Throughout the last several years, I've often called for a Luck roll at the table - for those instances where no ability or skill really comes into play, and it's really just up to fate as to what happens. For example, when the party is exploring the sewers under the Dwarven district of a major city, and one character decides to look up a rubbish chute. What happens? Make a Luck roll!
At the time, a Luck roll was just a toss of the d20. Read the result, and the DM will decide what (if anything) happens. In the case above, it just so happened that our hero rolled a natural twenty. As he looked up, a Dwarf from above tossed his garbage, including a set of magical goggles that he had chalked up as a failed experiment; they just so happened to grant dark vision to their wearer.
Since then, I've expanded the Luck roll to include a Luck ability rolled upon character creation. Using the standard ability rolling rules, this allows a seventh ability roll and a clear throwaway stat. In short, Luck allows for stronger characters. How does this affect the rules about rolling again? I just disclude this seventh roll from those calculations - it is meant, purely, as an auxiliary roll. What if you're using the elite array or point-buy systems? For the elite array, add an extra 10. As for point-buy, give each player an extra two points (such that Luck could be raised from 8 to 10). Characters who choose to keep their Luck scores low will be slightly more powerful, but by a nearly negligible difference.
LUCK (LCK)
Luck measures a character's favor with the fate. This ability represents just how often events just so happen to turn out positively for a character. While Luck is not specifically needed by any character class, a character's Luck may come into question at any point in time. Therefore, Luck may be important for any character. Only important characters have a Luck score; a creature with no Luck score is considered to have a Luck score of 10 (with a +0 modifier).
You only apply your character's Luck modifier to Luck checks.
See you next week.
