A lot of popular LitRPGs rely heavily on MC luck. In rare classes, perfect timing, impossible survivals.
Which series do you think would fail without absurd MC luck?
And does that actually matter in LitRPG, or is luck just part of the genre’s DNA?
A lot of popular LitRPGs rely heavily on MC luck. In rare classes, perfect timing, impossible survivals.
Which series do you think would fail without absurd MC luck?
And does that actually matter in LitRPG, or is luck just part of the genre’s DNA?
A pretty large number of stories involve some crazy luck just to separate the protagonist from the common people. I think it is pretty well baked into not only litRPG, but fantasy and fiction as a whole. Plot armor is as common as it is for a reason.
One of the sentences that has stuck with me for over a decade and changed how I read stories is "the hero doesnt survive because they are the hero, the hero is the hero because they survive"
Which allows for far more leeway in stories and I would argue a far clearer line in when it snaps from lucky to plot armor.
Eg a system apocalypse where buildings collapse and the mc are one of the few survivors to start off the story makes sense because he is the mc due to surviving, however if that keepa happening again and again it veers into plot armor.
Frankly it's one of the reasons why I skip 95% of fight scenes because litrpg authors are incredibly bad at setting stakes that they can reasonably deliver, eg when the stake is "death of the mc" then it's never going to happen which is why I found DOTF such a drag cause they tried to rely too hard on it.
As opposed to something like early HWFWM where the stake is trying to buy time for others to escape from a monster rather than fights to the death. (Though don't get me wrong that series has a laundry list of what I consider writing faux pas)
It does make it easier to suspend disbelief when you think of it like that. The reader is just following the one in a billion most interesting storyline.
Or in other words, if everyone on Earth was to roll 7 d20 dice in a row, around 5 people would have rolled all 20s. The story follows those individuals.
Yeah, you follow the lucky ones. A big writing issue I have is when all 5 of those people happen to meet lol.
very much this.
most ttrpgs have a crit mechanic and the inverse of that includes the "natural 1" or whatever that might be on the dice being rolled. So 5% chance of messing it up.
What's the error rate for humans in our reality ? 4% for data entry maybe 0.001% for repetative actions.
to keep going into high risk situations and coming out alive has always implied an element of luck to me.
I want to read about the guy who gets lucky (or unlucky) in an interesting way, not the one who lives a life as boring as me.
Yes!!! This right here. I want the stories of the incredible and the wondrous, I’m not in it to read about Joe farmer with average cultivation who grows to the end of first stage then farms for life. Books are supposed to be about the one in a million persons perspective
Yeah, luck doesn't typically bother me too much, although it can if it gets a bit too deus ex machina, I don't know if I could describe when it hits that line. My big annoyance--like in real life--is when the characters don't acknowledge or even notice the luck, and instead feel all superior to other people when they lucked into some reward or opportunity.
The initial luck is baked in
The problem is if they keep getting stupid lucky afterwards
Read HWFM and you’ll confirm your findings
Oh, for sure. Jason is so far beyond plot armor, it is uninteresting to see his own development. I read the books for the side characters. BISCUIT!
Yeah, I always like to think of MC characters through the lens of Murphy’s law. At the end of the day, plot armor is just statistics. In any universe, there’s always going to be someone miraculously making their way through every dangerous encounter. If it can happen, it will. And those stories are always the most interesting. So those are the ones which we—the inter dimensional, omniscient observers—are interested in watching. Because, you know, there’s plenty of other people that just get blasted by the first obstacle. Or even worse, they magically make it through most everything. Then they die outta nowhere from something totally unrelated to their struggle. Which, those stories aren’t as interesting, satisfying, or rewarding.
Yea, that's how I've always seen it, I'm being told this story because they survived, not that they survived because they are in the story.
Defiance of the Fall not only Zack but everybody in his orbit relies on his luck
Not just implied luck either its a major plot point that he as a crazy high luck stat. Honestly the entire series is only a result of his first lucky roll really
Given how it starts, isn’t it intend to be based on his luck?
His initial roll to avoid death was legitimate luck I believe. The achievement he got for that was what started his luck stat spiral.
