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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Steed on August 16, 2010, 03:52:05 PM
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So let's say I wanted to make an Emissary of Lady Luck. I know I want to give him some kind of Supernatural Sense for Luck (whether someone's luck is good or bad, etc.) and I definitely want him to be able to manipulate luck. He'll be Marked by Power too, obviously. So my question is, what do you think would be the best way to do the luck manipulation? And what other powers do you think he should have?
The backstory is that he was a drifter and a gambler back in the old west. He tried to cheat Curly Bill (one of the cowboy gang) and though he walked away from the saloon with the pot, he only made it about twenty feet out of town before Curly shot him through and left him for dead. He'd lived his life according to the whims of luck, so the Lady appeared to him and gave him a choice: Become her agent in the mortal world and he could have new, longer life (Wizard's Constitution with the serial numbers filed off) and power. Or he could die alone in the ditch. Obviously he chose the former.
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Hmm ... I think I'd give the character a -2 Refresh Power that let's you make one free "lucky" declaration a scene. Then I'd probably give you a pair of dice as an Item of Power, with a version of True Aim that gives you +1 to a random ability for the scene. A Supernatural Sense that would allow you to make Assessment actions regarding Aspects that may apply to a given situation, so you'd be able to tell if someone has a lot of Aspects that apply to a given situation or not.
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I have an NPC character who has that ability in the game that I run. I find it very simple just to use the True Faith ability "Guide my Hand". Just it deals with luck instead of the almighty.
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I have an NPC character who has that ability in the game that I run. I find it very simple just to use the True Faith ability "Guide my Hand". Just it deals with luck instead of the almighty.
Ooh, that's a good one!
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Just another concept to toss in: What about Sponsored Magic (Luck)? Buy using the idea of "Thaumaturgy at the speed of Evocation," couldn't you toss around low grade entropy curses (a form of bad luck) or even an opposite version for good luck at a moment's notice? I can see direct and simple applications like a "Good Luck" aspect as per a maneuver, or even causing "Faulty Wiring" to explain why that light bulb burned out just when you needed some darkness to hide in. What a coincidence!
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Just name him Rincewind, the rest will take care of itself, so long as he/ she never acknowledges said ties to lady luck.
:)
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I'm really liking what you guys are throwing out here, thanks! I do definitely want him to be able to sling around some luck effects like Crion suggests, and I think I might go with Sponsored Magic (Luck) as that seems the simplest to me. It seems like it'll be a lot of maneuvers, which works great with what I'm thinking. I picture a guy who, during a foot chase, can take a second to throw up a curse that applies a maneuver to the person he's chasing like OFF BALANCE or something, that he can tag to try and make the person trip. Or alternately, a maneuver he can apply to himself like SLIPPERY AS A SNAKE to help him avoid getting hit in a fight. Seems like the Sponsored Magic route might be the best way to go about that.
I like the idea of using Guide My Hand for the luck sense, too. I'll probably rename it, "Sense the Lady's Work" or something like that to fit the concept better, but mechanically I think it should work fine.
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I like the concept, and the power suggestions so far are cool. But what does Lady Luck get out of the deal? In other words, what s the emissary called upon to do for his sponsor? How does she complicate his life?
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I like the concept, and the power suggestions so far are cool. But what does Lady Luck get out of the deal? In other words, what s the emissary called upon to do for his sponsor? How does she complicate his life?
He's basically her slave. When she calls, he goes. It's almost like a Knight of the Cross, only replacing the WG with Lady Luck. She gets a free-willed champion, much like the Faerie Queens with their Knights, and he gets power and a new life. She complicates his life because sometimes, he's not the one benefiting from the luck, and sometimes she gets him involved in things regardless of whether he really wants to be or what else he has going on at the time. Part of the vagueness is because I want to leave her deeper motivations up to whatever GM I end up using him with, but that's the basic idea.
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Can she use him to cause un-luck?
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Can she use him to cause un-luck?
Do you mean un-luck as in everything being standard, with no deviation from a set norm? Or do you mean bad luck?
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Can she use him to cause un-luck?
Since I envision his magic as being able to cause bad luck, I would say she could absolutely compel him to cause it on someone, even if he didn't really want to. If you didn't mean bad luck, then I'm not really sure what you mean.
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I like the concept, and the power suggestions so far are cool. But what does Lady Luck get out of the deal? In other words, what s the emissary called upon to do for his sponsor? How does she complicate his life?
He's basically her slave. When she calls, he goes. It's almost like a Knight of the Cross, only replacing the WG with Lady Luck. She gets a free-willed champion, much like the Faerie Queens with their Knights, and he gets power and a new life. She complicates his life because sometimes, he's not the one benefiting from the luck, and sometimes she gets him involved in things regardless of whether he really wants to be or what else he has going on at the time. Part of the vagueness is because I want to leave her deeper motivations up to whatever GM I end up using him with, but that's the basic idea.
