Follow TV Tropes

Following

Luck Stat

Go To

A statistic in a game that represents how lucky or fortunate the player is, and has a passive effect on in-game events.

The Luck Stat is typically given a rather mystical or vague description from almost all sources, even official ones — possibly because describing precisely what it does would spoil the game's inner workings. Players seeking to master the game will scrutinize the stat to understand exactly what it does, and how to maximize it.

Common interpretations of the Luck stat include:

In other words, it's the stat that typically influences Gameplay Randomization. In many games, it can be interpreted as "divine favor", especially if the good guys have lots of it. The fact that this is probably the hardest stat in the game to raise permanently and temporarily doesn't help to dispel the mysticism. Expect a guide to arise explaining what the stat actually does (if the guide itself isn't vague about it either).

Contrast Luck Manipulation Mechanic, which is a game element that allows a player to actively re-attempt chance-based events, as opposed to the more passive bonuses commonly provided by a Luck Stat.


    open/close all folders 

Examples of the Luck Stat

    General Examples 
  • One of the ten stats of The Descended is the Luck Stat.
  • The old series of Fighting Fantasy books have a luck stat that is called just that. Your character starts with a specific luck number, and every time they rely on luck to do something, they both lose a point of luck and have to make a dice roll to see if they are lucky. The dice roll has to be below the luck stat number. So relying on luck a lot would eventually make your luck run out, literally. Although occasionally they'd provide bonuses if you failed your luck roll. This was particularly silly in "Black Vein Prophecy", in which passing the first luck roll would deny you a useful magical power.
    This use of luck directly carries over to the Advanced Fighting Fantasy tabletop RPG, which is of course pretty straightforwardly based on the books. One possible downside of this is that since tabletop game scenarios tend to be rather less strictly pre-plotted than gamebooks it's potentially easy for a game master to inadvertently run players out of luck without even meaning to, simply by asking for a few luck checks too many...
  • The interactive webcomic Fortuna assigns a Luck Stat to each player of which the value depends, among other things, on the selected species. The Geckrechauns, for example, are Born Lucky thanks to being the only species who can max their Luck above 10 points.
  • Gaia Online has a Luck Stat that affects item dropping.
  • 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.
  • In KanColle, along with the normal stats that represent the ships' construction, ships have a Luck rating to represent their historical counterparts' careers; ships like Mutsu (keeping her under the Washington Naval treaty required Japan to let the US and Britain keep two other battleships each, and she saw little action before blowing up in harbor when a turret exploded) or Taiho (sunk by a single torpedo hit- something she was specifically designed to survive as an armored carrier- and poor decisions by her crew) have luck stats in the single digits, while ships like Jervis (never lost a sailor in combat, leading to her being nicknamed 'lucky Jervis') and Massachusetts (survived to the present day as a museum ship) can crack triple-digits when fully upgraded. The current highest luck stat belongs to Souya, as the only IJN ship to remain afloat to the present day- though since she's an icebreaker instead of an actual combat vessel, her other stats are hilariously low.
  • In Lost Souls (MUD), Luck used to be an attribute (stat) but now it has become a character trait (either bad or good luck) with muddier effects.
  • There's a Luck stat in The Overseer Project, but only Light-oriented players get a Luck Manipulation Mechanic. Equipment Upgrade raises Coastal Ships' Luck points and causes the submarine Maruyu to increase the Luck of other ships.
  • It's denoted in Monster Strike as a cloverleaf sign and influences your likelihood of getting extra goodies after each level. To raise it, you need to fuse either duplicates of the same monster or earlier/later evolutions of it. Once you have Luck at 99 points unlocks the Max Luck monsters who gain 6 stars (which equals 200 Luck points) and guarantee additional prizes at the end of the level. Having multiple Max Luck monsters also unlocks Max Luck Bonuses which improve the probability of getting rare monsters, Strike Shots at the start of the stage, a free continue if you lose, a refill of stamina after clearing a quest, and an increase in HP between battles. Additionally, the gathering of at least five Max Luck monsters grants access to the Bakuzetsu levels (more difficult than the Chouzetsu, aka impossible, stages).
  • The Luck perf of Nation Red causes the zombies to drop more power-ups.
  • RPG Maker VX Ace has luck modify the chance of inflicting status ailments and debuffs by a small amount: one-tenth of a percentage point per point of luck the inflicter has minus one-tenth of a percentage point per percentage point of the target's luck. As a result, the effects of this stat require high base chances of inflicting a negative effect or high disparities in luck to actually notice. The effects of the stat can be modified by scripting, thankfully.
  • In Starve.io, wearing a Crown of Luck increases your chances of finding good stuff inside treasure chests.
  • RPG Shooter: Starwish is a rare, precious case where the game tells you exactly what the Luck stat does — it increases how often you inflict Critical Hits by a percentage depending on the weapon (Crit% stat), how often enemies drop power-ups (Exp, Moola, Overdrive, and Shield) (Item% stat), how often you get mods, the rate at which you gain cash, and makes qualifying to talk to characters easier.
  • In Sid Meier's SimGolf, the Luck stat affects the chances of the ball making a lucky bounce.
  • Experience points in Shira Oka: Second Chances are spent on raising stats and quirks. One of the quirks is Luck, which helps you get through a Luck-Based Mission and the random events to upgrade some of the school subjects.
  • The gameplay of Stardew Valley randomly generates Luck at the beginning of each day, which is viewable from the fortune-telling channel. It affects certain aspects of the game, like the drop rate of mine ladders, and can be temporarily modified by certain items like cooked meals or a certain charm. Curiously enough, said charm is obtained by exchanging a rabbit's foot which is not lucky by itself.
  • The Metroidvania Valdis Story: Abyssal City has a Luck stat of the "slightly increasing the other stats" flavor. There's also a Luck-based Finisher and the rare Ancient Coins only drop from enemies when the player has a minimum of 5 Luck points.