It started all of his stat spirals
Luck in the Dotf universe is actually pretty cool. Its an tangible value of how much the system likes you, and how willing it is to bend the rules of the universe to get you the best results.
In Zac's case, his luck is even higher than what his stat sheet says as the system Needs him, because due to his genetically modified body that is unique in the multiverse, he is the only one who can handle oblivion and creation energy, and combine them to make Chaos energy. So the System goes the extra mile to help Zac out.
Longtime reader.I would argue that luck is not a stat of how much the system likes you but more a stat based on how much your personal destiny can affect reality
That would make sense, if the system wasnt able to increase your luck through titles and quest rewards.
Under the original heavens, that would most likely be true, with Luck being an inborn, unchangeable stat outside of heavenly dao fruits, but with the system ursurping the heavens, it seems to have copied the luck stat to also show how much intrest and decide how much investment to put in an person.
Except it's remarked by multiple high level, people who understand the mechanics of the setting, that almost everything the system does existed before the system and the system has just made it quantifiable and significantly easier to access which means the bonuses from titles existed before the system just not the title itself
I will agree people with higher luck get more attention from the system it's just that attention is do to they're "Fate" being more prominent
It was explained that the titles and bonuses are unique to the system, not sure where you got that from. Yeah, people could cultivate before the system, but some of the stuff the system does is brand new.
They explained that the system "steals" your potential to create the titles and bonuses. To fund the energy required to make and sustain the unnatural bonuses from the titles, it reserves an chunk of exp or energy from cultivation to power them.
Think of them like active buffs in games that use an percentage of your energy bar.
Zac has to cannocially get like 4-5 times more exp to level up due to how many titles he has.
Well pretty much everyone who's at the top of the setting says that the system didn't invent the titles or the bonuses that came from them.The system just made a way to quantify what those titles are and what those bonuses are before the system you would have just gotten stronger and it was on you to figure out what that meant
And before the system, it was incredibly hard to advance without being naturally gifted to downright impossible to advance for mortals
One of the examples of something that existed before the system and granted something that is effectively a title is that lightning device Zack and Emily find before the system, you just got stronger from the process after the system you got a title as well and you got a definition on what exactly improved and why
I genuinely cant remeber any old monster saying anything about titles. I have only read up to book 15, so does Zac meet someone different in book 16?.
Yeah, but that location had been absorbed and integrated into the system, like the Technocrat lab (which originally had no system presence) from the forst couple of books.
When the system takes over an place, it modifies it to suit its need. The title from that came from the System, its not something people of ancient times got. The lightning machine was just their to cleanse ancient cultivators of impurities and temper their bodies. They got the full benefit of that, like Zac and Emily did, but they didnt get an extra title of top of it.
Right the extra title is a result of the system but before the system, people who were naturally gifted gained more than just purity and body tempering, they gained an advancement to their fate, which after the system became titles
Rava, Zack's mom, and a couple others im forgetting the name of
Huh, all the excuse I need for another reread!
I think it is better if the luck is part of the story.
Judicator Jane, I think that's the series. She's playing around with the stat points and noticed that she can play around with the skill points. Figures she can zero everything out and dump it all into Luck stat. And accidentally locks it in.
She can't do anything (all her skills are 0). Her stats aren't increasing anything (all but one of her stats are 0).
Just Luck. 360+ stat points in Luck as a newcomer.
She levels by sitting out in the monster infested wilderness (to be fair to her, that was her starting point) and the monsters keep dying in accidents.
I love how it's described that each point is multiplicative instead of additive like the other stats.
Huh…you know what I’ll finally give this a try.
I was hesitant at first but it’s well worth the read
I actually just DNF’d it. Jane was just an idiot.
I loved this premise but hated the MC too much to continue. Wish there was an alternative.
Have you tried Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense? She's playing in an online game. It's low stakes and cute.
Luck might protect her; pretty sure it would suck for everyone else around her. Be a shame when humans start dying like those monsters.
Yes. Yes, it is a shame. And the series will absolutely make sure you know just how much of a shame having quantifiably and objectively bad luck would be. There's an allegorical element to it as well, and it is NOT subtle.
