Jinxed

[Per]

I got a mail regarding Jinxed in Fo1 which basically contained 2 points:

1. With a high LK, you still won't have many critical failures, while the opposition will have lots.

2. After a certain level (9 or thereabouts) you don't have any critical hits at all.

I've never actually played a Jinxed game so I don't know exactly how it works technically, or how it works out balance-wise. I hereby invite everyone to post experiences and war stories involving Jinxed, from both Fo1 and Fo2, to see if we can shine some light on the subject.

 

[Roshambo]

Jinxies! I was about to give my Scientist character that as I went back through Fo2, I will let you know how it goes.

 

[4too]

Opportunity Awaits

Opportunity Awaits



Both FO's have chances to increase Luck stat for free, 2 points, just have to get to ''mid game'' turf.

Three or so MORE points devoted to Luck at the start would be a different
style of play from the average lootin', shootin' , forni-pootin' High Plains Drifter of a Sci Fi Samurai.

Consult oracle.

High LUCK for Jinxed Duck.
This temptation has allure. 3 coins say , '''Perseverance Furthers ...'''

4too

 

[quietfanatic]

I am sceptical about those observations, as they seem unlikely, but you never know.

I was interested in this topic before, but didn't work anything out in spite of doing a little testing in Fallout 2. To 'repeat' some of the relevant stuff from here:

I am lucky to have a hard and soft copy of the Fallout P&P rules by Jason Mical. Unfortunately, I can't find it on the net with a quick search. He adapted the rules set so that nearly everything is available. The problem is, I don't know exactly what he changed and what he took straight from the game. Anyway, according to his 2.0 rules, critical failures are a flat 3% chance regardless of Luck, and if you are Jinxed, any failure has a 50% chance of being upgraded to a critical failure.
...
I didn't have much luck working out how Jinxed works. I couldn't find any clear pattern. However the 50% theory could be correct. If it isn't that, there could be some sort of special table, as implied by the manual, but that seems like too much trouble just for one trait.

Hmm, I must have forgotten to include some details before. Oh well.

When I was fighting Enclave Patrolmen, they seemed to only suffer from a high frequency of critical failures if I had a ridiculously high AC, which seemed to support the 50% theory. I am assuming that Jinxed works in the same way in both games and is independent of Luck, but I'll do some testing in Fo1 tomorrow when I start my next game.

Something interesting that I did notice was that with the worst possible Jinxed combat character I could devise, the PC suffered from no critical failures while in the Temple of Trials.

Critical hits and failures are disallowed by the engine for the first 24 hours or so.

To clarify, it seems that only the PC is immune, because the critters suffered from many failures, as I said before.

 

[4too]

Don't Try This At Home

Don't Try This At Home




Not one to dip into the real mechanics, this day, perhaps this life, and encourage those that can, to counter point any intuitive game running like mine. With the cold dead hand of hard coded probability Delta's.

Right or wrong, ... , hard pan or statistical mudslide, my investment is in playing the game.
Had FOT on deck , on the game PC, to try the 50 cal Sniper Rifle Variant with a 'Gifted Cadre' and couldn't resist another 'travel with Tandi'....

FO 1, Mac version with patch. { Mac OS 10.4 allows quitting with out forced quitting.]

Took the stats from my last successful FO 1 PC ingenue. Gifted, traded Small Frame for this -- Jinxed --, and stripped and then stacked 3 points into Luck.

S: 6 / P: 7 / En: 5 / Ch: 5 / In: 8 / Ag: 8 / L: 8 . Tagged: Small Guns, Big Guns, and Speech. Expect to feed points into Steal, Science, and whatever to solve the quests. Expect to cash in this Raider loot in the Hub for books rather than the next level up in weapons and armor, the Glow always provides.

Wouldn't be a RPG with out rat killing ....

Rat Stomping 101, with Jinxed drop that knife often enough that wished I tagged Unarmed. Lots of bad criticals, lost lots of Hit Points, wished I Tagged First Aide And Doctor too. At least at that level a successful repair is 25 to 50 points, that's 1 or 2 in rat units, and a significant contribution until level 5 or 6. No gain with out pain.

[Is there a 'one' - 'true' RPG with 'less' rat in it? This one of, (THE 'one' - 'true' real time, 3-D, cool particle effects). LIFE'S genuine original ... S. O. L.'s ?]

Was killed twice before leaving the Vault training womb, when some critical took away my turns and the rat, rats nibbled away ...

Short arm inspection: fire arm criticals-- drop ammo --- drop gun -- no friendly fire like it can, will be, .... , well, Ian only shot me once, and burst fire into a crowd of Raiders some times wings Ian when he lopes ahead in the excitement.