    Action-Adventure 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: The Luck stat is for what type of items are dropped when enemies are defeated, or whether they have anything at all. Increasing the stat further on the Skill Tree will have enemies drop more valuable items for usage in healing or crafting.

    Adventure Games 
  • In Neopets: The Darkest Faerie, it appears as a vertical bar filled with clovers. The fuller the bar, the greater the loot you get from treasure, breakables, and enemies. It's increased by collecting 4 or 12 leaf clovers.
  • Luck is one of the many attributes in the Quest for Glory game series, and 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.
  • Montage from Way Walkers University is essentially this trope combined with Luck Manipulation Mechanic. If your Montage score is decent, it can potentially compensate for some of your weaker stats.

    MMORPGs 
  • AdventureQuest has the Luck stat, which controls critical hits, the chance to attack first in a battle, and adds to stat rolls.
  • In 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. After rings received secondary effects, you can also induce temporary Luck boosts by using Divinity or Coyote Spirit at higher Rage Ranks.
  • Phantasy Star Online has a Luck stat (abbreviated LCK) that simply raises your chance to have critical hits with physical attacks.
  • Ragnarok Online has a luck stat that varied in usefulness throughout the game's life. On its most basic level, Luck would increase a player's chance to land a critical hit 1% every 3 points, and increase the player's "Perfect Dodge" rate by 1% every 10 points. Luck was popular early in the game with katar Assassins and 2-handed sword knights, as criticals punch straight through defense and are not based on basic accuracy. Perfect Dodge was a stat that allowed players to completely null attacks if their flee stat would ever fail. However, Critical-based builds fell out of favor in later patches, as the Luck stat of whatever player or monster one would fight can now damper the already meager critical rates most players had. Perfect Dodge-based tanking has still maintained a bit of popularity though.
  • Guild Wars 2 has a stat internally called "Luck"—though the player base, and the game's interface, call it "Magic Find". It increases the chances of finding rarer loot, though notably, it does not increase the chances of getting loot in the first place. It used to be a stat bound to a particular character and available on gear, but that meant a nasty tradeoff of taking loot-boosting gear, or gear that actually made you more effective. A Net finally relented and made it an account-wide stat that is raised by consuming "Essence of Luck". It's easy to raise at first but becomes drastically harder the more you have.
  • La Tale lets you know what the Luck stat does (higher chances of critical hits and ely gain), but not how much nor whether there is a cap to it.
  • Mabinogi Has a luck stat which increases the likelihood of gold drop multipliers applying, anywhere from 2x to 200x. Players who build this stat sometimes report gold drops of 50,000g or more, although this is exceedingly rare.
    • It also increases your Critical Hit chance by a fixed 1% for every 5 points, as opposed to Will's 10. To compensate, however, it's by hard the hardest stat in the game to raise. Though Will may also count, due to the fact that it increases your chances of surviving with 0 HP and is associated with skills that increase your critical damage.
  • Thieves from MapleStory have LUK as their defining stat. It reduces the amount of experience the player loses after dying and increases accuracy, avoidability, and the very unclear "hands" stat.
  • Wakfu has the Chance stats, which you get a point for every 3 levels. They are mostly concerned with probabilities and battle-shifting outcomes. You can increase your chance of getting a Critical Hit by 2%, increase your Critical Damage by 4%, increase your chance to negate 30% of damage by 1%, reduce your chance of having a Critical Failure, etc. Before the combat update, it increased your Water resistance.