Advanced stats are zero; she leaves the basic stats alone other than luck. And you reversed two digits; her luck is 630. And unlike other stats luck is exponential, so the effective value is 2629 (luck starts at 1, so the exponent has to start at 0). Also she does eventually learn how to get around the zeros (she just has to pretend she's doing something none of the advanced stats cover).
But yeah, I literally just finished the series (what there currently is of it) this morning. Generally pretty good, though I absolutely despise where the plot went at the end of book 4 (even though I saw it coming two whole books away) and through book 5 (though some of Jane's stuff was still interesting). Fortunately book 6 got much better, and also started using her absurd luck again more whereas previously it often felt like it fell out of focus in favor of her OP class (which still gets used, but the balance is better again).
It has some other problems, too, such as Pogg, who IMO is an ATROCIOUS character, and I wish it would stop throwing arbitrary obstacles at Jane and back off on all the war stuff to make room for more stuff about the System, which I find far more interesting, but overall I would generally give it a recommend.
Locked in time loops is a genre that should be able to survive without the lucky MC. There are still a lot of those that have luck play a part, although it is usually played off as skill from repeating previous events.
Judicator Jane (I have only read the first so far) deliberately puts all her points in luck right away. Her subsequent good luck is a result of that choice, not as a device to cover a plot hole.
It would be easier to list series that wouldn't fail tbh.
It matters to a point. Getting a super rare class or broken ability at story start is usually what creates the story and I feel is fine. I want to read about the MC who ate a gas station burrito and instead of crazy diarrhea, can now use the power of farts to blow his enemies away.
If said MC defeats a lvl 100 boss while they are level 1 because they happened to encounter the boss on the fifth full blood moon while fairies defecated in a once in a millennium ritual, which weakens the boss to a baby. That kind of luck, fairly common unfortunately, is irritating.
Luck applied to an MC who doesn't do the work is annoying.
Luck applied to an MC who spent time researching the bosses weaknesses, traveled to meet with a crazy fairy poop scientist, saved said poop scientist from a horde of wild proctologists, and then learned of the poop ritual and had to race to the boss to take advantage. That i am okay with.
I love Dungeon of Knowlege. I promote it here all the time but the ome thing basicslly all readers agree is that the Lich should have won like 3000 fucking years ago. The only reason the goodguys have any chance of actually winning is that he sat of his ass for 3 millenium acomplishing fuck all and he continues to only harfheartedly atempt to deal with them even now.
From my understanding, one of the reasons lich hasn't overwhelmed everybody is he's splitting his levels to have multiple copies running around, so instead of one level 2000 lich, there are ten level 200s. But I agree. Realistically, he won that fight a long time ago.
The real lucky coincidence to me has always been on they always manage to find a conveniently located nearby dungeon that's the next level bracket up for them to keep power leveling. At no point did they ever stall because the dungeon's monsters were 3x their level and they had nowhere else to go to bridge the gap.
Also getting 10 levels from a single fight :/
I think the problem isn't that the MC gets lucky once or twice, but that he gets lucky every 25 pages. That doesn't seem like a lot, but it is when the book is like that for 600 pages.
In this regard, "1% Lifesteal" has many moments where the MC gets into an unfavorable situation, but by the skin of their teeth, they always get lucky at the right moment and pull through with something "incredible." This is exacerbated by the number of times that the MC gets an item that fits his needs. Besides the first item, he has yet to receive something that doesn't perfectly fit his build and that improves everything he does by a mile. "Oh, he's being granted a completely random reward? Oh gee, let me guess, is it going to be something that fits with his affinity? Or a thing that he doesn't know what it is, but when he finds out, 60 chapters later, it happens to be exactly what he needs at that point in time?"
I have no problem with a lucky MC or a Deus Ex Machina happening, but when it happens so many times, it takes away a lot of the immersion. Freddie's story would end abruptly several times if the author didn't rely on his luck.
I like to think we're reading about the MC BECAUSE they are the lucky one.
People get lucky in real life too. If you were going to write about lottery winners you wouldn't pick a random person, you'd pick someone who won the lottery.
