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Sadly not; charisma is very useful for a few caster archetypes, but even this is a "tax". An intelligence-based character happens to get more skill points for his specialty; the vastly preferred Wisdom caster gets both will save and a bump to the most important skill in the game (Perception). Only Pallys (who use it as the wisdom + plan) have great use of CHA.
Charisma affects social... but how much? If you have the skill points you can get all of the cha-based skills up, and keep up. The issue is there are no CHA classes that encourage high int, so more than likely you'll be about the same as a skill-focused low int character. The rest the high-int face will simply pass you on; you'll be OK low levels, but mid he'll surpass you easily with his array of skill points.
Going back to this > luck is a fine use of CHA, but subjecting too much to dice isn't a great way to run things. It'd be far better to encourage scouting to see when the guard changes, IMHO.
I overtly tell my players that I use CHA checks for luck and random events. Being lucky often considered to be a part of leadership.
- Maybe I'm mising something, but I don't think the difference tween a high int skill user and a high stat user is as big as people think, at least not in favor of the skill user.
If, for example you have a Paladin and Rogue and both with an 18 and at least a 14 otherwise, chances are the Paladin will put the 18 into Cha. The Rogue might, but he also might opt to put that high stat into Dex or Int, depending on build. The Paladin then puts the 14 into Int and he now has 4 skills per lvl, 5 if he's human.
4 skills per level, id go with Heal, Diplomacy, Sense Motive and Perception. But one could always mess around lvl by lvl and toss in K:Religion and Spellcraft if desired or any other skill, though for this arugment, we'll keep Diplomacy maxed out.
The Rogue here decides he's more of a skill monkey than a combatant, and so puts his 18 into Dex and his 14 into Cha. So he gets 12 skills per level, 13 if a human. Again max Diplomacy.
At level 1, the Paladin has one rank, plus 3 for it being a class skill, and plus 4 cuz of his 18 for a total of +8 to Dip checks. The Rogue has 1 rank, +3 for class and +2 for his Cha mod for a total of +6. Now the Paladin will most likely keep his Cha up via leveling and items, but the Rogue may not. If he sticks with being a skill monkey, he'll focus first on his Int, but he very well could opt to increase his combat stats over his Cha if he's getting into a lot of fights. The Paladin probably has a solid Str and Con, but a lower Dex and Wis, possibly using them both as a dump stat.
This trend will keep up over their careers, the Paladin knowing he has damn good combat stats because of his class, and a really good bonus to his social skills via his Cha score. However the Rogue could face difficult choices depending on how the game goes. If combat is happening a lot, he'll want to forsake his Cha and possibly even Int for awhile, if he's gettin his ass kicked enough.
One could make the argument that the Rogue could focus on his social skills and thus go with an 18 Cha, but again depending on build and the game may need to switch his stat focus up. The Paladin will never really need to worry about this much.
Finally, to the OP, its a cool idea. I really like the idea of a Luck stat, in some fashion and if such was in the game from the start, I would use it a lot, as a GM or player.