Ian's criticals are similar, loses ammo, rarely dropped gun, has yet to drop knife.

Lot of pixel searches groping for weapons in the dark. Love throwing flares around in Vault 15. Helps the nascent level 2 or 3 ''shootist'' with all those territorial rat-pigs.

First time criticals ''helped'' was when attacked by mantises. Scorpions can hurt themselves too.


How Luck comes in? Critical wounds help when taking out Raider Clan. Got an amazing roll of 'good' critical-s when swarmed by Raiders.
Where does the 'good' jinx come in? One dropped gun or lost clip per round [or even every other round], is 3 to 13 hit points your PC or Ian doesn't lose.

Took four runs at the Raiders to survive with Tandi, Ian, and the PC still standing.
Point blank aimed shot gun, Uzi at burst, hunting rifle for long shots into the dark..
that's how Mama cleans house ...

Raider land.
'Bad' criticals were not the severed ham string and flood of rodent death as in the rat caves , more like the 50-50 quietfanatic alludes to.

Luck? With 8 luck one tends to ''trip over'' stuff in the wastes. The wheel of karma stubs your toes with 9-mm ammo, green fruit, and a 'designer' tote bag, at least 4 or 5 times between Vault 13, Shady Sands, Vault 15 and back ... diverted points to steal to get that BB gun on the second try, (and later
Tandi's knife) wish i didn't lose my B-B's to a 'bad' critical

Tend to run a big posse' so will see how 'good, bad, and ugly' criticals will become.

Do not expect to get 9 or 10 Luck until the LA Work Camp, so plenty of time to see which way the Jinxed karma flies, and if a max-ed Luck threshold exists to tilt the table, stack the deck, load the dice for any party in particular.




4too

 

[Per]

This guy theorized that there's a LK roll involved. He also mentioned he had LK 9, so I thought maybe he was around lvl 9 when he raised it to 10 and would therefore see fewer failures.

It's perhaps more likely that you need to fail before the game even checks for a critical failure (if you look at skill use in scripts it seems to work like that). So a late-game char with 95% to hit at all times would only suffer crits much less than 5% of the time. Difficult to say without knowing just how Jinxed works, though. I always believed that it added an independent chance of critical failures, but it was just a guess. Is it correct that Unarmed attacks never fail critically, even with Power Fists and the like?

Oh, and I meant "critical failures" in point 2 above, of course.

 

[4too]

Apples And Oranges

Apples And Oranges



Trust we are comparing similar values, or are at least bagging citrus.

Per:

... Is it correct that Unarmed attacks never fail critically, even with Power Fists and the like?

At low skill levels. 40 to 50 %, sh-t happened every encounter. Appears to be less likely to critically fail as Skill points go 95 plus. Perhaps the chance becomes 'normal'. Slides from often to rare.

Unarmed attacks do fail. At the rat killing levels, it happened often, right after a weapon was dropped ... took the chance that a fist would finish the rodent.

There seems to be few text messages for Unarmed and Melee weapons. The messages tend to be ""critical failure, and (blank)""don't even say when one has lost a turn.

Dogmeat's unarmed attacks can fail, losing a turn or even crippling him.

Hunting Deathclaws ....
Katja had a 14mm pistol detonate. Lost that like ammo. Gone.
Ian and Tyco can drop their super shooters, just like the PC.

Tandi is the only NPC to pick up a dropped weapon ....

Have yet to be forced to unarmed with this PC at level 9. Have dropped Sniper Rifle at level 8, will try to watch for a level 9 failure ...
Perhaps it would be - safe - to use the deactivated robots at the Glow as punching bags .... power fist in the Glow's loot too.

Frequency of friendly fire about the same as any FO. Have issued the big hand guns or sniper rifle to NPC's. Attribute one PC death while hunting Deathclaws to ill timed loss of 20 or more hit points.

Never played with 8 then 10 Luck. Some fights seem easier. AND Deathclaws are never 'easy' ...
One Deathclaw may be stunned by a critical, and the next closing to focus multiple attacks.



4too


..............

On Reflection


Per:

... Is it correct that Unarmed attacks never fail critically, even with Power Fists and the like?

Are you thinking Jinxed could be a voodoo curse against all tech?
'Weather' one adopts a 'Green' stance or is merely '''born under a bad sign''' ....
Jam the mechanics, chemistry, electronics of all human intellectual constructs?

Present run through is a traditional 'shootist' and have adopted the one save slot (don't look back) policy. Hardly the template for serious study.

Can see how NPC's are JINXED, Will equip Ian with Power Fist and a LOT of batteries ..... NPC's lose a lot of ammo with JINX evoked.


4too-2