Johny Spot, Luck bunny in need of help Options

[Androcomputus]

Awhile back I was thinking about playing a extraordinarily luck (edge (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) human, so I went to the forums and was suggested to put a rank in EVERYTHING so I could roll on it, use a point of edge and with my average stats... get a DP of 12 for anything.

This got me thinking about what happens the ninth time I need to do something... my DP for EVERYTHING goes from 12 to 4 (maybe six)....

This got me thinking... What if I played someone who was specialized at something and had an edge of 8... I know 8 edge sucks up a lot of points (105 I think) because you have to pick up extraordinary attribute.

Any suggestions on what to have a luck bunny specialize in?

[Aerospider]

Although taking specialisations for this character is more than just useful, it's going against the prescribed archetype of jack-of-all-trades to the extent that you'd need to specify a bit more about him. What I'm saying is that there's no reason why someone who mostly relies on luck would have chosen to train further in one field than in another without more background on him.

It might help to think of it in these terms: in which areas would this character's luck run out less quickly? Again, it's up to what kind of luck-bunny you're after.

[Tsuul]

The big problem I had with a luck based character was combat. It's possible that by the end of the first turn, you've used it all (even using it only for defense).

[Karoline]

The big problem I had with a luck based character was combat. It's possible that by the end of the first turn, you've used it all (even using it only for defense).

And thus putting some BP towards actually stats and skills in combat related areas can be a huge boost. I don't normally look at the luck builds very much, because while they seem handy (Yeah, I have a DP of 12+ in everything I do) they are basically 8 shot disposable items. Once they've done their 8 things mediocrely well (12 DP isn't that impressive) they're basically useless. Now, in a large group where all fields are already covered, this can be handy because he is there to replace anyone that goes down, but in a small group, you need a team of specialists, not two specialists and someone who gets lucky sometimes.

That said, I think you need to look at the character as an X who happens to be very lucky and dabbles in alot of things. Grab up a 6 in your weapon of choice, and throw in restricted gear with muscle toner. Toss on a smartgun and you have 15DP for shooting stuff without even needing to burn edge. You've suddenly become useful even when your edge has dried up. Could do the same thing for infiltration or hacking or whatever other area you want to be a specialist in. This increases the viability of the concept vastly, as instead of someone who can do a cool trick 8 times and then needs to be put down to not get in the way, you instead are a competent X, and happen to be able to do a cool trick 8 times as well.

It's like the difference between being some guy with eight sticks of gum, and some guy with a gun and eight sticks of gum. You'll keep the guy with just the gum around so you can get the gum, but after that he's useless. The guy with the gun still has the gun when his gum runs out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Androcomputus]

So what Arch-type benefits from an extra 8 dice but with ~105 less to start with... (400 BP of course)

[Cain]

All but magic and otaku. They need all the points they can get. 6 Magic/Resonance plus 6 Edge is usually sufficient for them.

My search-fu must be weak, because I cannot find the Mr. Lucky archetype I posted quite a while back. Human street sam with Edge 8; he was run in a number of Missions and home games, and always rocked. I do recall that he had 18 dice in Pistols and once took out a Force-15 spirit in one [lucky] shot. 26 exploding dice can be very impressive, even with pistol damage. I've heard about the skillmonkey variant, and that seems to work as well for a generalist type. However, I don't like generalists, so I'll leave that as a YMMV thing.

[Glyph]

So what Arch-type benefits from an extra 8 dice but with ~105 less to start with... (400 BP of course)

95 points less to start with, you mean - and keep in mind that most characters will have some points put into Edge, and simply have different positive qualities rather than less of them, so Mr. Lucky won't be the full 95 points behind everyone else.

An Edge of 8 is useful, but you don't want to be someone with crappy stats and skills, who needs an Edge of 8 simply to function. You still want to be good in your main skill, and functional in a few other basic areas. The Edge of 8 is for when you want to be overwhelming in your specialty, or when you need a good roll for something you are only functional in.

Here is a build from me. Less well-rounded than Cain's version, this one is more purely combat-oriented. But good enough to illustrate that an Edge of 8 does not have to mean useless outside of that one stat.

[ Spoiler ]

Mr. Lucky variant

BREAKDOWN (400 Points)
Core Attributes: 190
Special Attributes: 75
Race: 0 (Human)
Active Skills: 100
Qualities: -5
Contacts: 5
Resources: 35

=Attributes=
Body: 5
Agility: 5(9)
Reaction: 5(9)
Strength: 2
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 3
Logic: 2
Willpower: 3
Edge: 8

Essence: 0.70
Initiative: 12
Initiative Passes: 3
Physical Damage Track: 11
Stun Track: 10

Current Karma: 0
Total Karma: 0
Street Cred: 0
Noteriety: 0
Public Awareness: 0

=Qualities=
Allergy: Seawater, Mild
Ambidexterity
Lucky
Records on File
Restricted Gear (x 1)
Scorched
Sensitive Neural Structure
Weak Immune System

