Piece: Ablative Luck.

[anonymouse]

Was watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico...

Got to thinking that a game could have some kind of "luck armor". Heroes get a boatload, mooks probably only have a handful of points (enough to soak a bullet or two, but since they'll usually get hit with five...). Any "real" armor is just cinematic, doesn't really add to Luck or anything.

[Daniel Solis]

So it's essentially something like this?

Player: I duck underneath the speeding truck, shooting out the front tires and the engine as it passes over me!

<Player rolls a critical failure>

GM: The gunshot has ignited a fire and you take 53 points of dam-

Player: Boo-yah! I spend a luck point! The engine's explosion actually rockets the truck into the air, causing it to do a front-flip nose-dive, leaving me safe and sound in the street.

GM: The Heroine joins your side, holding your arm across her shoulder. As you both walk away in a slow cinematic shot, the truck explodes one last time just to make sure that evil drug lord gets his comeuppance.

It would guard against failures? Or perhaps it flips an astonishing failure to a success of equal calibre?

[anonymouse]

Well, that'd just be sort of normal Luck or Drama or Whatever points.

I was more imagining it as a pool, basically, of Armor Class. Every point of "damage" that hits is a lost luck point. Any damage that gets through is automatically lethal (damage that isn't lethal isn't worth tracking; cutting a finger while making a sandwich would be 1 HP in some games, but is just nothing in this system).

The scenes I was invisioning were more the dark, smoky bars or churches or whatever where the hero is blasting away at a dozen guys, never getting touched but managing to kill each and every last one with style and panache. And there's maybe a whole twenty feet seperating the participants. So they'd be draining his Luck with each shot, but he's got a tonne, while they "run outta luck" pretty quick.

[ethan_greer]

Really, it is a hit point system you're talking about. But I like your trappings and rationalization a lot better than most hit point systems I've seen.  A lot better.

[anonymouse]

Oh, it totally is. Didn't mean to sound like it wasn't. =) In my mind I kept thinking of it as "luck armor" (and been reading over Mekton Z, so had 'ablative' on-hand), but it'd basically mesh health and armor concepts into one.

In fact.. hmm. I'm running an Arcana Unearthed game for one player (which is basically just 3E D&D with some slightly tweaked rules), and may try this out. Ditch Armor Class and HP, and just have "Luck".

[mrteapot]

I may try this idea out the next time I run Feng Shui, as it seems to match more closely the action movies that I've seen.