As most of us know, the Lucky feat is usually seen as one of the strongest feats in the game. Some DMs outright ban it at their tables. The feat reads as follows:
You have inexplicable luck that seems to kick in at just the right moment.
You have 3 luck points. Whenever you make an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can spend one luck point to roll an additional d20. You can choose to spend one of your luck points after you roll the die, but before the outcome is determined. You choose which of the d20s is used for the attack roll, ability check, or saving throw.
You can also spend one luck point when an attack roll is made against you. Roll a d20, and then choose whether the attack uses the attacker's roll or yours. If more than one creature spends a luck point to influence the outcome of a roll, the points cancel each other out; no additional dice are rolled.
You regain your expended luck points when you finish a long rest.
I thought about how this could be balanced, and I came up with the following:
Your inexplicable luck undermines the Gods of fate, who in turn seek to balance the scales.
After using a luck point, your next roll of the same type is made at disadvantage.
If you use a luck point to cause an attack to miss you, the next attack made against you has advantage.
Feel free to use and/or modify this at your own tables, and any constructive criticism is welcome. I feel like this balances the feat fairly well, but there are probably problems with this homebrew that I haven't considered.
The Lucky feat's fine. The only part that needed fixing is the fact that you can deliberately give yourself disadvantage to roll 3 dice and pick the highest, and that's something your homebrew doesn't address.
I feel like this too much seems to simply punish a player for having the Luck feat rather than rebalance it. Honestly, just giving the player 2 rerolls instead of 3 would probably be a simpler balance... maybe make using the players Luck cost their Reaction for that round.
What if the Lucky feat just let to modify an existing die roll by 3? Upwards or downwards. Not as big a boost as having advantage, but still useful in many clutch situations.
It’s not intended to punish anyone for taking the feat, but I understand where you’re coming from. The initial idea was to modify the feat so that it was more of a risk vs reward option that can be used if a DM decides to ban the RAW feat
GURPS has an advantage with a similar effect, and a list of (possible) limitations players can use to make an otherwise very expensive ability less so. You could perhaps steal from that list, potentially even creating a number of different variations of Lucky for players to choose from. Namely:
-Premeditated: The player must choose whether they're using a Luck point before seeing their roll, not afterwards. No more "saving" a bad roll with Luck; instead, it's generally used to try and hedge an extremely important roll, regardless of advantage or disadvantage.
-Defensive: The character's Luck only works on enemy attack rolls (or their own saving throws); they can't use it on their own attacks or their ability checks at all. Their Luck acts purely to protect them, not to make them better at doing stuff. Conversely:
-Lucky (Skill/Tool/Stat): The player's Luck can only be used when making rolls with the given skill or tool proficiency, or the given stat. The player's supernatural Luck is limited to a specific task or grouping of tasks they're good at (or bad at, depending on) and cannot be used for other rolls. Whether this allows only ability checks or all rolls made with a given stat (including attacks and saves) is up to the DM; Lucky (Dex) is vastly more powerful than Lucky (Perception), but by the same token something as limited as Lucky (Perception) might be too nerfed to appeal to players.
Personally, I like either Defense or Lucky (Stat); both feel like solid feat picks in a game where normal, vanilla Lucky is either banned or held to otherwise be too powerful, while Premeditated is prone to frustration when you 'waste' a point on a good natural roll or can't catch a bad one and Lucky (Skill/Tool) feels too limited to be worth picking up.
The only unbalanced thing about the lucky feat (other than intentional disadvantage) is that it is good for everyone. Much like CON, every character benefits from it so it will always rank high on potential choices.
"Intentional disadvantage" giving a best-of-three roll sounds like bad DMing to me. A player who does that at my table would roll the original disadvantage'd roll, then the Lucky dice separately, and have to choose between their Lucky roll or the lower of their normal rolls. You don't get to turn Lucky into automatic Elven Accuracy on everything.
As a player I love the lucky feat as it is, as a DM it annoys me. :-) Now I used to ban it altogether at my table, as my experience grew I let players run it but only give themselves advantage and not invoke disadvantage on the DM's rolls. Finally I just allowed it as is and it hasn't really caused any problems but I understand this will very group to group as you may have a player that will find ways to abuse it or be a less experienced DM. Of all the suggestions offered above I most liked the suggestion by this one below.
But what I can't fathom is how went from having to be concerned with 3 uses to now in the 2024 PHB the feat is available to everyone at first level as an origin feat and the uses are equal to your Proficiency bonus. That means they'll have 3 uses by level 5 and 4 uses by 9th level. Most campaigns I run last until somewhere in the mid teens so they are going to 5 uses out of a level 1 feat by 13th level... That has my head spinning.
I feel like this too much seems to simply punish a player for having the Luck feat rather than rebalance it. Honestly, just giving the player 2 rerolls instead of 3 would probably be a simpler balance... maybe make using the players Luck cost their Reaction for that round.