=Active Skills=
Dodge/Ranged: 2/+2
Infiltration/Urban: 2/+2
Influence Skill Group: 1
Intimidation: 1
Monofilament Whip: 4(5)
Perception: 3
Pilot Ground Vehicle/Wheeled: 1/+2
Pistols/Semi-Automatic: 6(7)/+2

=Knowledge Skills=
Languages>
English: N
Japanese: 4

Other>
Corporate Politics: 1
Gang Identification: 3
Safe Houses: 2
Security Systems: 3
Underworld Politics: 2

=Cyberware=
Attention Coprocessor: 3
Cybereyes III with:
>Flare Compensation
>Low-Light Vision
>Smartlink
>Vision Enhancement: 3
>Vision Magnification
Fingertip Compartment
>with Monofilament Whip
Radar Sensor: 4
Reaction Enhancers: 2
Wired Reflexes: 2

=Bioware=
Muscle Toner: 4
Reflex Recorders:
>Monofilament Whip
>Pistols

=Contacts=
Fixer (Connection: 3/Loyalty: 2)

=Lifestyle=
Low (1 Month prepaid)
Starting Money: 3d6 x 50 Nuyen

=Equipment=
ID/Credsticks:
Fake ID (Rating: 4), Fake Cyberware (3) and Bioware (1) Permits (Rating: 4 each), Fake Gun Registration (Rating: 4), Fake Concealed Carry Permit (Rating: 4), 4 Certified Credsticks.

DocWagon Contract:
Basic (1 Year).

Weapons:
>Ares Predator IV with skinlink modification, concealable holster, silencer, 150 EX explosive and 150 Gel rounds of ammo, 5 spare clips.

Armor/Clothing:
Armor Jacket with Fire Resistance: 6 and Nonconductivity: 6; FFBA Half Suit, PPP Forearm and Shin Guards (discrete protection version), Chameleon suit with Thermal Dampening: 6; 1,250 Nuyen worth of assorted clothing.

Commlink/Software/Simsense:
Novatech Airware Commlink with ISIS Orb OS, skinlink, sim module, trodes, and subvocal mic; 5 - Rating: 3 Programs (Analyze, Browse, Command, Edit, and Encrypt), Virtual Surround Music.

Other:
Sports bag (100 Nuyen cost), Survival Kit, Medkit (Rating: 6) with 3 refills, Operations Cleanup Toolkit.

[Karoline]

Is it just me, or do people overvalue exploding dice? You need a 6 to explode, and then you still need a hit for it to mean anything special. 1/6 chance of a 6 followed by a 1/3 chance of getting a hit means that on average 'exploding dice' give you an extra hit for every 18 dice rolled. Now, 26 dice is nice, no doubt, but the exploding fact only means an extra hit and a half on average.
(Yes, I know I'm not factoring in for rerolling a 6 that you get a second time, but only on 1 in 36 dice on average will that come up, and only on 1 in 108 dice will that actually generate an extra hit)

*shrug* Maybe its just me, but edge has never seemed exceedingly important to me, and the explosion ability of edge even less so.

[Draco18s]

Is it just me, or do people overvalue exploding dice? You need a 6 to explode, and then you still need a hit for it to mean anything special. 1/6 chance of a 6 followed by a 1/3 chance of getting a hit means that on average 'exploding dice' give you an extra hit for every 18 dice rolled.

Of course, just last night I crit-glitched a 4 die swimming roll, spent a point of edge to "roll edge dice" (getting me 4 dice) because the exploding 6s were a slightly better option than rerolling failures.

Got 3 hits (needed 1).

1, 3, 6, 6
1, 6
5

I spent 2 more Edge that session too, which was well worth it (spend edge and get everyone signed in as security guards and get that anti-boat turret to stop tracking us...or...have the anti-boat turret open fire?)
I should point out that it was an opposed maglock passkey type test. My 11 dice versus the rating 5 lock. One edge was spent when it got 3 hits to my 2, and the other when I landed no hits (1% odds). I'm not great at anything, but I have every possible knowledge skill I could get to know how security worked (which were free, due to high logic). So despite having skills of 1 and 2 I'm frequently applying them with an Agility of 6 or Logic of 5 and a few DP mods. My Edge really is to be able to answer "Screw the Pooch? [Y/n]" with a heart felt "No!"

[Karoline]

I'm not saying it isn't handy to have at least a few points for that exact reason, I'm just saying it seems like people over-estimate what exploding sixes does. You got quite lucky getting all those extra hits, and on average I think you expect to get .2 extra hits on 4 dice for exploding vs not exploding.

Edit: The value of a high edge is much more in the fact that you can get eight extra dice (2.7 hits) than exploding dice (1 hit per 18 dice). I totally agree that high edge can be handy, I just think I value it less than others.

[Draco18s]

You got quite lucky getting all those extra hits, and on average I think you expect to get .2 extra hits on 4 dice for exploding vs not exploding.

Quite. I know that I end up with some of the most amazing Edge rolls (previous game I rolled a damage resistance test on an explosion, threw Edge to--essentially--not die instantly*, and ended up with enough Exploding 6s to take no damage).