    Platformers 
  • In every Castlevania with RPG Elements, Luck determines how often items Randomly Drop.
    • In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night it also determined the damage done on a critical hit, but not the rate at 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 a 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 Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, one of the New Game Plus options was to start a new character who received massive luck bonuses and penalties to everything else. It was the last one of four or so you unlocked, and for good reason; 9999 LCK basically gave you enough random drops of every sort to kill anything and never die.
    • In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, luck is very important as it helps determine a higher chance of getting souls from enemies. It doesn't help that in Aria of Sorrow, you need to get souls from Flame Demon, Giant Bat, and Succubus before the boss fight with Graham in order to get the final dungeon, which requires grinding out those enemies for their souls.
  • Similarly is Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, where Luck is the single most important stat in the game since it determines how often you'll get lucky attacks, grab enemy shards, and get rare drops. In the early game, you should focus entirely on making equipment and food that boosts luck as it will more than makeup for the stats you're neglecting.
  • The instruction booklet's description of the Lck (Luck) stat in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is the critical hit one, plus increasing the chance of beginning combat with an ambush. (Basically, every character in your current party gets to use a normal attack against a random enemy once without being attacked themselves.)

    Roguelikes 
  • Ancient Domains of Mystery has a hidden luck stat. There are also intrinsic mechanics that affect that luck stat. Doomed status, for example, lowers luck but also has several other nasty side effects.
  • Backpack Hero: Your Luck stat determines the rarity of loot drops after combat. To increase it, you can carry Lucky Rings or use consumables (luck potions, a lucky fish, lucky shuriken) that increase your luck for a single battle.
  • The Luck stat in The Binding of Isaac affects many things, including how often a drop (including a chest drop) occurs once you clear a room, how often slot machines, beggars, and shell games pay out, and how often item and tear effects go off. You primarily raise the stat by grabbing luck items and consuming Luck Up pills.
  • Enter the Gungeon has two hidden stats that stand roughly in for luck, "Coolness" and "Curse" (basically, good and bad luck, respectively). Coolness increases your chance of finding chests, reduces the cooldown of items, and turns the odds of other certain chance-dependent events in your favor. Meanwhile, curse not only has the opposite effect, but also increases the chance of chests being mimics, and having any of it at all can make any enemy become Jammed (the chance increases with every point of Curse, and after several points, even bosses might turn out Jammed). And Kaliber helps you if you max out since you'll then face The Lord of the Jammed. Oddly, Curse is not entirely negative: your curse stat also makes enemies drop more money, and ammo appears more often.
  • Incursion puts some player-visible oomph behind its Luck stat. While it has the standard "determine items and affect random events" effects, there are also a few abilities based on it, most noticeably the protection offered by the spell Mage Armor, the saving throw bonus from one of the halfling's abilities, and how many times you can use a Place of Sanctuary. It is also damnably hard to train; you have to wander around on dungeon floors deeper than your character level.
  • Gloom: In the game's own words, it "affects enemy drops and other random events". You also begin with it set at 0, even while all the other stats are at 5.
  • In NetHack luck affects a number of things, but the oddest is that it determines your deity's reaction when you pray. That response, combined with the most common factors for increasing one's luck stat being sacrifices to your god and offerings of gems to co-aligned unicorns, imply that the "luck" statistic is probably better described as "divine favor". "Divine favor" should not be confused with prayer timeout, because the gods will smite you if you ask for help too often.
  • Luck in One Step From Eden increases the odds of finding higher rarity spells and artifacts, but it also increases the odds of finding tougher enemies and bigger packs as well. Also, Common tier items become rarer the more Luck you have, and at very high levels they are found less frequently than the rarity three tiers above it.
  • In most Roguelike games with a Luck Stat, the primary effect it's determining the quality of items created when a level is first generated. Ragnarok Valhalla goes a step further, as well: a wand of wishing can be used to create a stack of items up to the character's luck in number.
  • Tales of Maj'Eyal has a Luck stat that does a little bit of everything: each point slightly increases accuracy, defense, critical chance, and chance to save against status effects. It is impossible to raise with stat points, only being found on items (and an innate bonus for Halflings).
  • Tower of Guns has a Luck stat that can be permanently boosted or hindered by the badge Luck++.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • When a Spellcaster from Knights of the Chalice Prays, their allies get the Lucky condition. The game also assigns Luck values to friends and foes alike.
  • If you spend points in the Luck stat of Nethergate, the chances of your character surviving an otherwise lethal blow (taking damage while at 0 HP) will be higher. This is lampshaded by the log "Bob lucks out!" that appears immediately after.
  • Luck in Meteo Chronicles determines the usefulness of states, hit rate, evasion, and critical rate.
  • Last Scenario is a Type 6 case. Luck helps raise a little the other stats every now and then.
  • It has very muddy mechanics in Legionwood, where it vaguely affects your Critical Hit and Evade rates.
  • Both monsters and players have a Luck stat in the third installment of Siralim. The former's determines the frequency and power of critical hits or glancing blows. The latter's determines power balance which, among other things, influences how much loot you obtain.
  • Star Ocean: The Second Story presents a case where the Luck stat is part of a Gameplay and Story Integration. One of the characters, Ashton, describes himself as incredibly unlucky. In-story, he suffers from terrible luck, and in-game, he has an abysmal Luck stat. Moreover, one of his hobbies is to collect good-luck charms which, in the gameplay, work as his best weapons. The reason for that is simple — the charms boost his Luck to a great extent, so he can potentially be the character with the highest Luck.
  • Agarest Senki has the LUK stat, which can raise the chance for hits, avoids, drops, and particularly, a successful steal. In most cases, the stat won't change much, especially in later parts of the game, it's a pretty useless thing, but the successful Steal part of the stat is rather attractive to Winfield, whose first Limit Break has a chance of stealing from the enemy.