Obviously it can be taken too far or not done right. But especially in a universe spanning system or multiverse, with that many people there are going to be some really lucky S.O.B.s
As others mentioned, luck as part of the premise is fine. If their Luck keeps saving them or getting them insane overly rare once in a millennium loot, I start to hate it
It's why I hate Luck as a stat. It just becomes a measure of how much loot and plot armor the author can give the MC. So the MC keeps getting advantages instead of actually earning it, and personally I find that annoying to read
DOTF, ofc. No explanation needed.
I LOVE Delve, but rain would be so screwed if he hadn't luckily met the most charitable (and also pretty) adventurer who happens to know a powerful smith to help balance his build
Boxxy from everybody loves large chests gets a fair bit out of his high luck, and a few lucky breaks
The land, Richter kept finding super rare shit. I vaguely remember him finding that super rare seed of the spiritual tree or whatever when he was just walking. Randomly. And that allowed a bunch of advantages later on
Ascend online, which TBF felt like a beginners litrpg, did have a host of luckiness in it
I honestly can’t even remember a case where the main character doesn’t pull through thanks to luck. Probably LMS, but there’s a reason it’s been top 1 for so many years.
Lms?
Legendary Moonlight Sculptor
Ah yes, how could anyone not understand the acronym.
It's the logical conclusion after all
I don’t really like acronyms myself, but this sub constantly uses them. Considering that the Sculptor is basically The Lord of the Rings in the LitRPG world everything should be clear.
I’ve never even heard of that novel let alone the acronym.
I understand. In that case, you’re always welcome. Now you also know about the greatest work and, essentially, the progenitor of the LitRPG as we know it today.
All of them?
I dropped mark of the fool because luck seemed to be the main character.
Well definitely not DOTF since in chapter one the MC wins an impartial roll off with <1% chance that would have murdered him if he lost
Now that I've finally read a few, I can finally say this
Calamitous Bob,
Due to god shenanigans, a luck god isekai's the MC and gives her a little piece of his luck.
She then ends up in the middle of magic Chernobyl x100 and survives due to said luck.
Discount Dan, he’s cosmically lucky to land next to the wanderer and the flayed monarch’s battle and get rescued. He’s also cosmically unlucky because the artifact that got knocked loose was something very important to the monarch and he remembers Dan’s face.
You should all read Daniel shinhoven's Luck's Voice series. It's all about a guy who is probably one of the most unlucky people in the world, and he becomes the voice of the goddess of luck. The entire premise is centered around him being absolutely stupidly lucky to the extreme and it is done so incredibly well. It is genuinely one of my favorite series and I say that as somebody who has read almost a thousand books.
Honestly fantasy in general depends on things like this outside of maybe slice of life style stories.
I'd like a side chapter in every book in a series covering what happened to end the career of the the alternative protagonist who made all the right choices and also got a dope perk/skill/class/exploit/stat/etc.
The Land. He can charm spell someone a lot higher level than himself just to win the fight. Every advantage is based on luck. In short luck is his super power.
I mean, luck, as you describe it, is a lot of the reason that the story is about a particular person and not one of the side characters. We read most stories, especially power fantasies, specifically to hear about an interesting journey
I think by definition, Defiance of the Fall. It starts with a literal random dice roll with the odds ridiculously stacked against the MC.
I'm what sense failed? Do you mean protagonist would be dead without insane 1/1000 odds going in their favour? Becouse that's basically all of them.
Would be better to ask which mc wouldn’t fail without absurd luck 😂
This luck Is called plot or plot armor if you are specific.
Welcome to the multiverse
He who fights with monster. MC lands in a world where being a snark asshole to people in power gets you respect. Jason is so over the top that the author himself had to plot away some earlier powers.
currently reading through this series, and I personally disagree. the entire series makes a point of Jason's demeanor fucking him over. plenty of people hate him for being who he is, it even leads to him getting tortured by a Cthulhu entity. multiple times, they mention that he's aware that for as many friends he makes with his demeanor, he'll make twice as many enemies, which comes to pass quite a bit. also not sure what you mean with plotting away earlier powers, as I'm only just now finishing book 6, so I'll have to wait and see if that holds true, but really the only thing he's lost is the Quest System, which was for actual story purposes, being that he no longer needed direct guidance to survive, as he had truly made his own way in the world.
sorry that that ended up being a paragraph and a half lol
Is it luck or a survivor bias ?