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With 2024 PHB, players get it more often, but the way it is written now, they have to decide BEFORE the roll, not after they've seen the first. It gives them advantage or disadvantage to their opponent. That balances out the power of luck quite a bit. It's still very useful for those really important rolls, especially at the beginning of an encounter when the bad guys are pulling out their biggest and best attacks or when you really need to get a hit in. Honestly, the idea that you could simply decide whether you needed luck after your action always seemed a little OP as well as counter to the idea of luck to me in the first place. This makes a lot more sense.
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As most of us know, the Lucky feat is usually seen as one of the strongest feats in the game. Some DMs outright ban it at their tables. The feat reads as follows:
You have inexplicable luck that seems to kick in at just the right moment.
I thought about how this could be balanced, and I came up with the following:
Your inexplicable luck undermines the Gods of fate, who in turn seek to balance the scales.
Feel free to use and/or modify this at your own tables, and any constructive criticism is welcome. I feel like this balances the feat fairly well, but there are probably problems with this homebrew that I haven't considered.
The Lucky feat's fine. The only part that needed fixing is the fact that you can deliberately give yourself disadvantage to roll 3 dice and pick the highest, and that's something your homebrew doesn't address.
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I feel like this too much seems to simply punish a player for having the Luck feat rather than rebalance it. Honestly, just giving the player 2 rerolls instead of 3 would probably be a simpler balance... maybe make using the players Luck cost their Reaction for that round.
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What if the Lucky feat just let to modify an existing die roll by 3? Upwards or downwards. Not as big a boost as having advantage, but still useful in many clutch situations.
It’s not intended to punish anyone for taking the feat, but I understand where you’re coming from. The initial idea was to modify the feat so that it was more of a risk vs reward option that can be used if a DM decides to ban the RAW feat
GURPS has an advantage with a similar effect, and a list of (possible) limitations players can use to make an otherwise very expensive ability less so. You could perhaps steal from that list, potentially even creating a number of different variations of Lucky for players to choose from. Namely:
-Premeditated: The player must choose whether they're using a Luck point before seeing their roll, not afterwards. No more "saving" a bad roll with Luck; instead, it's generally used to try and hedge an extremely important roll, regardless of advantage or disadvantage.
-Defensive: The character's Luck only works on enemy attack rolls (or their own saving throws); they can't use it on their own attacks or their ability checks at all. Their Luck acts purely to protect them, not to make them better at doing stuff. Conversely:
-Lucky (Skill/Tool/Stat): The player's Luck can only be used when making rolls with the given skill or tool proficiency, or the given stat. The player's supernatural Luck is limited to a specific task or grouping of tasks they're good at (or bad at, depending on) and cannot be used for other rolls. Whether this allows only ability checks or all rolls made with a given stat (including attacks and saves) is up to the DM; Lucky (Dex) is vastly more powerful than Lucky (Perception), but by the same token something as limited as Lucky (Perception) might be too nerfed to appeal to players.
Personally, I like either Defense or Lucky (Stat); both feel like solid feat picks in a game where normal, vanilla Lucky is either banned or held to otherwise be too powerful, while Premeditated is prone to frustration when you 'waste' a point on a good natural roll or can't catch a bad one and Lucky (Skill/Tool) feels too limited to be worth picking up.
Anyways. Hope that helps.
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The only unbalanced thing about the lucky feat (other than intentional disadvantage) is that it is good for everyone. Much like CON, every character benefits from it so it will always rank high on potential choices.
"Intentional disadvantage" giving a best-of-three roll sounds like bad DMing to me. A player who does that at my table would roll the original disadvantage'd roll, then the Lucky dice separately, and have to choose between their Lucky roll or the lower of their normal rolls. You don't get to turn Lucky into automatic Elven Accuracy on everything.
Please do not contact or message me.
As a player I love the lucky feat as it is, as a DM it annoys me. :-) Now I used to ban it altogether at my table, as my experience grew I let players run it but only give themselves advantage and not invoke disadvantage on the DM's rolls. Finally I just allowed it as is and it hasn't really caused any problems but I understand this will very group to group as you may have a player that will find ways to abuse it or be a less experienced DM. Of all the suggestions offered above I most liked the suggestion by this one below.
But what I can't fathom is how went from having to be concerned with 3 uses to now in the 2024 PHB the feat is available to everyone at first level as an origin feat and the uses are equal to your Proficiency bonus. That means they'll have 3 uses by level 5 and 4 uses by 9th level. Most campaigns I run last until somewhere in the mid teens so they are going to 5 uses out of a level 1 feat by 13th level... That has my head spinning.
Everyone believes in something...I believe I'll have another ale.
With 2024 PHB, players get it more often, but the way it is written now, they have to decide BEFORE the roll, not after they've seen the first. It gives them advantage or disadvantage to their opponent. That balances out the power of luck quite a bit. It's still very useful for those really important rolls, especially at the beginning of an encounter when the bad guys are pulling out their biggest and best attacks or when you really need to get a hit in. Honestly, the idea that you could simply decide whether you needed luck after your action always seemed a little OP as well as counter to the idea of luck to me in the first place. This makes a lot more sense.