I am not this lucky in d20 (I have yet to roll a crit-threat against a creature who a) wouldn't have died instantly from the attack anyway or b) wasn't immune. This is not to be taken lightly, I played--a single character--through the World's Largest Dungeon that took us 26 real world months, approximately 520 hours of session time, and only got a crit against a mook with 4 hit points near the end of the campaign).

There is a damn good reason why I don't get "keen" or "on crit...." enchantments.

*Without Edge, average hits would have left me unconscious. With edge average hits I would have had something like 5 boxes of damage.

[Aerospider]

Is it just me, or do people overvalue exploding dice? You need a 6 to explode, and then you still need a hit for it to mean anything special. 1/6 chance of a 6 followed by a 1/3 chance of getting a hit means that on average 'exploding dice' give you an extra hit for every 18 dice rolled. Now, 26 dice is nice, no doubt, but the exploding fact only means an extra hit and a half on average.
(Yes, I know I'm not factoring in for rerolling a 6 that you get a second time, but only on 1 in 36 dice on average will that come up, and only on 1 in 108 dice will that actually generate an extra hit)

*shrug* Maybe its just me, but edge has never seemed exceedingly important to me, and the explosion ability of edge even less so.

For those interested, the formula for how many hits an exploding die will generate is:

Σ (no. of hits = h) x ((rolling h-1 sixes then a five) + (rolling h sixes then a non-hit)), summing from h=1 to h=infinity

= Σ h x [(1/6^h) + ((1/6^h) x 2/3)]
= Σ h x [(1/6^h) x 5/3]
= Σ h x [10/6^(h-1)]
= Some slightly tricky mathematics
= 2/5
as opposed to the usual 2/6

So on average you get an extra hit for every 15 dice in the DP. Might still not seem like much, but that's a 20% increase on the five-hit average you get without the exploding sixes. And, since people tend to save Edge for when it's really needed, every drop of bonus probability is more than welcome.

[Glyph]

Usually, for a decent-sized dice pool, you are better off waiting, and spending a point of Edge to re-roll your failures, if you need to. I agree that the main benefit of an Edge of 8 is the 8 extra dice themselves, more than the exploding 6's. They're fun, though.

The key to a good Mr. Lucky build is that he should be able to function without it most of the time - he should be good at his specialty, and good enough to get by at common tasks in other areas. But when he absolutely needs to kill someone with that one shot, or when the face is busy and he needs to get past the bouncer at the door, or when he needs to lose those two gangers on bikes chasing him - then it's time to use that Edge.

[pbangarth]

I have always imagined that a "luck bunny" would be good at Dodge.

***

For those looking to maximize the use of Edge, a thread a couple of years ago determined that there is a break point in the ratio between Edge and regular dice pool of 2.5 that determines whether it is better to spend Edge ahead of time for exploding 6s or spend it after for rerolls. So, with an Edge of 4, a dice pool of 10 or more is better off (statistically speaking) saving the Edge for rerolls. Three proofs were provided, two algebraically and one with calculus. See, kids, math is useful and fun!

This rule-of-thumb does not take into account either the fact that lucky exploding 6s could theoretically give you an infinite number of successes, or the fact that a lucky roll may obviate the necessity for using Edge.

EDIT: Well, actually it does take these into account, but balances them with the opposites. What it doesn't do is handle someone who can make the dice do what he wants.

[Draco18s]

What it doesn't do is handle someone who can make the dice do what he wants.

If you can do that, you don't need any Edge at all--unless you're making rolls where the threshold of success is greater than your die pool.

At which point "how much edge" is merely an indicator of how often those kinds of rolls are expected per Edge refresh interval (because 1 Edge die always rolling a 6 is sufficient).

[Axl]

I have an Edge 6 character for Missions. My GM says that it's too powerful with so many uses of extra dice available for any test. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)

[Axl]

"spending a point of Edge to re-roll your failures, if you need to." - Glyph

There is some debate about the interpretation of that rule. From SR4A, p. 74: "You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score a hit."

Does this mean that the whole test didn't score a hit? Therefore the rule can only be applied to tests that scored zero hits. If the intention of the rule was to allow re-rolls on tests that scored one or more hits, perhaps the rule should state: "You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score hits."?

Using my alternative interpretation, there is the paradoxical situation where it may be better to have critical glitch rather than a test with a single success, because the critical glitch can be re-rolled with this rule.

[Critias]

I think the generally agreed on reading of it is "you may reroll all dice that did not score hits on a single test." Could be wrong, though.

[Draco18s]

I think the generally agreed on reading of it is "you may reroll all dice that did not score hits on a single test." Could be wrong, though.

That's how most groups play it, I believe. My group sure does.

[Blog]

"spending a point of Edge to re-roll your failures, if you need to." - Glyph

There is some debate about the interpretation of that rule. From SR4A, p. 74: "You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score a hit."

Spend the point of edge, and grab all the dice from the test that were not hits and re-roll them. That is how i have always clarified it to people.