Did you need to unlock the mythic class "Slayer of Gods" or could you have done this with "Janitor"
Is it compounded boosts. 1st dungeon clear, 1st level 10 for stacking percentage bonuses.
How about that powerful mentor that just drops knowledge or training methods you desperately need - instead of having to reinvent the wheel and discover "fireball" for yourself.
If there are trainers or mentors around then why didn't they deal with this issue ?
or you could have had a few more years; to train up professionally and really excel.
Those are not the stories we want to read. So I'd say you can label it as "luck" if you want. It's more that we are reading the MC's story because they survived; surmounted the odds; got the breaks.
If the character only "nearly won" any fight and that was with those extras and "lucky breaks"; it seems fairly clear they wouldn't have been able to make that challenge.
When the imposing threat is a world ending catastrophe; yeah Lucky we had them around to deal with it.
Terry Pratchett has a few books where without hitting insane million to one odds, the heroes would lose. Which is why they sometimes try to engineer such a situation since actual million to one situations happen nine time out of ten.
But I think luck plays into most fictional books of any genre. A better question would be what story doesn't require luck to save the day
Well if we want to get super technical, doesn't the MC of the Defiance of the fall series begin his system journey with some super "bad guy" trying to spawn in his exact location and he just wins a die roll? If i'm remembering that correctly, then I guess technically that whole series wouldn't have happened.
I'm not super sure if this should really count or not though, because in that version of the system luck is a dedicated stat that you can improve.
I meannnn I love the series but azarinth healers MC Literally stumbles into a random ass temple in the woods while running from wolves and walks out with super op class that Also had like a 1 in 3 chance of death to get... Even self reflects and thinks about wtf was that luck lol...
I once heard that a good book is allowed exactly one lucky moment or coincidence. That has always seemed to hold true for me
Story's without plot armor/ extraodinary luckare either usually incredibly dark, and while it would be interesting to see a side character either be left with or take the heros mantle, most people want at least a moderately happy ending.
There are quite a few series where the luck is either comicly or depressing apparent, and I tend to stray from those.
I think most LitRPGs would fail if the MC wasn't absurdly lucky. At least most of the ones I've read. I just read Hell Difficulty Tutorial and everyone tells the MC not to completely focus on Mana because without buffing your body you'll overload and tear yourself apart. He keeps getting lucky making magical implants, meeting an "old monster" of a teacher that taught him Mana control, and getting a splitting consciousness with one part of his brain always managing his Mana among other lucky events. Even his teacher tells him he'll die in a decade if he keeps going like this.
It always comes down to the MC having a crazy high personal will power and luck. But I guess that's why they're the main character and not Jim or Janice who play it safe. It wouldn't make for as action-packed of a story.
Would we get bored if the MC had bad luck and setbacks? Is the luck part of the momentum forward?
Honestly, I’m at a place with the whole luck thing where I want the MC to get a setback. Because it’s a little weird that all the advice they ignore is legitimately good advice they don’t know that they’ll find a secret technique/ elixir/, resource/ grandmaster that will make their terrible ideas work out.
I kind of want to see a training obsessed MC actually ruin their body due to overdoing it, be forced to be bedridden, and learn that exercising 23 hours a day doesn’t make you devoted, it makes you injured.
Because, the world is full of billions of people. Thousands of them have ungodly willpower. More than enough to work 24 hours. There’s a reason why we say it doesn’t work.
Not a litrpg but rezero handled that so perfectly imo
It was the old monster that made him focus exclusively on mana, also the magical implants dont actually help his mana problem, they make it worse.
Only partially and not on purpose since he was already on that mana grind before the second floor, he just didn't have a way to contain the mana before without putting some points into Endurance. He decided to only focus on it after seeing her power and learning cycling. She realized he wasn't going to take her advice to balance himself out and change his build so she gave him some methods to work with it. The magical implants also do kinda help since they constantly turn some of his Mana into kinetic and thermal energy which takes away from the load of mana he has to cycle. In the chapters on Royal Road Lissandra warns him he has a decade or so to fix his problem or he'll die.
Nat Gwyn is one of the most blatant examples of plot armor.
Many examples to point to, but my favorite is the whole black mana debacle at the end of floor 3
None. Stories are constructs of an author.