Just to toss in my own two cents: I can see quite a few compels that Lady Luck would demand of her emissary. Perhaps someone is taking advantage of her good graces, and she needs someone to step in to set things straight. Perhaps some outside force is causing some bad luck on those that she's blessed, and she wants that to be remedied. And who's not to say that having him show up at Vegas to give some poor soul on his last dollar the luck to win millions isn't up the alley of the Lady herself? Good luck brings praises to her, after all, and those with bad luck are calling out to her all the time. How is this a bad thing?
As previously noted, some of these entities have a hard time working directly with mortals, and must act via an emissary, so putting him neck deep into a situation, such as a group thinking they can best luck with an entropy curse and will target any emissary she sends to further relay the message. . .yeah, about that :-p
I think with that line of thought, Lady Luck gets more than just a simple "slave." Just putting that out there for you ^_^
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Crion, you pretty much articulated what I was trying to say, only better. Those are exactly the sorts of things I envision her getting him to do.
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Crion, you pretty much articulated what I was trying to say, only better. Those are exactly the sorts of things I envision her getting him to do.
And you're welcome. Hope that it helped a bit ^_~
I'm currently trying (unsuccessfully) to get a group together, and I've been tinkering with a slew of character types/samples, ranging from Changelings/Scions to Sponsored Magicians to your Modern-Day Sherlock Holmes. What you're mentioning is actually kind of fun and an interesting exercise, so I may need to borrow the concept later whenever I can get the ball rolling.
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One of the things I'd go for with a concept like this is actually leaving as large a chunk of refresh free as possible and making sure the aspects I grabbed would generate a lot of fate points. The reason here is kind of simple. I've been looking at dumping fate points as a sort of luck in action. If your compels are going to show up as bad luck, it reinforces some fun story concepts too (assuming you like them). Namely that she's a fickle lady and bad luck is just as much her thing as good luck is. You could also introduce a sort of balanced luck concept in that explains away the game effects if your group likes the idea (probably best to check it doesn't muck up anyone's suspension of disbelief before you chat about it in character though).
All in all it would probably make the character more interesting as well. Being lucky is great and all but if you think about it almost every hero has great luck. I mean, they generally live through the messes they find themselves in. That's often pretty exceptional luck all on it's own. The ones that stand out as lucky to us are the ones who repeatedly trip up and end up in the worst of it before things get better for them. And the best way to make that happen in this system is to have a decent amount of fate points available to start and aspects that just beg the GM to be evil and mess with you. Should be a lot of fun to roleplay within the group too, especially if they know what you are.
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Oh, I'm not really thinking of a character that has astounding good luck or anything. This dude is going to be granting luck (good or bad) to others. And yeah, he'll be using some of his stuff to benefit himself too, but all the other Emissaries seem to do that too. What I'm envisioning is something like this:
Fighting on soil during a rainstorm? He uses his Sponsored Magic to throw down a low-grade entropy curse to apply the maneuver SLIPPERY WHEN WET to the scene, which he can then tag to trip his enemy up. Or if they're fighting close to a cliff? Hope the enemy's ONE LITTLE MISSTEP doesn't send them plummeting to their doom...
Alternately...
You've got his buddy dead to rights and are about to fill him full of lead? Hope he doesn't have a LUCKY BREAK and manage to dodge everything. Or perhaps another buddy had to do a little B&E to get some information on the powerful mystical artifact the group is trying to find before the bad guys, and he just broke the last pick he had in the kit he grabbed and is desperately searching for some way out while the footsteps of the night watchman grow closer. It'd really be LUCKY YOU'VE GOT THAT SPARE in that situation, wouldn't it?
And sure, maybe sometimes it's him that needs that lucky break or that lucky spare. Those can still be double-edged swords. Maybe the enemy goes down in the mud, but spends a fate point to tag the aspect to drag him down too. Maybe the one falling off the cliff grapples my dude and tries to pull him down. Maybe the ally that dodges the bullets ends up captured by the enemy and interrogated into giving away vital info on the good guys. Etc. etc. Plus, there'll be all the compels from the fickle lady to deal with.
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Also, the Sponsored Magic fate point debt system works especially well thematically with Lady Luck; after all, if you roll the dice enough times, eventually they come up snake eyes.
Also, LL could easily compel the character to get involved with people who "fix the odds" in their favor in any number of ways: politicians who rig elections, lawyers or crime bosses who rig juries or judges who do the same, gambling houses who fix the slots or cards, or roulette wheel. She might compel him to assist those who rely on her good graces regularly: extreme sports folks, thieves and rogues of any stripe, even the down-and-out who need LL to look their way *just once*... all those are great scenario opportunities.
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I have a simple -2 refresh power for one of my players. "Minor Fey Luck;" which gives a character a free re-roll twice a game session. The only limitations are that they have to keep the second roll and that it can't be used on the same skill attempt or in the same scenario more than once.
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IMO, that power is overpriced at -2 Refresh, especially since it isn't much more powerful than using a Fate point to invoke an aspect for a reroll. It would definitely be -1 refresh in a game I ran.