  • Demon's Souls has a Luck stat, which increases item drops and resistance to Plague. The Blueblood Sword is the only weapon in the game that scales with Luck, meaning being lucky actually makes you hit harder. After being absent from the first two Dark Souls games, it returns in Dark Souls III where it again increases random drops, boosts curse resistance, and makes it easier to inflict poison and bleed. Anri's Straight Sword is the only weapon that naturally scales with Luck, but any weapon with the Hollow infusion will as well. The Man-Grub Staff will also scale Sorcery damage off Luck instead of Intelligence.
  • 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.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Daggerfall has it as an attribute, and it can reach near-Game-Breaker levels. A Luck score in the mid-'90s can, for instance, allow the player to find a Daedric Daikatana in a cupboard. Or on slain bandits. Or bears. There are other effects, but none so powerful.
    • Morrowind:
      • Luck influences the failure rate of performing actions in the game's "dice roll" system when, for example, picking locks, brewing potions, casting spells, etc. It also increases your odds of finding better loot in containers that are pulled from "leveled lists".
      • Luck is very difficult to raise, having no associated skillsnote  and gets ignored by many players. In the Tribunal expansion, Bethesda pointedly includes an annoying NPC with his Luck cranked up to stupidly high levels. The end result is nigh invulnerability; if you somehow manage to land a hit onto him, he'll most likely reflect all the damage back at you.
    • 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 it's tedious to raise it naturally (i.e. without spells or potions).
      • An interesting use here is that it's been found that having a high luck stat also increases your chances of winning when you bet on a duel at the Imperial City Arena. Naturally, people have found ways to exploit this by artificially raising their luck with potions and/or magic spells.
  • Some Final Fantasy games have a luck stat. It is invariably responsible for critical hits but may influence steal rates or certain Limit Breaks, depending on the game.
    • In Final Fantasy X, luck is basically the most powerful stat, as it increases your chance to hit, your chance to land critical hits, and your chance to dodge attacks all at once. It's also the most difficult stat to gain any points in.
    • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers has artifacts (ring, earring, and "accessory" items) that affect all of your skills, including Luck. Luck is mainly used for what items drop when defeating enemies, or whether they drop anything at all.
    • Theatrhythm Final Fantasy has it all over the place, with a special mention to Princess Sarah who has low stats in everything but Luck.
  • Golden Sun has a luck stat that basically determines how likely you are to avoid getting hit by a status effect or being instantly felled. Considering which classes have which luck stat multipliers, "Divine Favor" wouldn't be a bad way of looking at it; i.e. obviously good guy classes like the Angel and Pure Mage have very high luck multipliers, while particularly shady classes like the Ninja and Chaos Lord have very low luck multipliers.
  • In Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded the Luck Stat improves the base drop rate, as well as Critical Hit chance
  • Legend of Mana has an example of THE Luck stat, which governs what items enemies will drop... officially. Players have attributed dozens of other things, ranging from how quickly new stats are earned to sync range. For similar stats everything related to the crafting system.
  • Most of the Shin Megami Tensei games have a Luck stat, which affects critical hits (if they exist in that particular game) and item drops. Luck Incenses tend to be the rarest.
    • It's even a plot point in King Abaddon, with the Luck Locusts having the ability to completely eat a person's luck, ensuring their death. Gameplay-wise, "Bad" Luck increases the chance of running into Fiends, but also increases the chance of being able to fuse a Fiend on a New Moon.
    • In Persona1, the skills Slumpa and Hula of Misfortune severely decrease a character's Luck, while in Persona2, Trish's ice cream gives a temporary Luck boost. These and the above mentioned Luck Locusts are the only ways in the franchise to modify Luck apart from rare Luck Incenses.
    • In Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Dx2, Luck is one of the basic five stats. It's actually one of the more powerful stat, as it not only governs both accuracy and evasion along with Agility, but it also affects landing or receiving critical hits, as well as inflicting or being inflicted with status ailments. A demon with low Luck is basically a magnet for critical hits and will be rendered ineffective by ailments a lot.
  • The relatively obscure Magi-Nation played this one very uniquely: Luck would never increase with levels and would have to be modified with things like equipment. This was because luck was not necessarily beneficial; it would increase the disparity between your attacks' damage. In other words, having high luck could make your attacks do more or less damage than they would otherwise, while lower luck would cause damage to gather around the average. The game explains that luck represents both good and bad luck, and as such isn't necessarily beneficial.
  • The Might and Magic games have this. Luck is tied directly to your magic resistance. It's been said that it also helps with getting higher numbers on your damage range, taking damage from traps, and so on. Some unofficial manuals state that it has a wide variety of effects throughout the game.
  • Planescape: Torment has a hidden Luck stat, that gives a small bonus to just about everything (and your enemies small penalties to the same).
  • While unnamed, a similar stat exists in Pokémon as well, which governs critical hits (which are particularly valuable if a Mezzer has been altering stats—criticals ignore reductions in Attack and buffs in Defense, but include increases in Attack and reductions in Defense). All moves have a base chance to critical, and this can be improved by the use of items (though some are only usable against the computer, like Dire Hit), abilities, or side abilities to the moves themselves.
    • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the probability of a Critical Hit was oddly based on a Pokémon's base Speed (which does not vary from individual to individual or with level, only with species).
  • Even among veterans, the luck stat in Trials of Mana is not fully understood. It has a noticeable effect on opening booby-trapped chests, but beyond that its vague effects may or may not include getting rarer items, avoiding enemy counterattacks, or increasing accuracy.
  • Almost all RPGs by Spiderweb Software (makers of the Avernum and Geneforge series) have a luck stat. It claims to have a variety of effects, but the most visible one in the Avernum games is to randomly leave a character at zero hit points but alive when an attack would kill them—even if they were already there, at times. In Avernum games it is the only skill to require no gold to train in (as the trainer presumably doesn't do anything) but is quite costly in skill points, but in Geneforge it is among the cheapest skills.
