Luck Stat: Difference between revisions

Named after the ever-so-vague Luck Stat that appears in video games and gets paired with the aforementioned ever-so-vague description. Of course, this also applies to other kinds of stats.

* Luck is one of the many attributes in the ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' game series. Much like the ''[[Elder Scrolls]]'' example, luck affects everything you do, but doesn't do anything ''directly''. Luck may be instrumental in calculating damage from one of your attacks, whether or not that hit you just took is enough to pierce through your armor, and whether your bare minimum level of skill in throwing is enough to let you peg that moving target. It's never necessary, but since it goes up just fine all on its own without any input from you, it's perfectly fine to ignore it completely and just let it do its thing.

* For the ''[[Guardian Heroes]]'' games, LUK is the 6th stat (after Strength, Stamina, Intelligence, Mentality, and Agility) and is used in lieu of Defense. While you could raise characters' HP with higher stamina, they would receive the same amount of damage. Higher luck reduces that damage and also affects one of the characters' randomized (luck-based) spells.

* ''[[Adventure Quest]]'' has the Luck stat, which controls critical hits, the chance to attack first in a battle, and adds to stat rolls.

* In ''[[Gaia Online|zOMG!]]'', Luck is useful since it controls item drop rates, which includes new rings and the Charge Orbs necessary to level them up. Luck also seems to be the only stat that isn't listed under your character's info tab. However, the game does mention ways to boost Luck: equip the Angel ring set, equip a Fitness ring, or learn Luck-boosting Ghi abilities and keep your Ghi meter filled. As of recent updates, you can also gain temporary Luck boosts by using Divinity or Coyote Spirit on yourself at higher Rage Ranks.

* In every ''[[Castlevania]]'' with [[RPG Elements]], Luck determines how often items Randomly Drop.

** In ''[[Symphony of the Night]]'' it also determined the damage done on a critical hit, but not the rate in which they occurred. Interestingly enough, the game has 2 damage formulas for critical hits depending on whether your attack or luck is higher when you trigger one. It also determines the chance of the Talisman accessory blocking damage by having an faint silhouette of Alucard fly off him instead of him actually being damaged, with ridiculously high normally unattainable Luck values making him more or less completely invincible.

* In ''[[Nethack]]'' luck affects a number of things, but the oddest is that it determines your deity's reaction when you pray. One would think that your deity's attitude towards you wouldn't be influenced so much by random chance...

** Nethack's "luck" statistic is perhaps inaccurately named; the term that best describes it is perhaps "divine favor". The most common factors for increasing one's luck stat are sacrifices to your god, and offerings of gems to co-aligned unicorns.

* ''Ancient Domains of Mystery'' has a hidden luck stat. There are also intrinsics that affect that luck stat. Doomed status, for example, lowers luck but also has several other nasty side effects.

* Appears in the ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' series. In ''[[Dragon Quest IV]]'' it seems to affect little more than the odds of dealing high-end damage with spells (which dealt fixed amounts of damage rather than damage based on intellect), as well as of receiving low-end damage when hit by them.

* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]]'': "Luck has an effect on everything you do, but governs no skills." In this game, the luck stat artificially raises all of your skills by 40% of each luck point you have above 50. For example: when you have 60 luck your skills will improve by 4 points, because you have 10 points above 50 and 40% of that is 4. The downside of this stat, is that its tedious to raise it naturally.(i.e. without spells or potions)

* Although completely unlisted, luck seems to exist in ''[[Advance Wars]]'', or as Nell puts it: "Luck is a skill!" Generally, luck in ''[[Advance Wars]]'' determines whether damage can round up or round down, as all units have 10 HP but damage is calculated as a percentage.<ref>Units actually seem to have two HP values, one "true" HP which is an integer from 0 to 10, and an invisible one which is calculated and stored to at least one decimal point. With each attack, the invisible one is decremented by the damage, then if the "true" one is greater than the invisible one, it is set equal to the invisible one then rounded randomly, where (for example) if the CO has neutral luck, then 4.2 has a 20% chance of being rounded to 5 and a 80% chance of being rounded to 4. If the "true" HP ever hits 0, the unit is destroyed even if the invisible HP is still, say, 0.9.</ref> Playing as Nell will randomly do extra damage up to about 10% (and that's 10% ''of the enemy unit's max HP'', not a 1.1x multiplier), and may also improve your chances of damage being rounded up. Meanwhile, playing as Sonja (who is stated to have bad luck) seems to have the opposite effect; your units do up to 10% less damage than normal. Nell's CO powers further increases the luck of her units, to the point where they can do massive damage to units they [[Beyond the Impossible|otherwise should not be able to damage]].

** ''Advance Wars: Dual Strike'' added equippable skills, one of which is "Luck". It allows any character to have Nell's luck (except CO powers don't boost it further). If equipped on Nell, it seems to additively stack with her regular luck, which essentially doubles the effect of her luck.

* In ''[[Diablo|Diablo 2]]'', items can give the player an increased chance to find magic items and/or a boost to the amount of gold dropped.

* In addition to the usual Luck stat, later ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' games also include a Style/Charm stat, which covers how nice your character looks. You can get bonuses to it by properly coordinating your equipment. While mostly used for optional matters like ''[[Dragon Quest VII|VII]]'''s [[Dragon Quest VII|Style contests]], ''[[Dragon Quest IX]]'' lets monsters react to incredibly stylish adventurers with shock and confusion.

* In ''[[Advance Wars]]'', Flak and Jugger increase the dispersion of their units weapons (which is separate from luck); it basically means their units may do less damage than normal or more damage than normal. Their CO powers can increase this level of dispersion. However, it isn't as much of a [[Game Breaker]] as Nell's high luck, which is kind of like dispersion except that it never does less than normal damage.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' has a very odd example in Morale/Will. While it on the surface merely seemed to restrict when you can do certain attacks and needed to be high enough to activate certain abilities, it in reality it affected pretty much everything. It started at 100 and almost never went down except for spells used by players or story events - 50 is the general minimum with 150 as the max - except for games with a skill that lets you take it to 170. The reason for this was that Morale was a percent in reality - 150 meant a 50% bonus to all attack damage and soon, making Break Morale Limit a very good damage boosting still.

*** Why stop at playing with power when playing with ''[[GaoGaiGar|ZA POWAA]]'' can crank it to 300?

** A much straighter example would be the Skill/Handling stat, which determines things such as critical rates, triggering of Blocking skills ([[Implausible Fencing Powers|Sword Cut]], [[Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me|Shield Block]], [[Shoot the Bullet|Shoot Down]]) and use of special techs such as Mercy or Attack Again.

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