I think there's a basic difference in our understanding of the Luck roll.
I agree. You seem to be under the impression that it arbitrarily replaces skill rolls.
Doesn't it? You are arguing the same point, but saying that I'm overstating it without actually rejecting what I'm saying. Maybe I am overstating the case a little but you seem to be agreeing that
at least 1/2 of the time Luck (rolling 1, 2, and 6) replaces skill.Even if I build a character to be, say, a ninja, and he dies because I tried sneaking into a heavily guarded facility that was just a little too hard for him, I'm fine with it, it was my mistake. I should've planned better and made some basic preparations like learn the layout, the guard routes, shut down the cameras, etc. Now I gotta think of a new character, but, y'know. That's my fault, not the GM's.
Like this. You keep giving these examples where the idea is that you failed because you made bad decisions, not because you got particularly unlucky. But we're talking about luck rolls versus regular rolls, not rolls versus stat comparisons. If your point was that it's less likely that your master ninja will die because he rolled poorly I could sort of understand your point, except that doesn't directly have anything to do with how dangerous sneaking into a facility is- it certainly implies that succeeding will be harder, but it's just as easy to have a straight skill system where even a "master" is likely to fail.
You're missing my point entirely. I don't care if I roll low and get good luck or roll high and get bad luck. I don't want
another roll complicating matters more than they already are. I'd rather play in an RTD where the choices I made as a character matter more than, well,
another roll that modifies what I'm trying to do a second time. I need to simplify the CvRTD system as it is, can you imagine how
horrifically unwieldy it would be if I started rolling 1d6 for everything you did? Would you find it very fair if, say, Claire's weapon effect only worked as stated if she rolled a 3-5 after already fulfilling the conditions of hitting the target with at least a 7 on the damage roll, and on a 1 it actually reversed the attack so she ended up damaging herself and healing her opponent? Not only is that not fair (to me at least) it would mean
adding yet another roll - one which I feel is completely unnecessary - and slowing things down.
The problem I have is that the Luck roll completely negates every single choice you made during character creation, and makes advancement of any sort pointless. Depending on that roll, a master thief, who has spent years plying his trade, is just as good at hacking computers as a child who can't even spell his name yet. An archmage has the same chance of accidentally calling Cthulu when casting a basic light spell as the warrior who just picked up a spell book and randomly read out a passage, despite most likely pronouncing all the eldritch words wrong and having no MP to cast with in the first place, has a chance of casting a semi-decent fireball spell.
No, it doesn't. A master thief might roll [1+3][Luck 2] and hack the computer but not be able to accomplish what he was after or succeed but alert security, whereas a child might roll [6-4][Luck 5] and not accomplish anything except for noticing a nearby grate to sneak through or simply not alerting anyone to his attempt. Luck rolls modify skill rolls, they don't override them.
No, Luck rolls either do nothing/something completely negligible to skills (3-5), make them fail (2), make you worse off (1), or do something else entirely (6). You said this yourself here: (Look at the odds, though. On a Luck 1, it {Healing} becomes necromancy. On a Luck 2, as far as I've seen it simply fails. On 3 or higher, it functions to varying degrees. It generally overrides/reverses it 1/3 of the time, but the rest of the time it modifies it- [3][Luck 5] is not the same as [5][Luck 5].) <-
The reason for (3, 5) not being as good as (5, 5) is that Luck 5 is meaningless and the actual action roll was two points better... therefore a good Luck roll does nothing, like I've been saying. The only Luck that matters is the bad and the great, and frankly the bad comes up 1/3rd of the time and the great only 1/6th.
You also proved my point without even using 1 and 6. ^^ The thief rolled well and the child rolled poorly, but because of an arbitrary luck roll nothing happened to either of them. On the standard RTD system the thief should have passed for rolling a 4 total (You did what you wanted) and the child should have failed for rolling a 2 total (You failed in your task), so yes, Luck does matter more than skill; the thief should have hacked the computer and been on his merry way while the child happily bashed the keyboard to hear the sound of the keys without accomplishing anything. And this would have been perfectly fine. The thief is doing what he was created to do and succeeded, and the child was doing something out of his league and failed. Because of Luck, the thief was not rewarded for being able to overcome the challenge set before him, and the child was not penalized for failing something he should not have been attempting in the first place... thus rendering the character build meaningless.
Let me try this as an example. Let's say you're playing an RPG and are grinding an enemy for the loot he drops. There's a percentage chance he'll drop anything at all, let's say 5%. Of that 5%, there's a 50% chance what he drops is a crappy item you don't want, 30% one that you don't want but can at least sell, 15% a good item for a class you don't use, and 5% chance of dropping the item you're after. You grind for hours and hours and hours for days on end but never get the item you want. A while later you get the chance to look at the source code and find out that, after the drop rate is rolled, after the item dropped is rolled, there's a third roll that has a probability to make it where he doesn't drop an item (1) or downgrades it one level on the list (2), drops what was rolled (3-5), or makes him drop a lot of GP instead (6).
In this example, the only reasons that could possibly be an issue are:
1. The rates are lower than you want. This is a design choice, and has nothing whatsoever to do with how the game calculates the odds.
2. The documentation has lied to you. This is also a design... feature, and similarly has nothing at all to do with the method of calculating odds, other than maybe being complex enough to have caused the mistake.
Or you're missing my point entirely, again, which is that an arbitrary, tacked-on roll makes you feel cheated and discouraged. I don't mind grinding for hours to get an item; I'm STILL trying to get Sonic Boots off of Beelzebub in CvHoD. What I would hate is for all the numbers to align for them to drop for me, right there on screen for me to see, and then see yet another roll come up -
a completely unnecessary roll just there to further complicate matters - that denies me what I just rightfully earned. No one likes seeing (5-1, Luck: 1). It's like telling somebody, 'Oh, hey, I brought you something to eat,' and then when they say thanks, you hand them (3, Luck: 2) an empty pizza box. Maybe a pepperoni fell off in there but it's still just a lump of cardboard, which is not what they were expecting and is far from edible. Luck rolls are a cruel practical joke.
So you have 50% of 5% of 5% of actually getting the result you want, or roughly 0.125% chance of getting the item... with absolutely no way to change that for the better. There's no stat you can put points into or item you can equip to raise that by even 0.005%. No matter what you do, you will always have that low chance of success.
All of this was always true. There was no Better Loot stat, there were no Increase Drops items, and there were no More Items skills. And even if there were, they'd still increase your drop rates like they were supposed to; the only way they wouldn't is if this tertiary roll is somehow unknown and therefore uncompensated for by the developers, in which case you've got deeper issues.
Which, essentially, it is. You can't change the Luck roll. It will always be there. You can see the roll, true, but you can do absolutely nothing about it.
It will always screw you over on a 1 or a 2, do something random on a 6, and basically not matter at all on 3-5. 
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 739781 times)