    • The wonderfully confusing Luck stat in Geneforge. The only known thing it does is increase the chance of body parts getting dropped by creations in Geneforge 3.
    • It does sometimes indicate itself when examining certain objects, as the text "you have a stroke of good fortune" appears, followed by your noticing some hidden panel containing an item.
  • All the Suikoden games have a Luck Stat. Nobody seems to know exactly what it does.
    • In addition to the usual effects (higher chance of hitting/dodging enemies, getting critical hits), it interestingly seems to have an effect out of battle too; bringing a team of characters with high Luck to play gambling mini-games seems to increase your odds of winning.
  • The Tales Series has a luck stat that requires luck to have at a high level, since it randomizes every time you stay at an inn.
    • In Tales of Symphonia maxing the luck stat at the expense of physical attack power is a potential route to awesome power; it seems to affect not only critical chances but the amount of damage critical hits do. Getting a critical hit on every single attack for greater multipliers can make up for lower stats in other areas.
      • Zelos's luck stat in Tales of Symphonia also seems to increase your chances of getting a better item when talking to women with Zelos as your avatar. Equipping Zelos with two Rabbit's Foot items is one of the best ways to raise Gald and gain great items in the game.
      • Also in Tales of Symphonia, Sheena's luck stat influences her Personal EX skill. Every time you encounter an enemy with it active, there's a chance the enemy won't engage, allowing you to avoid a battle. A high luck stat can make enemies bouncing off of you four or five times in a row a common occurrence.
    • In Tales of the Abyss, the stat determines whether or not Anise can perform her second Mystic Arte, Fever Time. (AND YA DON'T STOP!)
  • The earlier Wild ARMs games had a luck stat, although rather than being a number it was just a 5 point scale from Worst to Best, and changing randomly every so often. Incidentally, having bad luck made it more likely for your luck to get even worse, and vice-versa because the luck stat was used in determining what your new luck stat would be... along with everything else (damage range, crits, dodges, everything). Fortunately, there is also an item that boosts luck in those games.
  • Fallout:
    • Luck is the last stat in Fallout's SPECIAL system, and vital if you want to get a lot of critical hits or beneficial random encounters. A character with maximum Luck and the Sniper perk will have a 100% Critical Hit chance with ranged weapons. A character with low luck gets to experience a variety of harmful random encounters in the world map such as Pariah dogs, toxic waste dumps, and general nastiness. Nothing game-breakingly horrible, but generally unpleasant. Luck also has other miscellaneous effects, such as allowing you to randomly guess a password, making a band of raiders think you're a ghost or determining the amount of loot you get from a crashed truck.
    • Luck is less prominent in Fallout 3, but each point of Luck is worth an extra multiplier chance of critical hits and provides bonuses to all starting skill levels. You also need about an average Luck score to get the perks that increase the caps and ammo you'll find lying around.
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, Luck also greatly improves the player's odds when gambling, to a point that the easiest way to make money is to rob the casinos blind at blackjack until they ban you from their tables. The game describes "Luck" as "the ability to calculate probabilities". Truth in Television since the majority of a professional poker player's work is calculating probabilities and crunching numbers. As such, the one NPC with a maxed luck stat is resident chessmaster Robert House. In one memorable example, a player character with very high Luck, but insufficient skill at Medicine to notice someone playing possum, will be able to successfully perform brain surgery.
      Vulpes: That was... incredible. How did you do that?
      The Courier: I have no idea whatsoever.
    • Luck returns in Fallout 4, where it again governs Critical Hits (namely how fast the meter to use them in VATS charges). Perks unlocked by Luck are usually based on giving bonuses at random, such as extra caps and ammo, fully recovering AP or crit gauge, a man in a trenchcoat occasionally showing up to blast your enemies with a Hand Cannon and disappear, and tripling your experience gain.
  • Beyond the Beyond has a luck stat, but it seems to have a negligible effect on the game.
  • Luck in Ginormo Sword affects how often armor/weapon-enchanting jewels and stat-boosting fruits drop from monsters. It also increases the possibility of higher-ranked mobs spawning, which is essential if you want to complete the Monster Compendium—although you'll most likely wait until you can actually beat these tougher monsters before you begin really concentrating on upping your Luck levels.
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura has a similar concept in the form of "Fate points", which you can consume for a variety of benefits - usually forcing the best outcome on some kind of random roll (automatic success on skill checks, automatic critical hit on attacks, etc.). They aren't so much a stat as a currency - you are awarded fate points for completing significant tasks in the game and they are in very limited supply, so much so that they veer into Too Awesome to Use territory. They can allow for some otherwise impossible feats, such as cracking a lock on a door that you otherwise have a 0% success chance to open.
  • There are the Lucky and Unlucky traits in Project Zomboid, which influence your loot and weapon repair rolls.
  • In Postknight, AGI impacts the chance of landing Critical Hits or randomly dodging enemy attacks. Outside of special skills or perks, these are the only game mechanics which occur at random.
  • The Faery Tale Adventure: Each time a playable character dies, they are brought Back from the Dead but their Luck is decreased by one point. If it runs out, it's either the next brother's turn or Game Over.
  • In Summon Night, the Luck stat determines the "Chance on Use" rate of the Mana Shield waiting stance as well as some other, vague functions. It cannot be increased via level-up.
  • Yaga has, for starters, a Born Unlucky protagonist — his lack of luck physically manifests as a witch that randomly steals his items. It gets worse when you tempt fate by making choices that conflict either with his role as a hero (i.e. plain evil or selfish) and/or contradict with his primary character trait. And that's not counting the bosses and encounters that lower his luck by their mere existence.
  • What the Luck stat does in EarthBound (1994) is still not fully understood but it's generally accepted that it influences the character's accuracy as well as the chances of landing hits and dodging attacks.
  • Luck in the Shadow Hearts games is an all purpose stat that affects critical hits, evasion, accuracy and chances of acquiring items after battle.

