Luck

This page is about the Luck stat and associated game mechanics. The wizard spell Luck and Luck-altering status effects are treated in their own pages.

Luck is a creature stat able to alter many types of dice rolls related to weapon damage output, resistance to spell damage and more.

The final Luck score is affected negatively by the Fatigue and Intoxication stats, potentially to great extent. In Enhanced Edition, the game difficulty Story mode also grants a permanent +6 Luck modifier.

Effects on dice rolls

A creature's Luck score affects some dice that it rolls, and some dice that external sources such as opponents and allies roll against it.

When a dice roll is affected, the Luck score gets added to each individual die in that roll, but without crossing that die's boundaries: A single 6-faced die (D6) will therefore not produce a result below 1 or above 6 even after Luck has been applied – so for example with 2 Luck, the possible rolls would become 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6.

Rolls made by the creature

The following is a relatively exhaustive list of a creature's own dice rolls that will be affected by its Luck score. Positive Luck increases the values rolled:

• To-hit, though critical hit and miss are decided from the unmodified roll (D20)
• Natural weapon damage, but not on-hit damage effects
• Initiative for weapon attacks (D6)
• Initiative for movement, but only when interacting with another creature (D8)
• Bash doors (D10)
• Disarm traps (D10)
• Open locks (D10)
• Set traps (D100)
• Stealth (D100)

Rolls targeting the creature

The following is a relatively exhaustive list of the dice rolls not made by the creature, but by external sources trying to affect it. The creature's Luck score then comes into play. Positive Luck decreases the values rolled unless they're healing:

• On-hit weapon damage effects, but not natural weapon damage
• Damage rolls from spells and other abilities
• Healing rolls from spells such as Mass Cure and other abilities

Note: The odds that a Reflected Image or Mirror Image will be struck by an attacker instead of the real creature are affected by that creature's Luck stat in a unique way described below.

Examples

• An Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting that deals 10D8 or 20D8 would do the full 80 or 160 damage every time to a creature with -7 Luck, because every single one of the 10 or 20 dice rolled would be turned into 8s. Worse luck would not increase damage received from 8-faced dice any further.
• An attack roll of 1 before Luck is always a miss, and a 20 (or 19 with the right weapon proficiency) is always a critical hit. Luck has no bearing on this.
• Rolling a 18 with 2 Luck or more will not turn the roll into a critical hit, the roll will be counted as a 20 but will still have to go through the defender's AC and doesn't do double damage. Similarly, rolling a 3 with -2 Luck or less will not result in a critical miss, the roll will be counted as a 1 but an attacker with good enough THAC0 can still land the blow.
• Initiative for weapon attacks is modified by a 1D6-4 roll. The initiative formula is probably Speed factor - modifier, capped in [0, 10].^{[verification needed]} So with at least 3 Luck, a creature with speed factor 0 should be guaranteed to get the best initiative of 0 every time. This might be useful for parties with multiple backstabbers, where striking at the exact same time produces best results. The unkitted Bard's song provides +3 Luck party wide starting from level 20.

Effects on Mirror Image

Luck also affects the odds that a successful physical attack will hit a caster through their Reflected Image or Mirror Images. If the caster's final Luck score is 1 or higher, this unfortunate event will never happen. On the other end of the spectrum, should their Luck be in the negative by an amount equal to or larger than they have images, successful hits will always bypass images and strike true. The formula is:

(1 - Caster Luck) / (1 + Amount of images) = Probability to bypass images

Note: A probability is a number between 0 and 1 ; multiply by 100 if you want a percentage. Negative values mean 0% chance to bypass, values above 1 mean 100% chance.

Checking the Luck score in-game

Luck is a rather hidden stat. One good way to check it in game is, with console cheat keys enabled, to put the mouse cursor over the relevant creature and press CTRL+M. This will display a bunch of debug information in the combat logs. Scrolling up, there should be a line starting with Current Luck (with all Modifiers): and ending with the final Luck score for that creature.

How the Luck score is calculated

A creature's final Luck score is the sum of its base Luck stat, which is 0 for almost every single creature in the series, a number of status effects, the Intoxication penalty and the Fatigue penalty:

Final Luck = 
 Base Luck stat
 + Luck modifier effects
 + Luck spell OR Cloverleaf bonus (only one can be active)
 + Chant luck bonus OR Ring of Purity (only one can be active)
 + Enemy Chant luck penalty (only one can be active)
 + Intoxication penalty (between -12 and 0)
 + Fatigue penalty (between -94 and 0)

Note: The Luck spell and Cloverleaf attempt to give a unique Luck-modifying status effect. Only one can be active at a time on any given creature. The Ring of Purity and Chant grant a different, non-cumulative status effect as well, and if enemies are present in Chant's area of effect when cast, they will get another, different non-cumulative status effect.

Sources of Luck

Main article: Luck effects

Stacking behavior	Source	Luck modifier	Target
Normal	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Bard Song (no kit)	+1 at level 1   +2 at level 15 +3 at level 20	Party members
	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Blade Song	+1	Allies in range
	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Chaos of Battle	+1 to +5
	Cursed Scroll of Clumsiness	-2	User
	Cursed Scroll of Foolishness
	Fatigue	0 to -94	N/A
	Intoxication	0 to -12
	Rabbit's Foot	+2	Alora
	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Story Mode	+6	Party members
	Wish "Bad luck"	-5	Everyone in area
Only one from this group	Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (2016) This icon indicates content from the Siege of Dragonspear campaign of the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Cloverleaf	+1	Wearer
	Luck spell		Creature
Only one from this group	Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (2016) This icon indicates content from the Siege of Dragonspear campaign of the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Blazing Glory	+1	Allies in range
	Chant
	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Cloak of Atonement
	Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (2016) This icon indicates content from the Siege of Dragonspear campaign of the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Ring of Purity		Wearer
Only one from this group	Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (2016) This icon indicates content from the Siege of Dragonspear campaign of the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Blazing Glory	-1	Enemies in range
	Chant
	Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Editions This icon indicates content from all Enhanced Editions of the Baldur's Gate games. May situationally encompass Siege of Dragonspear and The Black Pits I & II content as well. Cloak of Atonement

Trivia

• Although some sources, including game manuals, indicate that fatigue/luck play a role in NPC dialogue reactions, this was not actually implemented in any game.
• Some creatures have a non-zero base Luck stat, such as Ribald Barterman, some Shadow Thieves like Aran Linvail or Brennan Risling, Bodhi, some Giant and Fire trolls, or the real body of Sendai. Their luck scores vary greatly, with Ribald at 20, Brennan at 10, Sendai at 4 and Bodhi only 1.

External Links

• Luck on the Icewind Dale Wiki, a wiki for the first Icewind Dale game.
• Luck on the Forgotten Realms Wiki, a wiki for the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Forgotten Realms.
• Luck: What it is and how it works on Beamdog forums