What does Luck do really?

V

VirtualAlex

Still Mildly Glowing
I know about the obvious critical chance. And a little about random encounters. But if I make a character with 1 luck. What will happen? Critical chance doesn't go negative. But will I do alot more fumbles when attacking? Will my friends shoot me more often? I can they program luck into this game and what does it effect?
 
From Per's Guide(http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout2.html)

Luck: As the effects of Luck are not so obvious, it's easy to perceive it as the trash stat of the system (much like Charisma usually is everywhere else). It does have an impact on your rate of critical hits, especially with the Sniper perk in place, but early in the game you won't suffer much from a low Luck score. It can be improved by 3 points during the game (perk +1, either a weird brain alignment +2 or another weird brain alignment +1).
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Some Scripts may check it and it will affect your quests, and probably used to see some mines, but thats it as far as I know
 
I am pretty sure that it affects random encounters too. It was a fucking long time ago and I was playing the original game but I remember that it affected random encounters. I think there was extra-malicious encounters for unlucky dudes. You know, quite the opposite of those sweet random encounters where you visit cool places. I played with a luck of 1.
 
Hmm interesting. I plan on making a character who has 1 luck, and is jinxed. I feel like that will be fun. Just wondering how it will effect me really.
 
Well, it would be cool if Ian's gun would get jammed and blow up in his face, but that would mean you have good luck...
 
Twelve Motion said:
Hmm interesting. I plan on making a character who has 1 luck, and is jinxed. I feel like that will be fun. Just wondering how it will effect me really.
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Heh. I´m pretty sure you´ll encounter loads of radioactive goo.
 
Bring the goo on.

About that guide, I checked it out, and it's hardly the most thoghrough of guides. It says nothing about perception effecting sequence, or agility affecting armor. Who knows what was left out of luck.
 
That's because it is considered to be a supplemental guide to Fallout, not a re-hash of the manual. It tells you things that are not in the manual.

This isn't a GameFAQ's "Guide", you know.
 
I assume you are talking about Fallout 2.

The relationship between Agility and AC is obvious. Sequence is also pretty useless in my opinion, so there would be little point addressing that.

Who knows what was left out of luck.
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Please read it properly before slandering it. Per is the greatest authority on the games that I know of. On that note, this is not the right forum for this type of discussion anyway.

For a 'Jinxed', LK 1 character, you would probably get the toxic goo, pariah dog and exploding brahmin encounters. It seems that most of the Luck tests reward high Luck characters rather than punish those with low Luck, but I've never played with LK 1 as I like Sniper Perk too much. Combat would be a nightmare because of Jinxed.

I am lucky to have a hardcopy of the Fallout PnP 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. Sequence is 2xPE in the book. If you are Jinxed, any failure has a 50% chance of being upgraded to a critical failure. I'll test that tomorrow. That might be the same as the original CRPG, as battles seem to take ten times as long, with many explosions etcetera.
 
quietfanatic said:
ISequence is also pretty useless in my opinion, so there would be little point addressing that.
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Yeah, it's just great when everybody has three turns before you get your turn again...
 
Well yeha as someone said, Luck might be something that many put low to get extra skill points to put on something else..

But I think it effects the games more than u think in many many ways.. hehe my character got 8 Luck.
 
Before you go take a bullet for Per. Please tone yourself down. I am hardly "slandering" it. The guide is very well written, however, in STR he talkes about how it adds damage AND carry wieght. Endurance adds HP and damage resistence. But he says nothing of the "obvious" relation fo AC and AG and PRC and sequence. So yeah I say, maybe he left something out of luck as well.

Also sequence is not pointless, and it has more to do than just the first turn. Thats why sometimes (with high sequence) you get two turns in a row. This is most obvious in fallout1 and 2 1v1 melee fights with Garl, or the boxing ring.

Sorry about the wrong forum also.
 
Twelve Motion said:
Endurance adds HP and damage resistence.
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It does what? Damage resistance?

Twelve Motion said:
But he says nothing of the "obvious" relation fo AC and AG and PRC and sequence. So yeah I say, maybe he left something out of luck as well.
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Quietfanatic was right when he said the guide isn't meant to reiterate info from the manual (that's why, for instance, there's no list of special HtH attacks, but there is a radiation table). The stat list mentions the stuff it does primarily because those are the reasons you'd usually want to raise the stat. If I were to put point in EN, for instance (not that I actually would), it would be to get more HP, not to get poison resistance. Same thing with PE, I raise it for quest options and sniping, but not specifically for Sequence considerations. I'm assuming the reader is already familiar with the basics of the game. You'll notice I also don't spell out what each trait does, and so on.

Twelve Motion said:
Also sequence is not pointless, and it has more to do than just the first turn. Thats why sometimes (with high sequence) you get two turns in a row. This is most obvious in fallout1 and 2 1v1 melee fights with Garl, or the boxing ring.
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I've heard this claim before, but I'm personally convinced it's not true. Never happened to me. In the case of Garl, if anything like that seems to happen I would sooner chalk it down to combat AI.
 
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 must be some sort of special table, as implied by the manual, but that seems like too much trouble just for one trait.

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. Afterwards the critical failures had a very high frequency. This could imply that either I am incredibly lucky or my unpatched game has a glitch. It could also have something to do with a possible critical table. Another explanation is that there is some sort of special script that makes you immune to the negative effects of the trait before you get the jump suit. It is hard enough already with such low skills. If it isn't just me, this would have been noticed before I would guess. I have no scripting knowledge so I couldn't check it that way.
 
Per, even though those things are obvious, I had no reason to believe that is why they were left out. Like I said, you DO mention the (yes poison sorry) resistence, and the Carry wieght, but neglect seguence and armor class. I didn't know what to think, a simple lapse of memory or laziness maybe? I don't mean to insult you, I happen to love your guides and I hope you will help me in the production of my Fallout Comic (I just made a post in General fallout discussion.)

As far as the Jinxed character goes, I actually made him gifted and jinxed so his luck is 2, and i am playing Fallout 1 on hard. I fought some rats and a group of 4. In the battle I dropped my knife 3 times, critically missed and "hit randomly" 2 times, Critically lost my next turn 3 times, and "Oops hit rat instead of rat" a ton of times also. The rats critically missed and did damage to themselves and crippled thier own limbs 4 times however. It was a long and interesting combat. I can't wait till Ian starts critically missing and shooting at me while I am standing behind him.
 
quietfanatic said:
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.
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Critical hits and failures are disallowed by the engine for the first 24 hours or so. This will be mentioned in the next guide version if it isn't in already.
 
That is interesting. Luckily the other critters do suffer from critical failures, otherwise my 1, 1, 1 etc. character would not have survived combat with the ants.
 
The very low stats were needed to ensure that I missed a lot. It was just for the purpose of testing the trait, not actually play the game, although that just might be an interesting challenge. But it wasn't 111111, that requires a save game editor.
 
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