    Strategy Games 
  • Although luck is unlisted, it exists in every Advance Wars game, or as Nell puts it: "Luck is a skill!" How it works is, every attack has a "good luck" roll that adds damage and a "bad luck" rolls that subtracts it. Both values are independent of each other and the base attack specific to the unit combination, which can lead to some strange upsets (e.g. Infantry damaging heavily-armored tanks), though losing health reduces all three by the same percentage. Most of the time, good luck is 0%-9% and bad luck is 0%, but five CO's abilities can affect either when they're attacking.List  Dual Strike also introduced the "Luck" equippable skill that adds +10% to that CO's existing luck range.
  • The meaning of Luck has varied throughout the Fire Emblem series, but in most entries since the Game Boy Advance titles, it reduces a character's chance of getting struck by a Critical Hit. It also improves their evasion (though to a lesser extent than Speed does) and their hit rate (though to a much lesser extent than Skill does). In games where the characters can get randomly-activated Skills, many of them are Luck-dependant which renders said stat quite valuable. It gets to the point of allowing access to some reputed Game-Breaker strategies, effectively turning the units into an One-Man Army. Examples of these Luck-activated Skills are Armsthrift (it causes the Breakable Weapons to not lose durability points) and Miracle (it gives a Last Chance Hit Point to a character that would otherwise have died).
    • The Early-Installment Weirdness of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light comes to show in the Luck stat of characters recruited from the enemy (Minerva, Matthis, Astram, and Wendell) — their Luck is randomized.
    • In older games where the Devil Axe was available, Luck reduced the chance of it damaging the user. But even with Luck at the cap, it's impossible to render the Devil Axe entirely safe.
    • In Micro Emblem, the Luck stat increases the unit's accuracy, critical hit, and evasion rates, as well as reduces the enemy unit's chances at landing a critical hit.
    • Fire Emblem Warriors throws the probability of item dropping after killing enemies into the mix. Specific examples of the above-mentioned increase of Skill effectiveness and triggering frequency are Luna (it ignores a given percentage of the enemy's Defense/Resistance accordingly to the Luck points) and the Damage Reduction from certain weapons (swords, lances, and axes for Pavise; magic, bows, and dragonstones for Aegis).
    • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones integrates L'Arachel and Joshua's in-game Luck stats into their support conversations. In particular, whenever they gamble it's shown that L'Arachel was born so lucky, she wins the bets even when Joshua is cheating. Joshua's unluckiness can't begin to compare to that of Knoll (whose Luck value is zero). When you recruit him after conquering the castle he was imprisoned in, his first thought is that they moved his execution date up a few days after you let him out of his cell.
  • Luck is a buyable ability of the second installment of Galactic Civilizations, It increases the probability of getting a helpful random event as well as the minimum damage done in a ship fight.
  • Hard West has its Luck stat as consumable ability. You spend Luck points by dodging bullets and regain them with each received shot. In the same vein, the poker cards bestow special abilities of which the use reduces the player's Luck. The success rate of certain actions on the world map is calculated from the Luck points.
  • The Heroes of Might and Magic games have a Luck stat that's very clear in its purpose—luck will occasionally cause units to do double damage (or half, if it's bad luck). Heroes can learn a skill or find artifacts that increase luck, and there are various ways to get a temporary boost.
  • Knights from Lords Of The Realm 3 who fail in battle are not always killed outright but are held for either ransom or execution. The more powerful knights typically have a bonus to luck, which increases their odds to survive said scenarios.
  • Ogre Battle 64: In general, Luck impacts the probability of dodging upcoming attacks and delivering critical hits. Additionally, female playable characters might get increased their chance of becoming an Angel Knight instead of a zombie upon death. Emphasis in might.

