[Runequest] Runequest Digest, Vol 30, Issue 15 High level Combat

[Andrew]

>
 Bruce:
>> It was about a year after I started running
>> RQ3 that I banned strengthening and armoring enchantments and adopted
>> hero points instead. I felt much happier with that.
>
> Hm, I'm not sure I like Hero Points. It opens the question, "How did
> you pull that off?", to which the in-character answer is either, "er,
> lucky I guess", or "er, a God did it". I'd rather characters could
> take the credit for their achievements, rather than having to be
> helped out by a deus-ex-machina. If you want to play a game where the
> characters are heroes overcoming outrageous odds, then in my opinion,
> magic is the way to go, not fudge. And if the player doesn't like
> fiddling around with spell durations and magic points, then getting
> some static or simple-to-use enchantments is ideal.
>
> Phil.
> -- 
> Don't you just hate self-referential sigs?
>
I agree with you on this one.

However, in my gaming group we do allow players to sacrifice 1pt of 
Permanent POW for what we call a Luck Point. A character can only have one 
(unless exceptional circumstances exist) and usually must have performed a 
worthy deed (too variable to pin down to a hard and fast rule).

This luck point allows the player to force a single re-roll of any one dice 
(their own or the GM). This wouldwould seem to be a 'get out of critical hit 
for free' however, interestingly enough most players have taken their 
chances on the critical and used it on a hit location roll instead. More 
than one character has been killed, called the re-roll and been killed 
anyway in this manner.

What it has done in game terms however is somewhat remove the critical hit 
self fumble element (which always irked me as a player as a pointless, 
Darwin award way to die in game).

Andrew