    Tabletop Games 
  • According to at least some contemporaries, in the original Dungeons & Dragons, the saving throws were intended as this. They still have some of that status—roll to see if your character can avoid or at least reduce the impact of something unpleasant—but the original emphasis was more on avoiding danger by clever play in the first place, with saving throws as something you rolled as a last-ditch desperate measure to literally "save" you after you'd already screwed up.
  • Call of Cthulhu has a stat called luck. It's rolled when nothing else makes sense to check for an outcome. Alternatively, it's rolled to see who gets unlucky in the party, such as when the horrible monster with too many tentacles attacks and the GM needs to decide who it targets.
  • The Table Top RPG Shadowrun has the Edge stat, which is essentially luck. It can be spent and slowly regenerated to help a character's chance at a particular task, and 'burnt' (that is, permanently lower the stat) to ensure a critical success or avoid certain death.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in 1st and 2nd edition has the similar Fate stat (and came out four years earlier), as have the derived Warhammer 40,000 RPGs.
  • Eon has a stat simply titled Luck. It is most commonly used by the DM to determine whether something nasty will happen to a player or not.

    Visual Novels 
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Servants have a luck stat, which seems to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Luck also seems include one's ability to Screw Destiny, as the one time it becomes relevant in the story is when Lancer tries to kill Saber with Gae Bolg, a weapon which has the pre-defined result of striking the target's heart and manipulates causality to make it happen. Saber is only able to survive because her Luck is high enough to avoid a fatal hit.
    • This is particularly relevant throughout the series, as the average Lancer-class Servant without a Heroic Spirit has a Luck stat of E (the lowest rank possible); being that this is a Holy Grail War, every Servant is a Heroic Spirit, so the stats will vary greatly...but the average Luck stat of any given Lancer tends to be E or D, rarely over C. Born Unlucky indeed.
  • Lucky Dog 1 has luck as the protagonist Gian's main weapon and several choices can cause it to increase or decrease; in general, clearly immoral or stupid actions will ding his luck percentage. If it dips too low, he's highly likely to get a Bad End.

    Wide-Open Sandbox 
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a hidden Luck stat, which is increased by finding horseshoes. It improves your chance of winning at gambling and lowers the odds of you being hit by random plane crashes.
  • The Luck Stat of Vangers influences what secret places you are able to open as well as the amount of free stuff lying around. Whether it affects the safety of your abandoned items and mechos, it's unknown, though.

Examples of Similar Stats

    General Examples 
  • Amber Diceless Roleplaying has the attribute Stuff —- that is, you have Good Stuff, Bad Stuff, or occasionally, Zero Stuff. Good Stuff improves peoples' first reaction to your characters, allows you to pick up the occasional useful detail, and allows you to take risks with confidence. Bad Stuff tends to leave you distrusted, distrustful, and unlucky but gives you points that you can spend on other stats and powers. Zero Stuff leads to a lot of neutral reactions, or to each good reaction being balanced by a bad one.
  • In Homestuck the Light Aspect represents the "essence of luck". Heroes of Light can understand the underlying probability mechanics of the game, reveal them to others, steal luck, and do other as-yet-unrevealed things.
  • The Fear level in No Delivery renders it more likely for negative events to happen. For instance, gift boxes will produce Mimics instead of items.
  • The Power stat in Paranoia can be treated as a luck stat (only to a limited degree, though—really lucky people don't live in Alpha Complex). Now report for termination, citizen—that information was outside your security clearance. (Also note that players don't know what their Power stat is, leading to much hilarity.)
  • In RPG Maker VX, the "Odds" stat is hidden. The purpose of the stat is to determine which party member the monsters will randomly pick to attack, using the simple formula of Odds divided by Party Odds (Your characters have 3/4/4/5 as their stats in a 4 party member group so your first character has 3 out of 3+4+4+5 (16) chances of getting picked to get smashed in the face). Ironically, your position in the party (Front, Back, Middle) modifies your Odds stat, which is why it remains hidden most probably. You'll want your front characters to have a high Odds stat and your mages to be on the lower end. An Odds stat of 0 will effectively crash the game or render the target untargettable.
  • Threadbare, a LitRPG book, includes Luck as a stat. A lower Luck stat means bad random things can happen to you, such as a monster just happening to fail to pull out of their dive and crash through the window, random architecture collapses, etc. This becomes plot-relevant in part because Greater Golems like Threadbare start with an extremely low Luck stat. In-world, a luck-based card game called Grindluck is taught to children to allow them to survive to adulthood by raising their Luck stat at every opportunity.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • In Diablo II, items can give the player an increased chance to find magic items and/or a boost to the amount of gold dropped.
  • In a similar manner to the above in Torchlight II, the Lucky Die unique socketable increases the chance of finding magic items.
  • 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 for it by properly coordinating your equipment. While mostly used for optional matters like VII's Style contests, Dragon Quest IX lets monsters react to incredibly stylish adventurers with shock and confusion.
  • EarthBound (1994) has a Guts stat that determines the chance of a SMAAAAASH!!! attack as well as the chance of surviving (with 1 HP) what would otherwise be a fatal blow.
    • It also has a regular Luck stat, determining—among other things, the chances of an attack missing (different from evasion, some attacks can miss but can't be evaded)
  • Ill Will presents us Cunning whose value impacts the player's chance to either resist or inflict ailments. While every character has a designated Cunning level, only Will can gain Cunning points.
  • Final Fantasy IX's Spirit stat. Affects random damage, critical hits, how quickly the trance bar fills up, and just about anything else the programmers would normally just have a constant in the equations for.
  • Final Fantasy XI's Charisma stat has been proven to affect Bard songs, Dancer dances, and Beastmaster charms, and a few other things... and also rumored to affect almost anything else at one point, and still does.
  • Cunning in Dragon Age II is used to determine critical hit chance, and Dexterity determines how much extra damage the critical hit does. With high ranks in both and various Rogue passive skills, it is possible to run a character who is getting critical hits for 250% damage on around 70% of his attacks.
  • Mario & Luigi has the "Stache" stat, which gives you discounts at shops and increases critical hit chances.
    • Oddly, in the second game, the baby version of the brothers ask use Stache points. Babies don't have mustaches.
    • In Bowser's Inside Story, Bowser's version of this stat was called "Horn" instead. As Bowser gets more powerful and more charismatic, he gets hornier (or conversely, the hornier he gets, the more charismatic and powerful he gets.) That explains a lot...
  • Visions & Voices' Logic stat increased the rate of both magical and physical critical hits, increased your overall damage, and increased the rate at which the ATB bar filled. While other stats also determined crits/damage/speed, Logic was the universal "Assassin" stat.
  • The World Ends with You's Sync Ratio, sort of. The game does tell you what it does (determine how long the light puck stays around), but it's not in the manual or help menu, only mentioned in one area you're unlikely to see before you beat the game.
  • In The Last Remnant, every character has a unique stat, a personality trait specific to that character. "Bravery", "audacity" and "independence" are some examples, but there are over 100. These stats affect the commands the leader can use in battle, as well as how individual units interpret those commands, but it is still not known exactly how this works.
  • One Final Scream has the ever-elusive critical hit chance stat that works as clearly as your everyday Luck stat. Id est, in very mysterious ways.

    Strategy Games 
  • In Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, there is a factor called Follow-Up Critical Coefficient (or FUCC) which multiplies the critical rate during a follow-up attack (if the unit is fast enough to attack again). In the first attack, the critical rate is capped by 25, but their follow-up will multiply depending on the character. Some, like Fergus and Mareeta, are as high as 5 (meaning that they'll critical if they have a killer weapon and since they are naturally fast, they'll always be able to reliably exploit Follow-Up), while some, like Lifis and Sara, have 0 so they'll never critical when using Follow-Up, even when they are fast. How do you know? You don't.
  • The "skill" value for pilot stats throughout Super Robot Wars not only determines a pilot's chance at scoring Critical Hits, but also the chance of triggering certain pilot skills that rely on the skill stat, such as "Counter", "Attack Again", "Sword Cut" and "Shield Block".


Top